Where do you store your photos?

[John_SD]

For some time, I have been concerned about proper long-term storage of my photos -- the ones that mean something to me. If you beleve like me, that photos capture a time and place in our lives and that you'd like future generations of your family to have access to them, then you begin thinking in terms of storage options.

I myself don't have any faith that any of these companies will be around 40 or 50 years from now, or that today's hardware solutions will be viable. CDs and such? They are on their way out already. Flickr (or any other Yahoo offshoot)? Don't make me laugh. Dropbox? Let's talk about it 25 years from now. SmugMug? Get real. Google Drive? Please. 

All of them are fine, for now. I stash mine on Google Photos, also a temporary solution at best. But my photos that really mean something to me, I print.

Thus, I am using the only tried and true storage and retrtieval "device" that has stood the test of time. That is the photo album. Don't laugh. I have family photo albums chock full of black-and-whites from the early 1930s onward. And I am **bleep** glad I have them. There is no hardware to fail. No company to pull the plug. No technology that will fall by the wayside. For many, photo albums may be a thing of the past. For me, they contain generations of my family.

What about for you? Where do you store the photos that mean the most to you?

[veer6]

On lots of sd cards

[John_SD]

You guys who are relying on disk drives and SD cards for long-term storage are looking at disaster in one fell swoop when those devices fail.

[RobertTheFat]

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@John_SD wrote:
You guys who are relying on disk drives and SD cards for long-term storage are looking at disaster in one fell swoop when those devices fail.

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Er ... That's why we put them on three or more geographically separated devices. (Everybody does that; right?)

But I agree with you regarding SD cards. No way are they a reliable medium for long-term protection. It's easy enough for a few of them to simply fall into the wastebasket and not be noticed.

[John_SD]

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@RobertTheFat wrote:

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@John_SD wrote:
You guys who are relying on disk drives and SD cards for long-term storage are looking at disaster in one fell swoop when those devices fail.

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Er ... That's why we put them on three or more geographically separated devices. (Everybody does that; right?)

But I agree with you regarding SD cards. No way are they a reliable medium for long-term protection. It's easy enough for a few of them to simply fall into the wastebasket and not be noticed.

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Three or more hardware devices in differnt geographical locations? That merely multiples your problem by 3, in my view, Bob. Hardware fails, period. And it's not a matter of if, but when. 

I have family albums full of black and whites that go back to the early 1930's. The photos remain in top-notch condition because they are protected (and not handled individually). While disk storage may be fine for now, think of the future. Disk drives aren't going to last for nigh on a century, and your future family members will have no clue about the photos that mean the most to you today, because they will be gone, along with a valuable trove of memories from a different world. Put your favorites in photo albums for all to enjoy, now and in the future. 

Photo albums don't require IDs or passwords to open up, nor family members 70 years from who know nothing of such things. After you're gone, who will maintain the accounts where your photos reside today?  

While photo albums themselves may need replacing after many decades, the photos will still be in excellent condition. Printing from a commercial firm and proper photo storage is the way to go. 

[Waddizzle]

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@John_SD wrote:
You guys who are relying on disk drives and SD cards for long-term storage are looking at disaster in one fell swoop when those devices fail.

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I shoot hundreds of photos every week.  What is your suggestion?

[cicopo · Accepted solution]

The fact of the matter is there are several great ways to do it but none are guaranteed to stand the test of time all of the time. Printed photos burn in house fires every single day of the year.

[John_SD]

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@cicopo wrote:

The fact of the matter is there are several great ways to do it but none are guaranteed to stand the test of time all of the time. Printed photos burn in house fires every single day of the year.

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You are correct, cicopo. There are no guarantees in life. House fires do happen. But hardware failures happen a lot more. Print. 

[Mr_Fusion]

As I understand, even those records carved into stone have, for the most part, not passed the test of time all that well. Sure, some have, but only a fraction of what were created. (Look up the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.) Even since the dawn of photography, the vast majority of photos (and negatives) have been lost for a variety of reasons. My grandfather was an avid photographer in the early 20th century. No one knows what happened to all his photos and negatives. 

As others point out, they often take hundreds of pictures per week. With today's large form size, that adds up to a lot of storage. Suggesting that we delete those sub-par is fine if you have very set standards. Most of us prefer to keep most of our shots. In my personal case, I only delete those obviously out of focus or where only my feet are in the frame. So instead of keeping five, I delete five.

I'm not worried that my storage devices will ultimately fail or their system be replaced. We have done that repeatedly throughout the ages. We managed to survive. If my HDD storage fails, it won't be the end of the world. If my heirs want to keep my collection, they will update the storage.

[TCampbell]

The drawback with "printing" is that the image goes from digital form with (if it's  a RAW file) 14-bits of color depth... to a non-digital sheet of paper.  So you do lose quite a bit of ability to work with that image in the future and any scan of it wont be as good as the original.

Paper and Ink are also "expensive" compared to the cost of a backup hard drive.  Simple mechanical drive (no enclosure) is less than $50 per 1TB.  That's pretty cheap compared to the price of ink (a full set of ink cartridges will cost more than $50 and wont produce nearly as many prints as can be stored on a hard drive.

So buy a drive and make sure you have a 2nd copy of each image.  Problem solved.  If you're worried about floods, store the drives in a water-tight Pelican case.  If you're worried about fire, you can get a fire safe.  You can also store the backup drives off-site (a family member, a friend, etc.)  

A lot of software that handles digital asset management has the ability to manage "offline" storage.  It'll store a small JPEG thumbnail preview of each image, but it knows which physical drive has the full-size RAW.  That means even if your offline storage isn't with you, at least you know which hard drive spindle has your data and can quickly retrieve it.

I use a 4-disk storage array with a RAID-5 type filesystem.  RAID-5 (RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a way of storing blocks of data spread across all but one of the spindles... the final spindle has a XOR'd value of the contents of the other spindles.  The algorithm is such that ANY sinlge drive in the array can fail completely and when you replace that spindle the array has the ability to completely rebuild the integrity of the data ... guaranteeing that you will not have lost any data.  it's quite clever.  One risk to keep in mind is that since all drives are the same make, model, and age... they all wear at roughly the same rate.  So when one drive fails... odds are high that the remaining spindles will not be long for this world.  But the solution is to just proactively replace all the spindles.  Replace the failed spindle, let the array rebuild it, then replace the next one and let the array rebuild that, etc... and as long as you do it one-at-a-time you will lose nothing.

I had a 4-drive array with 1TB drives and I wanted to grow the array to use 2TB drives... and it let me replace each drive one-at-a-time ... but once the final drive was swapped, it prompted me to reboot the array so it could "grow" the filesystem to double my space ... it didn't take long.

There are only two types of hard drives in the world:

1)  Those that HAVE failed

2)  Those that are GOING to fail.

There is no third category.  Everything WILL fail... it's just a matter of time.  Each time you drive your cars, you put wear on your tires.  You may not notice much wear from a single ride... but add up the wear of all the drives you take and eventually those tires will go bald and... eventually blow.  Hard drives are exactly the same.  They aren't supposed to last forever.  Even Solild State fails after enough writes (although I'd never buy an expensive high performance drive for backups.)

[John_SD]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

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@John_SD wrote:
You guys who are relying on disk drives and SD cards for long-term storage are looking at disaster in one fell swoop when those devices fail.

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I shoot hundreds of photos every week.  What is your suggestion?

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My approach and view of the matter may be different from yours, Waddizzle, as I am certain that based on your years of experience, you are a much better photographer than I am. Thus, you may want to save all of your shots. 

I am a serial deleter, and have no problem removing inferior shots, or simply not caring about them. Other guys are at the opposite extreme and fall in love with every junk shot they take. I don't know which end of the spectrum you fall on, but for me, if I take 300 shots, I have no problem deleting 295 of them and keeping the 5 good ones -- or at least the few that would mean the most to me. One or two of those, I will send off for printing. I suggest that every photographer who has a childlike faith in the eternal perfection of hard drives and backups do the same, as they will eventually lose their images one day due to mechanical failure or a company failing and going out of business.

Print the good ones or the ones that mean the most to you and keep them in photo albums. A hundred years from now your ancestors will be thankful for your foresight. And it will give them a glimpse into a world that will mean a great deal to them. At least that is the way I feel about the photo albums passed down in our family.