The current discussion on Computer Related has prompted this. It relates to what is the best way to backup thousands of photos from the PC.
Re photos - my dad has thousands of photos and the family were going to invest in a scanner thingy to scan them all into PC. Was going to be expensive and laborious process but we were astonished that my dad said not to bother.
Realistically he was never actually going to sit down and view them all and as a family we agreed that we probably wouldn't either. It would become the equivalent of the famila china teaset that would get handed down from generation to generation with everyone not wanting to be the one that didn't hand it over but no one would actually look at them or use them. Maybe one photo would be used for a funeral order of service and that would be it!
When I see old photos of grandparents etc they are interesting but probably because they are so rare and so few of them. But in my case, I upload photos with a folder name of that date and they are all filed chronologically. And because they are free and digital there may be tens of photos taken that date that, well you don't really need to delete any so you just save them all.
Maybe I should start a separate file for one off photos that a future grandchild or someone may find interesting rather than a thousand photos of a dog splashing in the sea, a landscape, a strange car?
How do you file yours?
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>>
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>> Maybe I should start a separate file for one off photos that a future grandchild
>> or someone may find interesting rather than a thousand photos of a dog splashing in
>> the sea, a landscape, a strange car?
>>
Very good idea. You have reminded me of my intention to do the same.
You need to bear in mind that no format is really secure. Is a CD or a hard drive really going to be readable in 100 years time?
I think you need to print off two copies of the select photos, and keep one in a traditional album together with explanatory notes, and the other set in proper envelopes in a sealed container
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>> You need to bear in mind that no format is really secure. Is a CD
>> or a hard drive really going to be readable in 100 years time?
>>
I read a recommendation that you should transfer anything important - in this case photos - onto the next new technology when it becomes available, while it's concurrent with the older, with the aim of having a version that's always electronically accessible.
Back to topic, I file my photos in folders by place name and date. Some more generic stuff, like photos of our cat, the garden etc I just file in a generic folder with the subject and year (rather than exact date), e.g. "Garden 2015". I keep one copy on my main computer, and every so often (but not really often enough) I do a full copy to an external HD which takes forever. I really need an incremental backup regime.
And like many others, we have a large number of old fashioned prints. I bought a negative scanner about 4 years ago, with the intention of filling the long cold Austrian evenings with negative scanning, but haven't got round to it yet. Some of the discussion here has made me think about whether it is a good use of time.
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" incremental backup regime."
Have a look at syncing rather than backing up (similar I suppose).
This is free, there are others - allwaysync.com/
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>> How do you file yours?
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I just pop them on a HD, with month, year and location of photo as the file name. I don't have any pre digital camera.
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Once a year I download the camera's memory to my hard drive.
I copy it to photobucket.
I also keep a copy on CD.
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Good topic. We recently "found" a box of photos that came from my mother's (d. 1999); quite a treasure trove and although there are hundreds they are easy to look through usually being grouped by the individual film roll.
That won't happen for future generations in the same way. A lot of material will be lost.
We acquired a granddaughter last year. I have uploaded all photos and videos to Onedrive. Easy for all to view and I hope secure.
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I back up my photos onto a server (home built) on the home network.
These are stored in a folder relevant to the topic (i.e. holiday Thailand etc).
I just wished that I had named them by date too.
Every few months I back the contents of the server to an external hard drive too.
Its more work and can take time but I have not lost anything in the time I have been backing up the data.
Businesses are advised to make a three point backup (where three copies exist), I don't think that is needed for home but a two point backup (on the server and on external hard drive) is good enough.
It's unlikely that an external hard drive and my server would pack up at the same time.
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" I don't think that is needed for home but a two point backup (on the server and on external hard drive) is good enough"
Yeah but - probably the biggest risk is that without you realising, your source file has gone corrupt, so you can back up as many times as you want but you are backing up garbage. That's more of an argument for different generations of your backup being kept, and never overwritten. E.g. keep one every quarter or year rather than over-writing it, that way there is more likely to be some point in the past you can go back to when the content was sound.
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I've never had the slightest interest in leaving any evidence of my existence when I finally depart. If people want to have memories of me they can keep them themselves.
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>> I've never had the slightest interest in leaving any evidence of my existence when I
>> finally depart. If people want to have memories of me they can keep them themselves.
>>
Quite right. No one but no one is going to have the slightest interest in your 47 thousand holiday snaps when you are gone however immaculately they are labelled and backed up. They won't go further than checking your on line bank account. ;-)
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Sun 5 Apr 15 at 12:01
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>> Quite right. No one but no one is going to have the slightest interest in
>> your 47 thousand holiday snaps when you are gone however immaculately they are labelled and
>> backed up. They won't go further than checking your on line bank account. ;-)
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Some of the family have various dealings when people die, so see it quite often. It's pretty much like you say, a few items (<1%) are kept, anything worth anything is sold. The rest; charity shop or a skip.
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Smokie, that is one weakness of my backup system.
could possibly up the ante and backup to the cloud too but I am a bit sceptical about cloud storage
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>> Smokie, that is one weakness of my backup system.
>> could possibly up the ante and backup to the cloud too but I am a
>> bit sceptical about cloud storage
Me too. Google and Microsoft make changes and occasionally leave people adrift with discontinued features etc.
I had a scare with Onedrive when the pictures in one of my old folders would not display on line at all. Fortunately the files were there and I was able to download them.
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Massive USB sticks are cheap enough these days. Well, massive for photos not videos. 64Gb are somewhere in the £12 - £17 region and are easy enough to drop with a friend/relative for safe keeping.
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>> Massive USB sticks are cheap enough these days. Well, massive for photos not videos. 64Gb
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How long will they last? Even if they still work in a hundred years, do you really think such old format will be readable then? Does your old reel-reel tape recorder still work?
You need real photographs or real negatives if you want anything to be useful to your descendants.
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>>You need real photographs or real negatives if you want anything to be useful to your descendants.<<
negatives degrade with time - glass plates from 100 years ago are beginning to 'fog'.
Maybe the answer is to etch them onto stainless steel (gold may last longer, but cost maybe an isuue?)? Should get a few more years out of them?
Reel to reel still work but tapes are becoming fragile if not well stored.
Are USB sticks EMP resistant?
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>> Are USB sticks EMP resistant?
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Can't comment on that, but I believe that they have a finite life, they're designed for a finite number of read/write cycles, and will eventually fail. Not so much of a problem if used for archiving as suggested here - but easy to physically lose!
Last edited by: Mike H on Sun 5 Apr 15 at 16:07
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I used to work for a company that sold UDO media (like blue ray discs) and we tested an guaranteed 50 year data retention.
Unfortunately this format never took off and companies still rely on Hard drive backups or tape backups.
This seems a bit overkill for home backups as its not cheap.
CD and DVD certified readable life is only in the order of 5 to 8 years after that if the disc is still readable then it's a bonus.
Hard drive life varies from manufacturer to another but rated in hours.
as for USB media life time, anyone's guess
Last edited by: diddy1234 on Sun 5 Apr 15 at 20:43
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>> >>You need real photographs or real negatives if you want anything to be useful to
>> your descendants.<<
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>> negatives degrade with time - glass plates from 100 years ago are beginning to 'fog'.
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>
But a cache of badly-stored photographs or negatives from the 19th century are usually still viewable. I wouldn't have much confidence that an old hard-drive or memory stick stored in someone's garage for a century would still work.
Or that the company managing your cloud would still be in business.
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>>You need real photographs or real negatives if you want anything to be useful to
>> your descendants.
So print all your electronic pictures and scan all your hard copies if you're that worried.
Frankly if my computer, the hard disk next to it, the hard disk 8,000 miles away (replaced every year or so) AND the cloud all disappear, I suspect that I'll have bigger problems to worry about than losing my pictures.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 6 Apr 15 at 18:21
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My only concern with any backup is some files become corrupted. So you keep backing up a corrupted file locally, to the cloud etc. One reason to occasionally take a local copy of important files to a write only medium and hope it works in the future, e.g. BluRay.
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If you want to create something to pass on select a couple of dozen photos of you and your family, no one will be interested in pictures of the Eiffel Tower, and have them printed by a professional company using high quality paper and inks and put them in a good quality album identifying who is who. You can include a DVD in the album.
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How do you file yours? - Cliff Pope
