Author |
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 11:17 am
I have 2 questions. Question 1: I am looking for suggestions for the best way to store all the photos that are currently on my desktop. (Yikes, a year's worth!) I was thinking of copying them by month to a disk and then either printing out thumbnails myself or bring them to a Walgreens and have them give me thumbnails and then put the disk and thumbnails in a CD binder. Other questions relating to this are: Is storing these discs in a CD binder "safe" or protective enough? Is it better to use jewel cases? Are any types or brands of CDs better than another? Question 2: What is the best way to backup my files? Is there anything better than copying to a disk? And then the same questions about storing the disks as above. Thanks in advance! Oh, if it matters, I have a mac.
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Monday, January 02, 2006 - 9:21 am
That’s a problem that photographers wrestle with all the time. The first step is setting up a system that makes sense to you so that it’s not too hard to find your images. Here’s one suggestion. Name your files starting with the date in the format of YYMMDD. That way they will always sort easily in order by date. Then split your files into folders that contain about the right amount that will fit onto a CD (about 700 megs). So now you have a bunch of folders each with a little less than 700 megs of images in them. Or you may want to back-up to DVDs (4.7 gigs). Next I would recommend buying a good brand name external hard drive (by that I mean a brand name that you recognize like LaCie). You connect them to your computer using USB2 or firewire. They are relatively inexpensive and they are fast. Copy all of your images to the external drive. It's great. They are huge and all of your images are available whenever you want them. Now if you are just looking for a back-up and want to keep your files on both drives, that’s a pretty good approach. It fits the number one requirement for backing up – it’s easy to do. There is no point in having the most secure back-up system if it means that it’s too hard to use and you never do it! The downside to the above is that if you have some sort of a power surge or accident, you might lose both drives (unlikely but possible). So the next step is backing all of those nice little folders up to CD or DVD. Store the CDs or DVDs vertically in little jewel cases, in a dark container. Don’t write on the CD (even with a marker) – you can label the cases. Don’t buy cheap no name CDs – they aren’t reliable. Buy something like Maxell. Even at that CDs aren’t rock solid, so you should make at least two copies. If you want to be really careful, store one copy at a relatives or a friends or at work. Finally, you might want to get an image database program like ThumbsPlus. It creates Thumbnails of all your images and stores the thumbnails in a database so you can see what is on your CDs even when they aren’t in the drive. It also lets you re-name all of your files very easily and it has a slideshow etc. Of course, you won’t need to look at the CDs as you will have your big external hard drive with all your images easily accessible on it. You can find ThumbsPlus on the internet. You can try it before you buy it. It is very important that you have your important images stored in at least two places. Your hard drive will fail eventually – it is only a matter of time. There are a lot of advantages to digital photography but the downside is that you are completely responsible for your files and a lot of people lose some very valuable images if they are not backed-up. I had a drive fail and I would have lost every picture of my little girl from birth to one year's old. But I didn't lose them because they were backed-up. 
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Monday, January 02, 2006 - 9:51 am
Jimmer, I can't say thank you enough! Now for some of my other files, like quark documents and or word documents, would you recommend the same procedure for backing up? Is Imation a good brand of CDs? That's what they used where I used to work. Also, you say don't write in the CDs. an you put labels on them? I got a pack of these:
but if they could possibly compromise the CD at all, then I will take 'em back. Is any of the 3 ways to use them safer than another? (full face, standard or center only?) Thanks again and always!!!
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Monday, January 02, 2006 - 10:04 am
What is the difference in storing photos on a DVD versus a CD?
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Monday, January 02, 2006 - 10:35 am
Glad to help Julie. As you can imagine, this is a very big deal among photographers now. There’s very little difference between CDs and DVDs except that DVDs hold much more data (and therefore more photos). CDs hold 700 megs and DVDs hold 4.7 gigs (about 6 times as much). I’d recommend the same thing for backing up all of your documents. The external hard drives are great. If you do buy one, double-check to see how long the firewire or USB cord is that is included. Sometimes the ones they include are very short so you may need to buy a longer one. Sorry … the labels are pretty but they really reduce the longevity of the CD or DVD so I wouldn’t recommend using labels for archival purposes. With respect to Imation – I don’t know. You hear so many different things. I recently read that Maxell used to have a terrible reputation but now they are better. If you are making two copies, buy CDs from two different manufacturers and make a copy on each of them.
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 6:44 am
What are magnetic tapes and how would you transfer the data to them? Do you guys concur with what this article says? http://msn.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124312,00.asp?GT1=7645
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 9:16 am
That’s an interesting article. I’m not sure that I agree with him about the short longevity of CDs and DVDs. There are things you can do to increase your success rate. Here are some of them. Always test them immediately after burning them to ensure that the data is good. I have heard that some of the CD/DVD failures where people try a disk a couple of years later and find the data is no good, are not the result of deterioration over time, but rather that it was never good in the first place! Avoid filling the disk completely. Only put about 4 gigs of data on it, because it gets harder for the burner to burn successfully, if you put more than that on it. Store them vertically in a dark location. The other thing is that it is very important not to buy bad disks. However, the problem is that even if you buy a name brand, you can’t be completely sure who made it and where it was manufactured. I’ve tested the Maxell DVDs that I buy and a good manufacturer (Taiyo Yuden) apparently makes them in Japan. However, I’m not sure they make all of Maxell’s disks that are sold everywhere. One thing for sure though – don’t buy cheap no-name disks! With respect to tape drives, I’ll start by saying I don’t know much about it. I don’t know many pro photographers that are using tape as a means of archival back up. Although, he says in the article that the tape will last, it is a magnetic medium, which makes me a little nervous. Also, tape is continuous. With disks, the head or the laser will immediately jump to the relevant section of the disk. The tape has to wind through the device so it’s not like you can easily view data on it. So I think most pros are using multiple external hard drives and DVD disks for archiving. The other thing you can do to make sure that your pictures are safe is to periodically refresh your back-ups. In other words, back them all up again. This works great if you don’t have too much data.
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Bonzacat
Member
07-08-2003
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 9:34 am
Julie - I am weighing in on the labels you posted above. Stick-on labels are a problem. Not only do they compromise the disc but they tend to get stuck in slot-loading drives. The iMac and Apple laptops have slot-loading drives, as do many cars now. I made an audio CD for a friend to play in the car and it got stuck in her drive. I just don't use them any more, even for fun projects. I back up to an external Firewire drive and also to CD or DVD. I do this now because I once lost A YEAR of digital photos that were on my computer desktop. The drive failed and no one - not my Mac dealer DH, his guru, nor DriveSavers (a professional data-recovery company) could save any of my data. I won't go through that again. I have heard good things about a Mac program called Data Backup, but have not tried it yet.
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 10:07 am
That is an excellent back up strategy Bonzacat. I agree about the labels. Another problem is that these disks spin fast so if the label isn’t applied correctly, you can have balance problems. Julie, Another good one time test to help ensure your CD/DVD burner is burning the disks properly is try reading one of them using a different disk player. With an external drive, you will want to do differential back ups. You may want to get a back up or a file compare program (for comparing what files have changed on your two hard drives).
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 10:19 am
I’m not sure that I was very clear up above when I was talking about being unable to distinguish who made the disks. What I meant was that you can't tell for sure by reading the brand label. What you have to do is look at the disk using a program that can read the disk manufacturer.
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 11:16 am
Thanks you guys! Bonza what does that Mac Data backup do?
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Bonzacat
Member
07-08-2003
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 11:28 am
Julie - I haven't used it so can't tell you much (well, anything). But it's an automated data backup program that allows you to back up to external hard drives. It may prepare data for backup to CD/DVD but I'm really not sure about that. Try Googling it and see if you can find their site - from that I'm sure you could get a nice list of the features. Sorry I don't have more info on it.
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Bonzacat
Member
07-08-2003
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 11:51 am
Julie - here we go: Data Backup provides the ability to backup, restore and synchronize your valuable data with minimal effort. When an activity, such as a backup, is needed on a regular basis it can be scheduled by using Data Backup's Programmed Actions Mode. Programmed Actions can be created as needed with Data Backup and settings and schedules are saved for each action including full, incremental and evolutive backups. With Data Backup you can make an exact bootable copy of your OS hard drive. Data Backup also allows you to synchronize your data on multiple volumes. System Requirements: Mac OS X, G3 or G4 processor, 128 MB of RAM ProSoft Engineering - Data Backup 
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Julieboo
Member
02-05-2002
| Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 12:01 pm
Thanks Bonza, you totally rock!
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Vee
Member
02-23-2004
| Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 8:47 am
That was all very interesting, everybody. I want to send a rather large file (7.5 MB) via e-mail and I think I should compress it. Does anyone know how to do this? I did find *This Site* that offers a free download, but am wondering if my system already has such feature...Windows XP. Thanks!
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 9:45 am
If you have Windows XP you don’t need an external program for this. Just open File Explorer and right click where you want the zip file to appear. Select New and then Compressed (Zipped) folder from the menu. You can call it whatever you want but you might want to give it an 8 character file name with a .zip extension for compatibility with other systems. Then you just drag the files that you want zipped into the folder. By the way, some files compress better than others. For example, because jpegs are already compressed, they do not compress any further, whereas documents or database files can be substantially compressed.
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Vee
Member
02-23-2004
| Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 11:14 am
Thanks so much, Jimmer, for all the information. I, at least, won't be downloading a file that I do not need. However, I lost you at "File Explorer"...the catalog of all stored files??? Yup, I am a certifiable idiot when it comes to a computer. I have back-up coming tomorrow...just thought that I would try to impress said backup with my brilliance. Ha! BTW, I want to send a large photo file.
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Jimmer
Member
08-30-2000
| Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 11:39 am
You’re welcome! If you want to send a large photo file, the best way to compress it is make it a jpeg. There are various settings for jpeg compression, which produce various file sizes. Of course the more compressed the file, the lower the quality of the image. Always be sure to keep the original. Another way to reduce the file size is to reduce the image size! In other words make the image dimensions smaller. Once again, there are costs involved. While a smaller image will look fine on the screen it won’t print as well. Finally, there is no point in zipping a jpeg file. It simply won’t compress with zip. But …. Just so you know, by File Explorer I just mean the folder thingy that you use to look at files on your computer (LOL – I don’t know how else to describe it).
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Jan
Moderator
08-01-2000
| Saturday, February 04, 2006 - 12:01 pm
Jimmer & Vee, I think it is called Windows Explorer and is found, on XP, under Start/All Programs/Accessories -hope that helps.  
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Vee
Member
02-23-2004
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 6:58 am
Cute, Jan! LOL!
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Jan
Moderator
08-01-2000
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 9:17 am
LOL Vee you might think I was being cute but i have to admit, as a brand new user of XP , it took me a week to FIND the windows explorer icon!!!!! On Win 98 it was right under all programs so I had no inkling to look under accessories 
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Vee
Member
02-23-2004
| Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 2:52 pm
Thanks, Jan! In fact, you are being very helpful because I found it quite by accident the first time, too. So it will be a big help for everyone who is getting to know their XP program as I am still in the process of doing over a year later. I was able to follow Jimmer's directions to the letter. Yay!
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