So. What do you do with 1megabyte files?

[SergeiR]

so.. 1G files, i hope. First of all, unless you got drum scan - you most likely will be more than fine with 400m-800m tiff files for b&w. Once you hit 2G you can't often open bloody thing in Photoshop (bug in Vuescan on writing out Tiffs? i keep forgetting to check tech specs of format), which kinda limits printing options quite a bit.

Now. On "what to do" - scan, check. If you like it enough to scan, you might want to keep them around as "digital negative". So, extra couple of external hard drives to back work up, may be external network storage (they are reasonably cheap). I mean you can get few terabytes drives around. Just don't store them all in same place ,thats all. And unless you shoot like man possessed - 2T drive will last you for a while.

[Corran]

Of interest might be the topic I started back in July about Network Attached Storage:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...or-their-files

The last post is my update with specs and information on my system. I've got 10TB of storage, so my 4x5 scans which are usually at most about 1GB don't even make a dent.

Off-site storage is a different topic and one has many options. Potentially just the negatives stored off-site.

[Tin Can]

Of interest might be the topic I started back in July about Network Attached Storage:

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...or-their-files

The last post is my update with specs and information on my system. I've got 10TB of storage, so my 4x5 scans which are usually at most about 1GB don't even make a dent.

Off-site storage is a different topic and one has many options. Potentially just the negatives stored off-site.

Bryan, your unraid plan looks pretty good and actually affordable NOW, as even this digital half life will need it soon.

Great idea and thread I missed.

[Greg Miller]

I'm not so sure about the cloud being everyone's future. Adobe's very own super safe cloud was severely hacked not long ago. And on another forum I cautioned individuals not to store their financial information on Carbonite. One irate member countered, "Carbonite is approved by HIPAA!" Among health care professionals such as myself that statement would have been met with a sharp peel of laughter. HIPAA can't take care of its own paper work, let alone someone else's. "The cloud" is just an air-conditioned warehouse of very large servers, and is subject to fire, vandalism, and hacking. I'm not being paranoid and I understand there are normal risks in every means of stashing data. However, to store one's financial information on the cloud is inviting disaster in my opinion. That said, I do use the internet to make transactions at our local bank . Too, there's the question of access. I live in a small town in Maine and we're lucky to have moderately fast web connections. Many in Maine do not.

BAB

While cloud storage is still impractical for most people that have TBs of data to move (because of the speed of the internet; and the cost per GB for the services that offer an initial data seed by sending a USB drive)). But using a cloud backup service where the data gets encrypted prior to transfer and storage is certainly extremely safe; even for financial data. And using a cloud backup service with multiple redundant data centers is also extremely safe. If multiple data centers go dwon, we have much bigger problems than the status of our image files.

[Corran]

Bryan, your unraid plan looks pretty good and actually affordable NOW, as even this digital half life will need it soon.

Great idea and thread I missed.

Good, glad I linked it then.

Large 2TB+ drives are so cheap now, and since I had extra computer parts around anyway it was trivial to build. I'm glad I did it.

I still remember buying a 500 megabyte drive for $300 and a "huge" 64 megabyte stick of RAM, back in the day for $200. How time flies...

[Tin Can]

While cloud storage is still impractical for most people that have TBs of data to move (because of the speed of the internet; and the cost per GB for the services that offer an initial data seed by sending a USB drive)). But using a cloud backup service where the data gets encrypted prior to transfer and storage is certainly extremely safe; even for financial data. And using a cloud backup service with multiple redundant data centers is also extremely safe. If multiple data centers go dwon, we have much bigger problems than the status of our image files.

Don't be negative!

But I agree, if the cloud disperses we all have big problems.

[Jac@stafford.net]

First of all, unless you got drum scan - you most likely will be more than fine with 400m-800m tiff files for b&w. Once you hit 2G you can't often open bloody thing in Photoshop (bug in Vuescan on writing out Tiffs?).

Gotta be a bug in something other than Photoshop.

[polyglot]

Hard drives off-site are IMHO the best+easiest option. Cheaper and more-reliable than DVDs, without the bandwidth and cost issues of the cloud. Sure, the cloud is not really secure, but then neither are the unencrypted hard drives I keep in my desk drawer at work (photography is not my day job). If you want to use the cloud securely, you can encrypt the data yourself and no one except the NSA will break it and they'll probably just use a rubber hose on you to get the key.

Some quick and dirty points to ponder:
- hard drives fail. all the damn time. using a RAID-like technology will reduce your pain level when (not if) this occurs because physically removing and replacing a chunk of metal and waiting a day for the resync to finish is far easier then restoring from a backup
- RAID is not a replacement for backups; you need both
- on-site backups are not backups. they have to be off-site to be fire- and theft-proof
- automatic backups (e.g. online) are easy and more likely to make sure you have the latest of everything in your backup
- automatic backups are far more likely to propagate user errors (accidental file deletion or corruption) from your primary system to your backup media
- if you cloud, google up "stackable cryptographic filesystems" like eCryptfs and encfs; they will transparently encrypt your data on its way to the cloud and on your machine while it's powered off.
- do periodic tech-refresh:
- a disc in a cupboard that you last looked at 5 years ago is not an archive or a backup, it's a useless hunk of metal or plastic
- copying all your data to new media every few years is the best way to make sure it lives on; when your old media fills up you buy a bigger one and move to that
- got any Amiga discs? Got any 3.5" discs that you wish you had pulled the data off 15 years ago when you still could? Got anything on a Zip drive? Copy it to HDD right now!
- optical media suck (no really. 100 years is just BS) and are really expensive+bulky compared to hard drives
- if you MUST use optical media (e.g. to post something), use par2 to make it more resilient
- if you use par2, try to make the par2 set span a set of optical discs so that if the root directory of one disc is unreadable, it can be resurrected from the other discs (this is computationally expensive but absolutely worth it if the content needs to survive any more than a couple of years on consumer-grade media)
- DO NOT USE PROPRIETARY DATA FORMATS because the vendors will not be in business in 20 years. use free (libre not gratis) and open-source software and file formats that OSS can process
- got any old Lotus-123 files? Wordstar? That wasn't long ago

Learn to use Linux or one of its brethren; it's not hard and you get high quality data-management tools. Hell, just learn to use rsync for a start! Google up zfs. Google up btrfs and have a play but don't rely on that for real data just yet.

If you use linux and its included raid-like tools, those tools work great with all block devices including USB drives. Your backup drives can happily be a RAID-5 or RAID-Z set in a stack of cheap USB cases, just plug them all in, start your RAID driver and mount the external volume.

[koraks]

I use a Synology Diskstation with two drives in RAID one for local storage, which is really convenient as I can access my data (including photos) from anywhere on my local network - and the internet. It also meshes well with mobile devices and as it automatically thumbnails images, quick browsing of images on e.g. a phone or tablet makes everything even a little better accessible. Moreover, I can share images with friends and family (or optionally anyone, depending on who I give access) without the use of a web hosting service, although I do use the latter for web 'publication'.

Of course, as pointed out, this is a good way of providing online storage, but it's not a proper backup. So the next step will be to plant one of these at a family member's house and set it up so that all data are automatically and constantly replicated between these two Diskstations. Synology offers excellent software and support for all sorts of applications, this being one of them. Moreover, since it essentially runs Linux, it's possible to create custom scripts e.g. using rsync.

While a Synology solution is a little more expensive than entry-level NAS systems (but still not insanely so), it's really the best solution I am currently aware of. Paired with some sort of off-site backup, it seems like the most convenient and easy to use solution there is for my needs.