# How do the professionals store and archive digital images (Raw, jpg, tiff etc)



## ChrisFACE

I just started my journey into photography a few months ago and the first week or so I shot in JPEG fine then decided to go to RAW to have more controle of my final image. I love RAW but as we all know the files are HUGE! I use my Canon Digital Photo Professional application which came with my EOS 550D DSLR to edit the images and I then "convert and save" which converts the image to JPEG but also leaves the original RAW file as well, so I then have both the RAW and JPEG version on my images saved. WHICH TAKES UP EVEN MORE SPACE. 

My hard drive as you may have guessed is full and I brouth an external hard drive to back up images but I know you should keep images in at least two places incase something happenes to the location of your first back up. 

Can anyone share with me some of the BEST ways professional photographers store and archive your RAW images as well as JPEGS, TIFF etc. I really need help here. 

Thank you.

ChrisFACE


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## Rekd

Spend a couple hundred bucks on an external hard drive. (You've got that)

Spend a few bucks a month on an online backup like Carbonite. (Haven't tried this)

Spend some money on optical backups (DVDs etc) and put in a safe deposit box or a relative's house.

Those three things should ensure the safety of the images beyond most catastrophes short of a meteorite hitting the Earth.


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## KmH

ChrisFACE said:


> I just started my journey into photography a few months ago and the first week or so I shot in JPEG fine then decided to go to RAW to have more controle of my final image. I love RAW but as we all know the files are HUGE! I use my Canon Digital Photo Professional application which came with my EOS 550D DSLR to edit the images and I then "convert and save" which converts the image to JPEG but also leaves the original RAW file as well, so I then have both the RAW and JPEG version on my images saved. WHICH TAKES UP EVEN MORE SPACE.
> 
> My hard drive as you may have guessed is full and I brouth an external hard drive to back up images but I know you should keep images in at least two places incase something happenes to the location of your first back up.
> 
> Can anyone share with me some of the BEST ways professional photographers store and archive your RAW images as well as JPEGS, TIFF etc. I really need help here.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> ChrisFACE


Professionals uses multi backups, and make sure at least one of those backups is kept off-site.


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## pbelarge

KmH said:


> Professionals uses multi backups, and make sure at least one of those backups is kept off-site.


 

I have 2 fire/water safes. I store a lot of good stuff that I do not want to loose to fire and water damage. The safe is rated to a temperature higher than an average home fire reaches.


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## ChrisFACE

Ok maybe I didnt ask the right question. This is the scenero. I have all my images stored in iPhoto. the original RAW image as well as the edited jpg image. I also have the exact same images on an external hard drive. I want to convert all the Raw images that are on iPhoto to jpgs so it will free up space on my hard drive and keep the Raw files on my external hard drive. But if I do that I will only have the RAW files in one place. Should I upload the RAW files to a site like Flickr or something similar so they are backed up in another location? Is this efficent? Do professionals do it this way?


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## Cy-Gor

pbelarge said:


> KmH said:
> 
> 
> 
> Professionals uses multi backups, and make sure at least one of those backups is kept off-site.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have 2 fire/water safes. I store a lot of good stuff that I do not want to loose to fire and water damage. The safe is rated to a temperature higher than an average home fire reaches.
Click to expand...


the safe may be rated that high, but are the internal temps low enough to keep from damaging what you have in there?

i personally don't trust any onsite as a true backup. what if you live in an apt and it takes weeks to get to the stuff. 

or a tornado hits and 100s of homes turn into one giant rubble pile. 

The more valuable your data the further away you want your backup to be offsite to allow for disaster recovery.

The other thing to keep in mind is access. If you need your backups, how quickly do you want them. If time isnt important then shipping cd/dvd off somwhere would be an OK solution. 

There are also a bunch of cloud solutions but i dont really have any specific advice since i dont use them.


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## darkchild

I use 2 external hard-drives. I drive a motorcycle so i always have a backpack on, i keep 1 hard drive, my laptop, and my camera in it at ALL times. my house has been broken into 2 times, one of those times being 2 months ago... so i decided to put security on my home, but if someone wants to break into your house, they will, so that's why i decided to also carry one of the hard drives with me.


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## table1349

I archive all raw files. They are my negative and I never destroy a negative.  I archive only the worked and converted files that may be needed again in the foreseeable future.  I have a redundant Raid 1 setup with 2 external drives, do a once a week backup to a third drive that is kept in a safe and keep a third copy off site.  

The safe is not a fire safe, it is a real live genuine safe that happens to be rated to 2400 degrees for 3 hours.  I managed to pick it up used for a good price from a lock smith I know.  I don't worry about my gun collection with this safe either.  Any burglar that wants in this thing needs either real good tools and some knowledge or explosives cause a pry bar is not going to do it.  

I do pity the poor home owner that buys this house after I am gone.  That safe ain't coming out so they better like it.


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## kkamin

ChrisFACE, there is actually an organization (ASMP:American Society of Media Photographers) and an initiative (DP Best Work Flow) funded by the US Library of Congress that is tackling your issue.

Planning Overview | dpBestflow

If you are serious about this concern, study the above link.

As many have mentioned, professionals back-up their files to multiple sources at various stages of their workflow, on-site and off-site.

Something else to think about is that files can degrade over time--your data can become corrupted. Some people create MD5 checksum files of their important files so they can routinely check on the integrity of their data. What that does is basically looks at the data of your file and creates a 16 digit code based off that data. If the data ever changes due to corruption, it will produce a different 16 digit code and the codes (original file and corrupted file), when compared, will not match. This is the big problem with digital photography. There is not a solid archival solution yet. Data stored on hard drives or DVDs or flash drives can eventually degrade. It seems like periodically verifying your important data is necessary.  And if a problem is found, having a good copy on another source is priceless.


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## Zrock

I may be a little redundant in my backups but i have them on my HD, back up to external drive, back up to thumb drive that i always have with me, and finnaly back up to DVD when i have enough to fill


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## ChrisFACE

kkamin said:


> ChrisFACE, there is actually an organization (ASMP:American Society of Media Photographers) and an initiative (DP Best Work Flow) funded by the US Library of Congress that is tackling your issue.
> 
> Planning Overview | dpBestflow
> 
> If you are serious about this concern, study the above link.
> 
> As many have mentioned, professionals back-up their files to multiple sources at various stages of their workflow, on-site and off-site.
> 
> Something else to think about is that files can degrade over time--your data can become corrupted. Some people create MD5 checksum files of their important files so they can routinely check on the integrity of their data. What that does is basically looks at the data of your file and creates a 16 digit code based off that data. If the data ever changes due to corruption, it will produce a different 16 digit code and the codes (original file and corrupted file), when compared, will not match. This is the big problem with digital photography. There is not a solid archival solution yet. Data stored on hard drives or DVDs or flash drives can eventually degrade. It seems like periodically verifying your important data is necessary.  And if a problem is found, having a good copy on another source is priceless.



Thank you for thi link. I will look into it. And thank you for your answer as well. I know see that there is no clear cut answer. I had no idea data saved on HDs and DVDs could be corrupted over time. Jeez! Oh well. I guess I will have to figure out a solution that works best for me and my work flow. 

Thanks again. Good answer.


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## ChrisFACE

Cy-Gor said:


> pbelarge said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> KmH said:
> 
> 
> 
> Professionals uses multi backups, and make sure at least one of those backups is kept off-site.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I personally don't trust any onsite as a true backup. what if you live in an apt and it takes weeks to get to the stuff.
> 
> or a tornado hits and 100s of homes turn into one giant rubble pile.
> 
> The more valuable your data the further away you want your backup to be offsite to allow for disaster recovery.
> 
> The other thing to keep in mind is access. If you need your backups, how quickly do you want them. If time isnt important then shipping cd/dvd off somwhere would be an OK solution.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> What about online storage solutions like Flickr? Do you see that as a save place to store images. You can create albums that you dont give the public access to.
Click to expand...


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## Rekd

I've heard there are ways to see personal albums on flickr. I would think you'd almost have to know they were there, though. 

Not sure if you can store RAW files there though.


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## table1349

ChrisFACE said:


> Cy-Gor said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> pbelarge said:
> 
> 
> 
> I personally don't trust any onsite as a true backup. what if you live in an apt and it takes weeks to get to the stuff.
> 
> or a tornado hits and 100s of homes turn into one giant rubble pile.
> 
> The more valuable your data the further away you want your backup to be offsite to allow for disaster recovery.
> 
> The other thing to keep in mind is access. If you need your backups, how quickly do you want them. If time isnt important then shipping cd/dvd off somwhere would be an OK solution.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What about online storage solutions like Flickr? Do you see that as a save place to store images. You can create albums that you dont give the public access to.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Simple answer.  NO.  Jpg, no raw files.  They do not have the kind of secure storage needed and they make no promise of perpetual storage.
Click to expand...


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## camera obscura

Floppy disks are the best backup. :mrgreen:


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## Phranquey

camera obscura said:


> Floppy disks are the best backup. :mrgreen:


 
OMG.... It would only take 15 of those to store 1 RAW file.


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## Boomn4x4

ChrisFACE said:


> I know see that there is no clear cut answer.


 
As far as I'm concerned there IS a clear cut answer.  That answer being, always have at least one backup copy secured away from the other copy.  How you want to do that may be up in the air, but that is beside the point.

In my opion, the best option is to keep 1 copy in your home (or stuido) and 1 copy archived offsite on a leased server from a reputable web hosting (or archiving) company.  And just to make life a little easier, I also suggest keeping a thrid copy onsite.  Due to remote data transfer speeds, it can be time consuming to get/take data from a remote location.  If your primary source fails, and you need something in a hurry, its nice to have a second copy near by.

I keep the last about 5 years or so worth of photos on my local computer, with a duplicate copy of those photos on an external hard drive.  Everything I have is also archived offsite on a web server.


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## Kofman13

I back up my raw files on two external usb powered drives. and then all of that same data backed up on a bigger drive and DVDs off-site


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## cyngus

this is what my job was for many years .. and still kinda currently is.. file storage and handling / archiving of photos for a professional photographer.. Troy Plota Photography now i do it for myself.. the job title is digital tech... not much information online regarding it..

i wont share all the secrets  but the big ones are these

online file storage is not reliable and it will get extemely expensive.. even if your using amazon web services for cloud storage. online should be used for specific backups or online proofing for clients

buy a external hard drive.. 
buy a portable hard drive (i recomened lacie rugged drives)

get ahold of a copy of adobe lightroom

those are the tools you'll need

portable HD should be for backing up shoots on location as they come off the camera / card 
external HD should be for backing up your shots for final storage / archiving and editing
lightroom is used for not only editing of photos but for archiving your images and converting the raws to various sizes of .jpeg / tiff etc etc
use specific naming conventions for your folder structure VERY IMPORTANT ie: 2010/10-29-10-Halloween-Party/      and then inside of that directory tree split out the RAW into their own folder the JPEG into their own folder the TIFF files into their on folder and also any editied files i like to keep seperate in a EDITS folder..


thats the basics that will help you greatly there are a bunch more tips and tricks to help with archiving and storing files for future use.. if you plan to be a pro photographer your gonna have a few thousand photos in no time.. after 3 years your gonna be thankful you adopted a good archiving system early on cuz you never know when your gona be looking for a specific shot from WAY BACK WHEN. pm me if you need any more help


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## itf

get an external hard drive with RAID so it'll mirror copy the images. better yet, get one that has network backup so it'll auto backup at a certain time everyday.


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## ChevyBaby

camera obscura said:


> Floppy disks are the best backup. :mrgreen:



Wow, i didn't know you could even get floppys anymore! None of my computers even have a floppy slot anymore.


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## Einherjar

There are some companies that, automatically via internet, store your data off site in more than one place, some in fallout shelters.


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## 480sparky

Here's my back-up/archive routine:

Every night, my internal hard drive automatically gets backed up to an external hard drive.

Once a month, I copy the entire external drive to two other external drives.... one goes into my WP/FP safe, and the other goes into my neighbor's WP/FP safe.  (She does the same thing, so I have one of her drives in my safe).

On an annual basis, I copy the external drive to yet another external drive, which is placed in my brother's WP/FP safe 6 states away.



It always amazes me how some people can spend tens of thousands of dollars on bodies, lenses, computers, monitors, printers, etc. etc. etc. and then ***** and moan about spending a couple hundred bucks to back-up their images.  C'mon folks.......... a 1tb external drive can be had for $70 or so!  That's CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP, and prices are dropping every day!


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## jritz

Backup on 2 external HD's, one around the house, the other goes in the safety deposit box along with these Delkin Devices DVD-R Archival Gold, DDVD-R-SA/10 BIND 8X B&H for my most important stuff.


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## vtf

I thought I'd seen this thread before, got sucked in til the spam then noticed the date.


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## Super Simple

I absolutely do NOT believe in "free" storage. It's simply not reliable for backup purposes. The absolute most important thing to consider is how reliable your backup is. If it's not 110% reliable, then it's not a backup. 

Flickr doesn't do RAW files. 

There are MANY possible backup solutions out there though. 

You can try Amazon S3 as they are relatively cheap, and highly reliable. 

I would go for Rackspace Cloud Storage though:

Cloud Files - Unlimited Online Storage & Data Storage Services

Now, you'd need to check out whether it's the kind of thing that's right for you, BUT, you are not likely to find anything, anywhere that approaches the level of reliability and quality that you will get from Rackspace. 

Rackspace has a much better value proposition than Amazon S3. They have a better network, better CDN, and better prices even. (I freaked out when I first saw their cloud storage as it really is all that.) 

From their page:



> *UPLOAD FILES TO THE CLOUD*
> Store and manage unlimited files using our online control panel,  desktop software, or programmatically via the API. And even manage it  on-the-go  			via your iPhone®, iPad® and iPod® touch.



Their cloud storage uses the Akamai CDN (content delivery network), so it's pretty much the fastest network in the world. 

It's not free, but it will give you peace of mind knowing that you've got your files safely stored on perhaps the world best network with the best service provider. 

(I am NOT affiliated with Rackspace. I have used their services, and from a lot of experience, I know that they are the GO TO people for reliability.)

But, that's cloud storage. You need to ask yourself if you're comfortable with that.

NOTE: I am in IT and am not a professional photographer. My recommendation for Rackspace is purely based on "data safety" from an IT professional perspective and not what happens in the photography industry.


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## skpupy68

How reliable are the external hard drives? We had a Terrabyte external drive that I bought specifically to backup my photos and the damn thing died. I have the same question as all the rest but I am just a hobby photographer. I had a friend lose all of her pictures in a house fire and now I'm looking for better answers. Right now, I keep a copy on my computer and a copy on my laptop but that doesn't protect me against fire, flood, hard drive crash etc. I've read that Cd or DVD's aren't the answer because they don't last. Does anyone know anything about Blu ray disks? Right now I have about 75 GB of images but it grows exponentially each year.


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## dbvirago

I have 4 WD externals, a 500Gb, a 1Tb a 1.5TB and 2Tb. Never had a failure. Started with the small one and as it began to fill up added the 1.5 and kept dual backups in addition to the laptop hard drive and an online service. In each case as the smaller one filled up, it became an archival offsite backup and I went to the next size. At least one backup has to be offsite or a disaster makes it useless. I depend on the externals and they get synced weekly. I use the online service as it is real time. I've pulled files from there when I've screwed up something local.


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## ph0enix

skpupy68 said:


> How reliable are the external hard drives? We had a Terrabyte external drive that I bought specifically to backup my photos and the damn thing died. I have the same question as all the rest but I am just a hobby photographer. I had a friend lose all of her pictures in a house fire and now I'm looking for better answers. Right now, I keep a copy on my computer and a copy on my laptop but that doesn't protect me against fire, flood, hard drive crash etc. I've read that Cd or DVD's aren't the answer because they don't last. Does anyone know anything about Blu ray disks? Right now I have about 75 GB of images but it grows exponentially each year.



They're not that reliable but that's why they're backup (and only backup) drives.  If you use them as extra storage you'll probably lose files sooner or later.  The point of a backup drive is to keep copies of your primary archive on it.  If one dies, you buy another.
Anyone using the Amazon Glacier to store photos?  I'm seriously considering it as a third point of backup (computers with external drives are first and second).  You can archive about 500GB for around $60/yr as long as you don't retrieve any of it.  The price goes up significantly if you start retrieving files but that should only happen in case of a disaster.

Here is pricing info:
Amazon Glacier Pricing
...and an unofficial cost calculator:
Unofficial Amazon AWS Glacier Calculator


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## Garbz

skpupy68 said:


> How reliable are the external hard drives? We had a Terrabyte external drive that I bought specifically to backup my photos and the damn thing died. I have the same question as all the rest but I am just a hobby photographer. I had a friend lose all of her pictures in a house fire and now I'm looking for better answers. Right now, I keep a copy on my computer and a copy on my laptop but that doesn't protect me against fire, flood, hard drive crash etc. I've read that Cd or DVD's aren't the answer because they don't last. Does anyone know anything about Blu ray disks? Right now I have about 75 GB of images but it grows exponentially each year.



Harddisks are great in terms of reliability. The problem is cheap external drives which have a tendency to die due to usually a very crap powersupply, or the USB controllers die. 
A good backup solution should meet the following requirements:
1. Resistant against all onsite problems. The same disaster should not affect all data.
2. Be easy enough to manage that it gets done.

Number 1 is achieved by ensuring your backup is kept offsite. Your home should burn down without losing your backup. Take your harddisk to work and keep it in your desk draw. If you can't do that store it at a friends place (encryption from a free program like Truecrypt can help if you have trust issues).
Unfortunately point 1 is often at odds with point 2. A backup solution stored far away is a backup solution that won't get used often. If you lose your primary storage you shouldn't lose more than a few days of data. If you're a famous wedding photographer you shouldn't be able to use any. 

The way I do the above is by two tiered backup. I have a second computer (but a NAS would also do) and every night my primary computer backs up to the secondary, two data locations on site. Weekly I bring my harddisks home from work (on a weekday to limit the time the backups are at home). The second backups are stored at work on encrypted drives. 

I use physical drives that I connect via an attachable SATA dock. I literally slide a bare drive into the dock. The upside is the drive has a native interface (unlike the ****ty external seagate harddisk which not only didn't speak sata, only usb, but the case was held together with a bloody pentile screw. I used an angle grinder to free the harddisk from the case after the USB electronics died). The downside is that SATA connectors have a low insertion rating. Constant plugging and unplugging will ruin the connectors, though at weekly intervals I expect the system to work for at least 2 years without drive replacement. 

Online is another solution though slow. I can't justify it. A photo shoot for me can be 10s of GB of data which would take all night to upload somewhere. 



ph0enix said:


> They're not that reliable but that's why they're backup (and only backup) drives.



Compared to what?


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## ph0enix

Garbz said:


> ph0enix said:
> 
> 
> 
> They're not that reliable but that's why they're backup (and only backup) drives.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Compared to what?
Click to expand...


Compared to commercial grade SCSI, SAS or SSD drives, for example.  Optical media isn't reliable either.  Cloud storage is the future as far as archiving data goes.


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