Long term future of PEF RAW

Hu Guys,

I've just purchased my first digital body and am starting to consider my long term file storage and indexing system.

I am planning to shoot and store as PEF RAW and convert to TIFF as an when I need an image. My main concern is the longetivity of the PEF format if I don't have a duplicate TIFF as backup. What happens if I need an image 10 years down the line and find I don't have the software to access PEF (say if Pentax moves to DGN). How are you guys storing your images.

Also I am considering my indexing system. I want to keep to the 8.3 ISO standard so I was thinking that I would go with a yymm0001.pef format which will ensure I get no duplicates when my counter goes "round the clock" and that I can sort by date and file by year. Again, what system are you guys using.

Cheers

My somewhat limited understanding is this:
there a (often gold colored) cd-rs that are sold as archival..think 20 or so years.
I burn a dvd back-up and keep the hard drives. Yes I keep hard drives. they are the cheapest, per/megabite storage period. kept in an off site fire safe, and the dvds in a safe deposit box at the bank.
I use external drive enclosures and swap drives when they get full.
that means I'll have to put a retired computer(plus software) into storage, so I'll have equipment to read the drive in the future, when something completely new comes along and I'll need to move the data.
That logic would apply to ANY file format. I look at it this way there was lots of room on a 60 gig drive to move the files from an older 8 gig drive. There was lots of room to move the files from a 60 gig drive to one of my newer 300 gig drives. There'll be room ffor the data on my 300 gig drives when the newer 80 terabite hologram laser storage devices get invented.
My guess is sometime in the next five to ten years I'll have to transfer the files.

Don,

Thanks for your reply. Your answer refers specifically to the media component of file archiving rather than my indexing / RAW format questions but you do raise some interesting points.

I am currently working with the triple hard drive approach (working drive, backup drive and offsite backup drive).

The key points are that

a.) Hard drives are not archival due to "magnetic relaxation" in the media and therefore a fresh copy of your working drive written at every backup or at least every 6 months in my opinion. USB 2.0 actually makes this a fairly quick task.
b.) The three drives are never electrically connected together at the same time and are ideally are never in the same location at the same time.

I personally wouldn't trust any media (including CD) for archiving and prefer to rewrite my media in a continual process and bridging across as new technology as it becomes available.

It's really quite simple.

The PEF format will not be supported for ever. For long term storage, convert either to TIFF or DNG.

For physical storage, I find CDs and DVDs a pain. Any minute now, we will be able to rent oodles of space on Amazon's servers for very little money, and this will be my preferred back-up solution as soon as it becomes available.

G

I agree wih George, convert to DNG with the free DNG convreter from Adobe. As to storage, two hard drives and DVD (for now Blu-Ray or HD-DVD later) is a safe method.

The main advantage of migrating formats when new drives come out is you confirm the integrity of your files, so you can pull from a different source if you find a corrupted file.

I responded to the media component as the file (image or otherwise) is just data. I find Iphoto and spotlight sufficient for my needs. I shoot mostly jpeg with raw as needed. Raw for Wedding portraits and some studio work, but everything else is about speedy workflow. Wedding shoot, to web proofs, to Multi media DVD, to prints. (in a week with no glitches) 90% jpeg, 10% raw, all delivered jpeg srgb. I have to get it right in camera the first try. The devil's in the details. I hope a raw workflow is in my future, but right now I use what works and sells for me.

I am shooting only raw. I use Extensis Portfolio, and shoot, copy to folder, import into Portfolio and periodically do a backup to DVD.

To produce jpgs for web pages I used to export from Portfolio or use the Pentax Lab software.

However yesterday for usd 12 I realized that "File Juicer" for OS X, can be used. drag and drop pef files onto Juicer and it automatically pulls out 3 jpg files which are already stored within the pef file. So without doing any conversion or damaging the pef, one can extract jpgs.

So I shall continue to store my raw in Portfolio, but when I need jpgs I will juice them. When I need files for printing I will use the pef.

I like Portfolio because it is very configurable it brings in all the exif etc info and then you can quickly find files and copy and paste, or email or whatever you need to do. Gone are the days when I would think "I have a picture of a Jaguar, but where".

So I will keep my files in PEF and JPG and always make sure whatever system I run that it can handle PEF/JPG/TIFF, if it cannot I will not change to that system.

IF PEF is dumped? Then I will find a unix/linux/os x converter PEF2 ???

I may add, why now? you can convert to DNG in the future if you need to...

I didn't say now. But I am sure it will become necessary sooner or later.

G

agreed

http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-6076650.html?part=rss&tag=6076650&subj=news

Sigh....javascript:emoticon('')

Don,

I make my living from selling, installing, and maintaining computer hardware running Microsoft operating systems and applications. My feeling is that Joe Public (and corporates for that matter) thinks that Microsoft has too much clout now and will steer clear of any attempts by Microsoft to 'muscle in' on such technologies.

That said, if the manufacturers endorse it, we'll have no choice. I somehow think it'll be a while (if ever) before their offering overtakes JPEG as a defacto standard file compression. Escpecially as most of the pro imaging world seems to use Apple and Adobe technologies.

My own opinion is that Microsoft should direct their energies into making rock solid OS's, office productivity, and development tools and leave consumer technologies alone (but they're not going to listen to me). I guess now that they dominate desktop computing (and I will not listen to any argument that says they don't. Accept it, they do.) they are looking at what else people have on their desktop connected to a PC. IE: Phones, cameras, et al.

I don't think that such a technology monopoly is very healthy for the consumer, us. If, heaven forbid, Microsoft went bust . . . it doesn't bare thinking about, but it is possible. 'The bigger they are . . . etc', some very big worldwide corporations have gone down the tubes, Microsoft is not immune from a very big fall. OK, its not likely, but what if . . .?

Whatever might be said about Microsoft, they have made an enormous contribution to the computers that we all love to use (or hate...) and without that unifying technology things like the web might not be so easy.

Almost anyone anywhere can sit down at any computer and use Windows and I think that's a pretty fantastic achievement.

what did microsoft do to the web that made it so that we all could use it?
They brought is the hell that is called ActiveX, now we are really happy with that........
Internet Explorer didn't bring us any good? At least nothing other browsers didn't give us.
If history would have gone slightly different, we might be using OS/2 right now.
The only reason that MS software is so widespread is because of the tight contracts with hardware vendors, and companies like Dell, Packard-Bell and others didn't choose Windows because it was superiour, the chose it because it was the cheapest solution for them so they could make more money.

Luckily there are alternatives now for a lot of tasks. Like a office suite. I can't see any reason to choose MS Office over OOo besides the fact if you have a lot of legacy macro's in use which you will have to rewrite completely anyway when office 12 comes out...

But now we are really getting off-topic here

Absolutely true John. To take that a bit further, for a few hundred quid Almost anyone anywhere can sit down and MAKE a PC to run the Microsoft Windows operating system and applications. The PC architecture has made high powered computing accessible to a huge number of people. When you consider that all you need is a handful of components, a hard drive, floppy (optional), CD/DVD writer, motherboard, CPU, memory, and a case which generally includes a power supply. Job done, oh, then you load the OS, and you're up and running, just about. OK a few apps need to be loaded, but that's it. You might choose to put a better graphics card inside but other than that, simplicity.

Not so, the Apple MAC.

Nowadays you need very little hardware as all the 'tricky' stuff is all onboard. All you need is a screwdriver to put it all together and no knowledge of electronics. In fact, if you buy wisely, you can't even get any connectors the wrong way round any more. If I had a fiver for every floppy cable I connected the wrong way, I wouldn't still be connecting floppy cables

Just about the most difficult part of building a modern PC is getting those darned front panel connections in the right place, and the LED cables the right way round.