What is the safest archive media ?

We all know that we need to make backup copies of our image files and up till now I have been using a mix of external hard drives and burning to CD or DVD. However, I've seen lots of articles recently about the dangers of using CD/DVD since they only have limited life ?

Now that SD/SDHC memory card prices have fallen I'm tempted to invest in some lower speed (e.g. class 4) 16GB cards and slide the write swith to lock. 7DayShop have some Sandisk 16GB class 4 at £14.99 for 2.

Meanwhile, I've been stocking up on class 10 cards (usually 8GB) as my general use and keeping these with the original files on instead of wiping them for re-use.

What advice do other Pentax User members have ?

Peter

An external hard drive, some space on a friend's computer and flickr.

Microsoft SkyDrive and google docs. SkyDrive is currently offering 25gig free space for existing windows live users...

Anybody considering the use of Skydrive for photo storage/sharing should understand the following extract from the Skydrive contract:-



Full Terms & Conditions / Service Agreement here.

I imagine that other 'cloud' service providers have similar clauses, 'though I've not investigated any others.

There's no foolproof way, not without a load of effort and cost.

However, backup drives might be one solution. I think memory cards will be a poor option as they will not hold the data permanently. A long time maybe, but they will become corrupted in eventually.

multi external drives with one being kept at a different site would be one way - a friend has suggested to me that I keep a drive at their house.

However, as John has said, I guess any option could fail at some point.

That only applies if you use the sharing tool and of course they would need that in their agreement for then to share files.

So long as you don't use the share tool then that clause is irrelivant anyhow.

I find SkyDrive very useful along with drop box too...

There are a number of 'free' solutions but you know what they say about free lunches.

I use Livedrive who have always been excellent, with unlimited storage (I'm currently using just under 1TB) for about £1 a week.

The best solution is to have a number of backups with a mix of online and offline and always try to keep one physical copy away from your home.

From what I've read, CD/DVD work by 'lasering' a dye layer sandwiched inside the disk, thus their life time is limited by the stability of the dye (sound familiar to anyone...). That of course excludes the very real risk that many disks aren't written properly in the first place.

I'm keeping mine on SD cards at the moment as they're less likely to become unreadable than my hard disk. To maintain permanent and 'secure' storage you're going to need a backup/archive routine similar to 'best practice' in the IT world, and that's too much for me to contemplate.

'Cloud' storage has it's own problems, such as the T&Cs they use (and can be changed at any time) and even then they're not going to guarantee they won't lose anything. I'm also not convinced they won't start charging you to get your data back in the future.

I have recently started shooting B&W film again, short of a fire or flood (or other similar disaster - at which point my photos may seem completely insignificant), which I think is the easiest and most effective (but not terribly modern).

I used to bnurn two copies of a DVD. Now I buy two internal drives and copy my stuff to them. then remove them and store them.

Not sure about that.

Plus a 3TB HDD is just over £100 - 3TB of SD cards is about £2,500.

SD cards are not suitable for long term storage, being only semi-permanent, see page 56 of the K-5 manual. SD cards may not keep their data if unused for a long time.

Best to mix a few things to be sure. John is correct here and if you wanted to go Just stats you'll probably find that a standard computer hard drive will out last a cd/DVD if treated well. Multiple different system spread over a wide area would be your best bet, the wide area means your data will be resistant to fire / floods, multiple systems (a backup of a backup of a backup) and keep going.

It will cost you and remember that every time you copy a jpeg and other data the data itself gets weaker (easiest way to explain).

So in summary. Spread you backup's around using different systems of storage and you'll stand a better chance if the worst should happen.

Will

Thanks for the pointer John.

Having seen this article I may try using CompactFlash as well link

Many thanks to all of you for some very useful comments and to johnha in particular for the very instructive link which is just what I was looking for.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't like relying on 'clouds' so although many people advise web storage I'll still not go that route.

Instead, it looks as if the standard backup principles of multiple hard drives is the way I'll stay at present but I'll also explore the CF idea as I gave some CF cards and a card reader.

Whatever, I WON'T rely on the SDHC cards !
What's more I'm going to check on all my CD archives and make sure (a) I can still read them and (b) if I can't I'll make a second backup from the hard drive onto another hard drive !

Many thanks again

Peter