Where is Buddy's shots?

[Buddy4344]

I have received a few emails asking why I didn't post this week. First, it's only Tuesday! But the truth is slightly more. Like many of you, I have a lot of photo files.

Thanks to my starting to shoot in raw, saving the best in Tiff and PSD, and the Africa trip, I am up over 500 GB of images. These are scattered among 3 drives plus a back-up drive with a mix of file naming systems. In short, I have a mess and it is growing fast. I have decided to take advantage of cheap hard drive pricing, a super flexible file synchronizer, and some advice from a Scott Kelby book and organize my mess. It may sound simple, but it will take much of the week.

While files are being moved, I will have time to comment on shots by others, but will not spend time editing my own work. In the end, it will be worth it.

I will have my active 2008 shots on my fast, internal drive with any changes being archived automatically to a 750GB external drive.

My prior year shots will each be on separate external drives which will typically not be connected. Each will also be backed up to my master back-up drive. These will also be auto backed up each time an image changes. All of this is properly catelogued in Lightroom (which is also backed up nightly). Also, I have bought another 750 external which I will keep at my office. Once a month or so, I plan to bring this home to transfer changes on my home archived back-up drive over so I have extra disaster protection.

Next year, I am hoping for a 2+ TB network storage device (running RAID 5) to replace this array of 5 external drives, but this gets me in shape to make that migration in the future.

My advice to all of you, think hard about file structure and be proactive. You have put a lot of time and effort into your photography. It is no fun re-naming and organizing close to a terrabyte of data.

Buddy

[Buddy4344]

I got an email: Why not burn to DVD? Answer: Clearly an option, but I feel even my old shots are dynamic. From time to time I go back to the old and re-edit as my skills improve or when a certain subject comes to mind. The hard drive and auto synch set-up lets this info stay current on my back-up. I also have minor concerns over DVD life.

[JoeMc]

Let this be a word from the wise... (BUDDY.. not me). There are concerns with DVD's... External hard drives kept in seperate locations seem to be the best option.
We (my wife and I) own dental offices and we back everything from all office's back to a master hard drive at our home.... I do vise-a-versa with my pictures....I back up to one of the offices everynight....With Raid...It is very simple and it does it automatically.
Thanks Buddy for sharing this very important piece of information!
Cheers, Joe

[RTaylor]

Hi Buddy,
Steve bought me an external drive for Christmas and I'm starting to do the same as you. Right now my desktop computer in the office is hooked up to the drive which like yours automatically backs up files daily as they are updated.

I worry about DVD's too. I have 4 books 1 for each year and each book probably has at least 50-75 DVD's inside.
I have already had a few older DVD's go bad. So I'm thinking to load all those DVD's onto the new external hard drive one at a time and go through and delete the pics I know I wont use to save space.
The external drive is a whole lot easier to find files when they are all in one place than to go to a certain book, look for the DVD and pull it out to search the file you think is on it.

Our external is networked. We wanted to buy the terabyte drive but at the moment with my employment status, the TB drive was a bit expensive. Maybe next year

What external drive did you purchase?

[Buddy4344]

Ruth,

I have a few Western Digital "my book" drives and they work fine, but are pretty audible when storing data, but my favorite is the Maxtor OneTouch III. The reason I like it is:

a)it is VERY quiet.
b) the design seems rugged
c) I liked the big vibration absorbing base
d) Maxtor is Seagate internals. Our IT forks (and I work for a big company) think Seagate is one of the most dependable hard drive companies.

I hope that helps.

[RTaylor]

We have the Seagate Free Agent Pro.
Steve said the Seagates are good too

Did yours come with its own back up software? I didnt decide yet to buy it yet or find my own.

What did you do?

[Buddy4344]

No, I wasn't kidding when I said I was using my "super flexible file synchronizer". My son (IT degree) loaded it on my machine at Christmas. Someone said it is freeware. I am not sure, as it was free to me
Buddy

[JoeMc]

I use the Seagate free agent pro for all the offices and the home. I have not had any problems whatsoever.... You can't even hear it....It does put off some heat though. I have windows server 2003 with raid II.... But the software that comes with free agent pro is very good too.
Now my filing system is terrible....lol I still file by date, and it takes me forever to find old shots! I have started a date log that I put the description of the date and the shots....I reference that first to find out what date I shot a certain shot.... I really need to re-vamp it.
Important information to ponder....lol
Cheers, Joe

[Buddy4344]

There is no "great" file naming stucture I have found if you (like me) shoot family, animals, landscapes, macros, etc. - often several of these in one day. As noted, I have a master file per year and then a subfolder by date. I am still playing with optimizing the actual file name. Right now I am using: . Until now, I used date and the camera default image name - often something like IMG_5347.CR2. The key for me was/is the use of Lightroom as my upload/cataloguing tool. I immediately upon upload assign some key words. I may add others later, but the key words allows me to search all my shots quickly. Key words I use include things like: landscape, season of year, macro, family, wildlife, nightshots, etc. and as I said before, I refine these with other descriptors once I get to editing mode.

I also had a great internal debate on saving files off the flass memory in Adobe *.DNG vs. the Canon CR2 format. The advantage was suppose to be better embedding of sidecar data. In the end, I decided *.DNG is not yet universally a standard and that Canon does a good job of back integration of any software and would probably exist and support CR2 in the future, so I left mine at CR2.

[JoeMc]

WOW Buddy...you brought up a great point... I save the original untouched as a raw file.....but the editted files I save as .tiff.... Is there a reason that I should be concerned with this???
This is an area that I have not thought about alot?
Thanks Joe

[Buddy4344]

Joe,
I knew digital negative (*.DNG) was an option, but had not considered it until this effort. While reading a book by Scott Kelby (probably one of the most prolific writers on Adobe tools), he noted that he ALWAYS upload/converts straight to DNG. This was different, so I searched it on a few photo forums and found it to be a pretty active topic among pros. Again, I have not formed a solid recommendation. It has some advantages to consider.

On edited shots, I most oftern save as *.psd, but if it is one of my true hit shots, I will save as .tiff. The only reason for *.psd is slightly smaller files.

If you are saving all of those HDR efforts of yours in Tiff, I would advise you to start shopping for more storage as, from my little bit of play, I see these files are HUGE!

Buddy

[JoeMc]

Yes Buddy....they are HUGE....not to mention the 5-9 original raw files that it takes to make one HDR..

The plus is that Hardrive space is cheap... I have 2, 1 TB drives at home....and a TB at each dental office....and the info that we have to back up from the offices is all data files so it takes up nothing....so that leaves a ton of room for my pictures..... I had it all planned for my pictures when I designed the office network (you can see where me priorities are...lol) Another plus....it is all a business expense!
.psd.....Thats a thought..... After CS3 I always "save as" back to .tiff. Not really sure why? Do all (most) programs recognize .psd? Hmmm Food for thought!

Thanks for bringing this up Buddy!
Cheers, Joe

[Buddy4344]

Again, I think .psd was developed by Adobe, but at this stage, it's pretty univerally accepted.

[RTaylor]

Great reading Joe and Buddy.
The files are getting larger with each new camera upgrade. I noticed a huge difference in Nikon NEF file sizes from the D70 to my D300. It almost seems to take up more than double the space from 6.1mpx to the 12mpx
I used to get a little over 175 raw shots on a 1gig card. Now with my D300 I only get 35 showing when I put in a blank card.
So now my laptop hardrive space gets filled up much to quickly so thats why I finally decided to get the external hard drive.
Thanks for reminding me its considered a business expense lol. I guess since my husband bought it for me, I had forgotten since I didnt actually purchase it on my business cc card.

I have to read up on this RAID thing. Still dont quite know what it is. I've just been seeing the name a few times in forums and never researched it.

Buddy, good luck on organizing your file system all in just one week
I know at least its going to take me much longer than a week.

[RTaylor]

so, have you finally finished organizing your picture files?