I edit my raw files using Adobe Bridge, throwing away the trash ones. I process the remaining raw files in Adobe Camera Raw, apply all of my metadata in Bridge, convert them Adobe DNG format, and throw away the original raw files. From there, I have three disk drives - one master and backup two copies. I place the new images on the master disk, and back them up to the two backup drives.

I use 500GB LaCie drives, no RAID, just duplicate copies. I'm on the Mac platform and use RsyncX to synchronize my master drive to my backup drives. When I travel, I take my master drive with me and leave the backup copies at home. If my house burns down, I have the master copy. If the master copy gets damaged or stolen while traveling, I have the two backup copies.

I do not make DVD backups any more. I used to, but retreiving the files off of DVD is painfully slow and buying DVDs is rather expensive relative to having multiple hard drives. In addition, having all of my images online all the time lets me retrieve them in an instant and to catalog them with iView Media Pro.

DVD storage is too small, slow, and fickle for primary archives. Keeping multiple external drives that are basically mirrored (rsync, etc) is the fastest, easiest way. The process of copying the images between drives can easily be automated with one of the many rsync or xcopy front-end GUIs. (ie. go to versiontracker.com and search for "rsync").

Hard drives are certainly always headed for failure, and you mitigate this by having 2 to 3 copies across separate disk enclosures.

I have the external housing for an internal drive. Just need to get the drive. The biggest I can go is 750GB in the housing. I then want to add another drive in my tower (500GB probably) to hold JUST photos. Then I'll add a second external hard drive.

Right now I'm doing the DVD shuffle until I can get some space.

And the bucks.

Jamie Taylor
Photojournalist Extraordinaire &
Grumpy Old Man in Training
"How about you come back to my place and I'll show you my man-size manicotti?" -- Grampa Gustafson, "Grumpier Old Men"
http://www.myspace.com/tailwindimaging
http://tradewindima

to an Epson P-2000 (unless shooting tethered in the studio) and then pull the images onto a 300GB RAID1 array. I then use PhotoMehanic to rename, inject IPTC data and cull. I cull a lot as I do three exposure brackets (all in RAW) and usually throw away at least two of three of each set. The next step is to process with LightRoom and export fullsize jpegs and 800 pixel jpegs (two different folders), create a collage (a story for another day) and take a breath. At the end of every major event I do an incremental copy to an 800GB RAID5 array on the same box. At this point I have images on the Epson P-2000, a mirrored disk and a striped/redundant disk on my primary workstation. About once a week I do an incremental copy of this large repository to a 1.16TB RAID5 array in a second workstation. Every couple of weeks or after a big or important project I do an incremental of this repository to one of two external 750GB drives and take the latest one into the office and bring the twin home for the next round. So far I have had enough space to keep a year's worth of images on the initial RAID1 drive. At the end of the calendar year, after making sure everything is backed up all the way through the offsite drives, I delete it from this "work" drive. So, I have at least four copies of everything where two of the copies are on redundant disk arrays. This isn't protection against everything. Before I shot RAW I would sometimes accidentally re-edit a jpeg and save a smaller or compressed version over the original. Now I keep the RAW files unmodified so this isn't an issue but I have degraded some priceless images. I expect to begin copying RAW files to Blu-Ray DVDs when the technology settles a bit more and prices come down. Also, I expect to expand my photography business and will likely want to keep client work on DVDs for filing/accessing purposes.

When the 750GB offsite drives fill I will buy a pair of something else, likely larger, and set the original pair aside. This combined with the Blu-Ray (when I start that) should be adequate protection. :-)

My system is likely overkill but it has some nice benefits. I generally have all but the most recent one month's work with me at my day job so if I get an emergency request (happens four or five times a year) I can handle it immediately rather than lose the opportunity. Also, if my primary workstation goes down, I have all my images already on the backup workstation. [Confession: the backup workstation is actually a more powerful CPU and I should migrate/swap them but I hate the idea of reinstalling all my applications, particularly those that require online registration with limited copies. I will bite the bullet probably this summer but I am very resistant.]