Digital Photo Organization & Storage

[CFRay]

I'd like to ask for advice on how you'all are organizing your collection of photos. I've got 2000 in my Pictures library/folder, seperated by the date they were taken, spanning 4-5 years. I've got Elements 7.0,,, thus far I've not used it for organizing, if you've had good results with that please let us know..

From my visits here I know several of you make a living from your photos and you must have a system in place to organize your work. I'm looking for a hobby shooter's level of organization.

Finally, what means should I use to store my photos off of the computer to insure their survival should my HD fail?

[bobbymalone]

As far as the organization stuff goes maybe somebody else can help you, but I will chime in my thoughts on backing up your pics.

I backup my entire HD on an external drive (~$100) about every week and I periodically burn a copy of my pictures on DVD for safe storage. I actually keep the DVDs of pics and other important electronic documents in my office at work --- just in case the SHTF and my house burns down.

[Dbl]

I will give you my structure, as you mentioned I run a business so I need a fool proof system to keep my work safe and easy to find. So I have figured out what works for me and a large number of photos.

First the organization; I am not a fan of ANY programs cataloging system, my own system is simple and it works for me. That doesn't mean it will work for anyone else. I like to specify what goes where and when. So I start with a main folder, inside that folder are more folders labeled by year. Inside those year folders are my next set of folders that contain the files by event, date and name. So it looks like this; Photos >>> 2010 >>> XYX Baseball >>> XYZ Baseball vs ABC Baseball 5-10-10.

This may seem like a lot but it becomes very easy to find a specific file or folder. I look in the year, find the event look in that folder and find the specific event or date I am looking for.

Here is how I store all that data. I download photos from my card to my newly created folder on the desktop. I then sort through them and delete my shots that don't meet my criteria (out of focus, bad exposure, etc.). After completing that I burn those original files to a DVD and store them in a case that I keep in a fireproof safe. Files are also re-named using my own system as well.

I have a second hard drive that I installed in my computer that only contains photos, nothing else. The file I created on my desktop with the new photos is copied to that second hard drive using the file system I mentioned above. I also have a external case that you can swap hard drives in and out of. These are normally 500 mb sized drives. I usually fill one per year or if busy two per year. I don't like larger drives because I don't want to re-copy all that data to another drive should it fail. When that drive is full it gets put in my fireproof safe and a label put on with the dates the drive is from. Lets say I filled one drive in 2009, that is how it will be labeled.

After that is done my files are copied on to a server that I built that is networked to all of my computers. It runs on Windows Home Server software. If you haven't heard of it take a look, it is a photographers dream! I used an old desktop and installed the software on it, ran a network cable to my 10/100 network switch which is hooked to my router. This gives me access to my files to both upload and download from anywhere in the world that I have an internet connection and because it is hooked to a fast network switch I can move large files from within my home network in the blink of an eye.

Total cost of all this? The server cost me about $100 for the software, I run 3 hard drives in it, all 1 tb sized drives, about $80 per drive. External enclosure for hard drives, $20. 10/100 network switch, $20. The nice thing about my server is that EVERY night it backs up ALL the computers on my network (3). I had a hard drive failure on a 3 month old drive on my main desktop a while back. I bought a new drive, installed it and within 3 hours my computer was up and running with EVERYTHING exactly as it was the night before. No re-installing Windows, or programs it made an exact copy of my computer.

I have not had good luck with external hard drives, which is why I bought a enclosure that I could install a regular old hard drive into and swap them when full. I now have files backed up on four separate sources. Not much chance of loosing data. At this point the file I created on my desktop is deleted, keeping my main hard drive on my desktop free of photos and free to use its space for computing!

Do you need that much backup...likely no. But if it was me I would have a separate hard drive in my computer with nothing but photos, a USB hard drive enclosure that can be stored in a safe or off site at a minimum. If you don't take a huge volume of photos in addition you could also back them to DVD's.

Its a simple organization system that allows me to find a file in about 15 seconds. Works for me but you may find something that works better for you.

[SkunkedAgain]

Dbl has a great system. The only tweak that I would suggest is with the date format. It's weird to get used to, but go by year, month, then day (2010-05-12). Dbl likely avoids the problem because he already has photos in a 2009 or 2010 folder. If others don't take it that far, you'll find that if you go with the 5-12-2010 format, all of your files will be grouped by month, then by day, then by year. So if you have different years in the same folder, it's more difficult to trace the chronology.

I have a 500GB external drive that I use to back up, and store in my office drawer for the same reasons that bobbymalone listed.

[pikestabber]

I use disposable cameras, then print the photos, then throw them all in a shoebox under my bed

OK, only kidding... I use folders and sub-folders as mentioned above, but I just organize first by year, then by topics, then by specific subject(e.g., 2009-->Fish-->Walleye pics; 2010--Hunt-->Grouse pics; 2010-->Gather-->Morel Pics).

I backup occasionally to photo disc, but I do strongly recommend backing up your treasured pics to an online album such as PhotoBucket or Picasa (Google) Web Albums. It's easy, free, and it gives me peace of mind knowing that I have local copies on my HD and also copies on the net on some huge server in another place entirely.

[Dbl]

My way of getting around the date that skunkedagain mentioned is as I mentioned I have a file naming system as well. That is how the date is resolved. I start with the year, the month and the date. I also have a three or four digit code that is placed in there that reletes to my workflow. So the first picture that is shot today with the code ABC (a specific client is assigned a code or you could use a subject as well)would be re-named and look like this; 100512_ABC_001. The first two digits are the year, the second two the month, and the last the day always using two digits for the day and month. A quick glance at the file name tells me most everything I need to know about the file.

This allows for easy searching, all pictures are always in the correct sequence shot. As to on-line storage I just plain don't trust it. I also have shots backed up on-line through my web site but I know of a few photographers that had on line storage providers go belly up and more than a couple lost ALL their on-line work. So if it is a third line of backup, great, but I would never use it for a primary backup. You also have to be aware of some services that backup for free only to a certain file size or total amount stored.

[JohnK]

I don't use any particular software to organize my photos, just a directory structure that makes sense to me. I break it down by camera, year, subject so I'll have

c:\photos\nikon\d300s\2010\kids

c:\photos\nikon\d300s\2010\kids\sports...

c:\photos\nikon\d300s\2010\wildlife

c:\photos\nikon\d300s\2010\wildlife\birds...

c:\photos\nikon\d300s\2010\landscapes\...

and so on.

Like Dan, I copy new images off the card to a _New folder and do the initial culling from there, deleting bad shots, duplicates (fast bursts end up with a lot of similar photos) and so on. Then I sort the images into the directory structure described above.

I used to have the year higher up and then had multiple cameras under it, I haven't decided which way I like best. I use Google Picasa for most viewing, it has an extremely fast search feature I so just search for what I'm looking for based on the folder name.

For backup I have complete copies on my laptop, desktop and 2 external hard drives, one of the drives stored offsite. I use robocopy to make the copies, it comes with every version of Windows since Vista. It's fast and will copy only files that have changed.

Also like Dan I don't trust any online storage company for backup. There is absolutely no guarantee they will be around tomorrow, most likely they will, but any company can go bankrupt and close their doors. It's happened more than once so far. Hard drives aren't 100% reliable either, but the odds of 4 physical drives in multiple machines, 2 unpowered, going bad at the same time are all but nill.

I've got over 21,000 images, around 65 gig, so far this system works for me.

[JohnK]

I have not had good luck with external hard drives, which is why I bought a enclosure that I could install a regular old hard drive into and swap them when full.

That's odd, external drives are just standard drives in an enclosure, the company just put them together for you. Doing it yourself does give you more control over which brand and size of drive you use though.

My wife uses a SATA docking station instead of typical external drives. The docking station allows you to just plug in a common SATA drive without the need for an enclosure. It makes it very easy to use multiple drives without needing multiple enclosures. She's used it for a couple of years, so far so good.

[Dbl]

That's odd, external drives are just standard drives in an enclosure, the company just put them together for you. Doing it yourself does give you more control over which brand and size of drive you use though.

I should have been more specific in the type of external drive. They are more like a portable drive, like those that are slim designed, or those that derive power through a USB port like some of the Passports. Many don't have cooling fans either and are not capable of swapping drives out the enclosure. That is why I prefer to select my enclosure that has its own power source and cooling fan. If you shop for them they are all lumped together and called external drives.