Since I have gone digital in my photography, I have shot a lot of photos and I am happy to say (with fingers crossed) that I have not lost any photos due to computer problems. I thought that since I am experiencing another non-diving weekend (northeast winds with 3 to 5 foot seas), I would talk about how I manage photos on my computer. I shoot mostly in Raw so I have dedicated one hard drive for Raw photos. They are kept in photos by year. For this year, I have a folder named “Raw 2008”. That folder is broken down into other sub folders. Those folders are “Land 2008” and “Underwater 2008”. Each of those folders are broken down into sub folders. I have another folder on my “Raw” hard drive and that folder is named “Unprocessed Raw 2008” which is also broken into sub folders similar to those mentioned above. Any raw file that has not been converted to a Tiff file resides in the “Unprocessed Raw 2008” folder until all the files in each folder are processed. The finished folder is then moved to the appropriate area in “Raw 2008”. I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 (and soon Photoshop CS4) to do my conversions. After I have converted a file, I assign it a label in Adobe Bridge so I know that the file has been converted. I use a green label for raw files that have been converted to Tiff files. On the rare occasion that I shoot jpegs, I will file them first in the Raw 2008 folder as I consider the jpegs as my originals. I will process the jpegs in Adobe Camera Raw. If you didn’t know that you can do that, please read my write up in the Digital Photography section of my web site. Here is a link to the page.
Raw File Folder List Example 1
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Raw File Folder List Example 2
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I keep all the photos in the “Raw 2008” folder until all the files have been processed and at the beginning of 2009, I will burn the completed “Raw 2008” folder to DVD’s using Archive Creator. I found that the best way to use this program for me is to have the program create ISO images so I can let the program run and now worry about sitting at the computer and changing DVD disks. I just let it run and when it is done, I burn the iso images to DVD and then delete the ISO files. Archive Creator does a great job of putting as many files as can fit on a disk and then adding additional files to the subsequent disks. It creates an HTML file of each disk so you can quickly browse the disk and see what files are on it. After I complete my burning, I take the DVD’s and store them off site. In 2008, I think that I made about 30 DVD’s of RAW and TIFF files from 2007.
I have a disk for files that have been converted to “Tiff” files. Actually this year, I had to add a second finished photos disk because I was filling up the first disk. My finished files are categorized by subject. An example is shown below:
Birds Folder Example
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The exception is that I use a “Land 2008” and a “Underwater 2008” folder. These contain the Tiff files that I have converted from Raw during 2008. At the beginning of 2009, I will use Archive Creator to burn these folders to DVD and take the DVD’s off site. After that is complete, I put the individual files into the proper category folder. Currently, I have all my raw files on a 500 gb hard drive in my computer tower. I have Tiff files alphabetically from “A-L” on a 750 gb hard drive in my computer tower and I have the remaining Tiff files (M-Z) on a second 750 gb hard drive in the tower. I am not comfortable with having the files on a single hard drive because I have had hard drives fail in the past. I am also not confortable with have a backup to one additional hard drive. I found my comfort zone by backing up each of the drives to two additional drives. I originally started with one RAW hard drive and one backup drive and one TIFF hard drive and one backup drive. I used individual external drives that either had firewire or USB 2 connections. When I was ready to add a second backup drive for RAW files and a second backup drive for TIFF files, I began to realize that I was going to have too many drives, too many power supplies, too many cables so I looked for a solution. I found it at Addonics.com. I really liked their Mini Storage Tower with a built-in port multiplier.
Addonics Mini Storage Tower
The storage tower holds four 3.5″ drives and has a built-in power supply and cooling fan. I bought the version of the tower with the built-in port multiplier so that it connects to my computer tower with a single eSata cable. I currently own two of the mini storage towers and I am really pleased with them. I am using Seagate Sata drives for all the drives in my computer and both mini towers. I like the Seagates and have pretty good success with them. I particularly like the five year warranty on the drives. There hasn’t been a single problem with either of the mini storage towers. My system configuration looks like this:
Tower and Hard Drive Configuration
The 500 gb RAW hard drive backs up to two separate hard drives in the right hand mini storage tower. The Photo 1 TIFF drive backs up to two drives on the left hand mini storage tower and the Photo 2 TIFF drive backs up to two hard drives in the left hand mini storage tower. I back up to each drive on alternating days. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, I back up the RAW drive to RAW 1 in the mini storage tower and backup PHOTO 1 and PHOTO 2 to PHOTO 1A and PHOTO 1B in the mini storage towers. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I back up to the second RAW drive, TIFF PHOTO 1B and TIFF PHOTO 2B. My backup program is SyncbackSE. I use it in a mirror mode so that it mirrors the original drives onto the backup drives. I have set parameters in the program to delete any files on the backup disks that were deleted from the original disks. I set schedules for the programs to run and the program sends an email to me with a report as to what actions were taken. SyncbackSE is inexpensive but it works incredibly well.
I also have a 750 gb main drive in the computer that has my program files and data files on it. I really should split the two so that the data files are on a separate disk but I back up the disks religously. Once a week, I schedule a full backup of the main drive to a second hard drive in the tower. I have four hard drives in the computer tower. I use Acronis True Image Homeedition for the full backup. It is scheduled to run once each week and it sends me an email when the task is complete. I also use it daily to backup my data files and my email files. The reason that I do my full backup to a disk in the tower is that if I need to restore my main drive, I will put in an Acronis boot disk and restore from a drive attached to the computer and not from an external drive although Acronis will restore from an external drive. I just feel better using the drive in the computer tower. So, I am up to eight hard drives but I have more attached. When I went from Vista 32 to Vista 64, I kept my original Vista 32 hard drive and installed it into an external USB enclosure. I am going to keep that for a few months just to be sure that there isn’t anything that I might need from the disk. When I am comfortable that I have everything, I will reformat that disk and use it for another purpose. I normally have the USB enclosure turned off as I don’t see the need to keep it running when I am not accessing the drive. I have another disk that I keep downloads and misc. files that wouldn’t matter too much if I lost them and finally a scratch disk for Photoshop.
I wanted to say one other thing about the Addonics Mini Storage Towers. They come in a lot of different configurations but the one that I use allows you to install one drive at a time. It will run with only one drive or two drives or three drives or all four. This is a plus if you can’t afford or don’t need to add drives right now but feel that you will have to in the future. My last comment is my favorite place to purchase hard drives and computer related equipment is NewEgg. I have used them for years and they have been great. I recommend them highly.
