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For Picture Archiving Do you...

For Picture Archiving Do you put your pictures on a

  • CD

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • DVD

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Blu-Ray

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • USB Thumbdrive

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • Hard Drive

    Votes: 11 64.7%

  • Other- Will leave comment.

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Total voters
    17
waloshin

waloshin

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 9, 2008
3,564
397
For Picture Archiving Do you put your pictures on a CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, USB Thumb drive or Hard drive?

The reason why I am asking as I am starting a business and I am not sure if customers would prefer Blu-Ray or would be happy with DVD.
 
For myself I use a couple of hard drives.
If your looking to give them to clients, I'd go with thumb drives. Many people don't have CD or DVD drives any more. If you buy in bulk, you can pick them up cheap. Especially small ones which is probably fine if just giving JPEG's.
 
I always keep copies of pics and docs on multiple formats. But not anymore on discs, since they will become completely obsolete within this decade.

Thumb and external drives are my go to ways. And the cloud for non sensitive material. Most of my pics are on the cloud as well as external drives.

I also have several laptops and one desktop, so they are on those too.
 
As Mr fanboy says, thumb/flash drives are the way to go.

Drives with your company name/logo are dirt cheap. Here in the UK you can buy 50x 8GB drives for around USD 4 a piece. Capacity doesn't seem to have much impact on price, ie 1GB drives are only around 10% less.

The look professional, and are much, much more durable than any disc format. A fifty year old USB stick is likely to be fully functional, if someone goes to the trouble of trying to read it. A disc? Not a hope in hell.
 
The reason why I want to offer Dvds is I can sell M-Disc dvds which have a lifespand of 1000 years.
 
mobilehaathi said:
What will make your service stand out from others?
Click to expand...

In my area there is not much competition. I will offer the option for higher resolution scans, photo touching such as removing scratches, and offering mediums such as M-disc which has a 1000 year life span.
 
From your initial post I assumed you were a photographer, and were simply looking for the best format to use when returning processed images.

If you're trying to sell (self-store) archival services then M-DISC™ is certainly one way to go, not least because it makes all those 1000 year claims on your behalf.

The graphic on their website...
zHB8DNW.png

...strikes me as nonsense, though. A DVD written once on a domestic burner might be good for seven years, although I'd imagine that a very significant percentage will be unreadable after that time. But the claims that hard disk (spinner, presumably) and a flash drive are good for only 5/8 years respectively is absolute rubbish. Write once then put either of those in your sock drawer for fifty years and I'd be amazed if the data was gone. I'd be even more amazed if your sock drawer M-DISC™ was still good after a century.

In reality, the best anyone can really hope for is a storage medium that's still 'good' at the last date anyone is likely to attempt to retrieve data from it. One thing that CD/DVD/M-DISC™ does have going for it is that it's more platform neutral than a HD or flash drive, and the means of reading such discs is likely to remain more readily accessible than will be the case for GUID/NTFS etc.

Personally, if confronted with a 3.5" floppy or a ZIP drive, I'd most likely throw it in the bin unless I was damn sure there was something very valuable to me on there. But an 8" floppy? Or a SyQuest 44MB? The time and effort and cost, and the hoops you'd have to jump through, in order to try and retrieve anything meaningful from those would be ridiculous. But they *were* storage 35 and 20 years ago.
 
Last edited:
mojolicious said:
The graphic on their website...
Image
...strikes me as nonsense, though.
Click to expand...

I still have USB sticks and writable CDs/DVDs that were from the late 90s which is over 15 years ago, which have no problems at all and still have what I orginally copied from the late 90s. Although they are slow as hell compared to today's USB sticks.

From my personal experience, I have no trust for using rotating disk HDs for long term storage. I now use external SSDs for storage of files and pics.
 
mojolicious said:
From your initial post I assumed you were a photographer, and were simply looking for the best format to use when returning processed images.

If you're trying to sell (self-store) archival services then M-DISC™ is certainly one way to go, not least because it makes all those 1000 year claims on your behalf.

The graphic on their website...
Image
...strikes me as nonsense, though. A DVD written once on a domestic burner might be good for seven years, although I'd imagine that a very significant percentage will be unreadable after that time. But the claims that hard disk (spinner, presumably) and a flash drive are good for only 5/8 years respectively is absolute rubbish. Write once then put either of those in your sock drawer for fifty years and I'd be amazed if the data was gone. I'd be even more amazed if your sock drawer M-DISC™ was still good after a century.

In reality, the best anyone can really hope for is a storage medium that's still 'good' at the last date anyone is likely to attempt to retrieve data from it. One thing that CD/DVD/M-DISC™ does have going for it is that it's more platform neutral than a HD or flash drive, and the means of reading such discs is likely to remain more readily accessible than will be the case for GUID/NTFS etc.

Personally, if confronted with a 3.5" floppy or a ZIP drive, I'd most likely throw it in the bin unless I was damn sure there was something very valuable to me on there. But an 8" floppy? Or a SyQuest 44MB? The time and effort and cost, and the hoops you'd have to jump through, in order to try and retrieve anything meaningful from those would be ridiculous. But they *were* storage 35 and 20 years ago.
Click to expand...

I don't understand that graphic. So after 5 years, all of the photos on my hard drive are going to disappear?
 
sdilley14 said:
I don't understand that graphic. So after 5 years, all of the photos on my hard drive are going to disappear?
Click to expand...

It's the excepted life span for the storage tech, and 5 years is probably a pretty good average (based on use, uptime, etc.) for a consumer grade HDD.
 
sdilley14 said:
I don't understand that graphic. So after 5 years, all of the photos on my hard drive are going to disappear?
Click to expand...
Actually, a bit of light googling suggests than an HDD used for archival, ie sitting in your climate-controlled sock drawer, will go bad in a surprisingly short timeframe due to demagnetisation.
 
mojolicious said:
Actually, a bit of light googling suggests than an HDD used for archival, ie sitting in your climate-controlled sock drawer, will go bad in a surprisingly short timeframe due to demagnetisation.
Click to expand...

Ok. That kind of makes sense I suppose. I'm just imagining myself owning and using a computer for more than 5 years. To say that files won't last more than 5 years on a computer hard drive just didn't make sense to me. But I suppose if it is just a dormant piece of hardware that isn't being used then I could understand how it would degrade over time.
 
sdilley14 said:
To say that files won't last more than 5 years on a computer hard drive just didn't make sense to me. But I suppose if it is just a dormant piece of hardware that isn't being used then I could understand how it would degrade over time.
Click to expand...
My understanding is...

a) Your internal HDD will last from five years (if you're unlucky) to ten or more years with regular use, before experiencing mechanical failure.

b) The data on your sock drawer HDD should last a decade before demagnetization starts to work its magic.

c) [and this one's a complete guess] If you retire your functioning ten year old HDD, it should still last ten years in your sock drawer.

d) [another complete guess] If you power up your sock drawer HDD once a year, copy all the data, reformat, and copy back, then it will last indefinitely.

Hopefully someone who knows what they're talking about will be along shortly!
 
Ok what is a M-Disk and how do you read the format? 1000 years is pure marketing. Lets say the format lasts that long, I remember using zip disks but good luck finding a drive to run it on.
 
MacNut said:
Ok what is a M-Disk and how do you read the format? 1000 years is pure marketing. Lets say the format lasts that long, I remember using zip disks but good luck finding a drive to run it on.
Click to expand...

The M-DISC™ contains no organic dyes. Instead, the M-DISC™’s data layer is composed of rock-like materials known to last for centuries. The M-DISC READY™ Drive etches the M-DISC™’s rock-like layer creating a permanent physical data record that is immune to data rot. The stability and longevity of the M-Disc DVD has been proven in rigorous tests conducted according to the ISO/IEC 10995 test standard for determining data lifetime of optical media.

M disc can be read on any standard DVD player.

www.mdisc.com/faq/
 
waloshin said:
The M-DISC™ contains no organic dyes. Instead, the M-DISC™’s data layer is composed of rock-like materials known to last for centuries. The M-DISC READY™ Drive etches the M-DISC™’s rock-like layer creating a permanent physical data record that is immune to data rot. The stability and longevity of the M-Disc DVD has been proven in rigorous tests conducted according to the ISO/IEC 10995 test standard for determining data lifetime of optical media.

M disc can be read on any standard DVD player.

www.mdisc.com/faq/
Click to expand...
And how long will DVD players be around?

The problem is this is still a disk, and those scratch, break, get lost. I don't even know if we will be using disk media in 10 years.
 
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