How much does this cost per RAW file or image? Since my current cameraNikon D1hmakes 4mb RAW files. This equals about $0.04 cents per image. So, if I have 500 images, that’s $20 bucks. This is much cheaper than using film but its still something verses being totally free. BTW, the CD’s are just about nothing, less than $0.0025 cents per image. That’s nothing.

What does the future hold or how will I expand my system in the future? First, I plan to start using DVD’s over CD’s sometime this year. While DVD media costs are higher, the actual per image cost is cheaper. Also, CD’s have longevity issues that DVD’s apparently don’t. That’s a good thing. I will also acquire two new 400 or 500 gig hard drives to handle the large files produced by cameras with significantly more megapixels. I’ll probably finally retire Vicki after four years of faithful use and move +Kirsten and +Robin to Vicki’s role as RAW file backup. The new drives will take on their old roles. Hopefully drive costs will continue to drop allowing

There you have it, my archiving system. If you haven’t guessed it takes a lot to keep a sound mind when you’re dealing with digital files. Anything I can do to avoid the ultimate catastrophe is a good thing.

Cheers

Tom

Update 9 June 03

While writing this article I suffered my first hard drive issue in 25 years of computing. My +Kirsten stopped reading and copying. Every time I tried to access certain volumes, my system would crash. Unfortunately the computer's Disk Utility could not detect any problems. To fix things I totally erased the drive by writing a zero on every segment. Fortunately by using my system, I restored +Kirsten by just dragging and dropping the contents of +Robin. Hopefully things are back to normal.

Update 22 Dec 05

After much work and transforming how I take images, I've outstripped the capacity of my old data archiving system. It was in need of major updating. For now, I decided to maintain the same structure of what I had before by using Firewire hard drives as my storage medium--I haven't changed anything on buring CD's and DVD's for off site archival purposes. The difference this time is I now have sets of drives for archival purposes.

• Drive set #1 is a primary and duplicate copy of my primary digital files. On these are stored the RAW NEF's from my projects. The images are catagorized by shooting sessions. I'm now using Aperture as my primary browser and if I use their terms, my RAW files are categorized by Projects. These drives are each 200gig Firewire 400 LaCie Big Disks. The Aperture Libraries are stored on one drive while the Vault is stored on the other as backup. There's a copy of each NEF on each drive.
• Drive set #2 is holds a copy of every DVD/CD I've ever burned. If you remember, I still copy all my files to partitions. When they're filled, I burn CD's and DVD's. These will be copied to La Cie Bigger Disk drives just like I was doing before in my original drive setup. I made a couple changes to my these La Cie Bigger Disks. Normally, each of these enclosures contain two 160gig hard drives. I replaced one in each enclosure with a 320gig hard drive thus effectively increasing its capacity by 50%. Since I copy each of my shooting sessions on these drives as well as Drive set #1 and I make a DVD copy, I now have five independent copy of every NEF I've ever shot between four drives and external media.

I now have about 1.2 TB of hard drive storage. Effectively I only use about 600gigs with the other protion being a backup or clone of the original.