Recommendations for digital picture archive

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Back2PA

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Starting a project soon that I?ve been meaning to get to for some time - scanning a large number of photos and negatives from my daughters? childhoods. I have an Epson flatbed photo scanner with slide attachment that does a pretty good job, although it?s an excruciatingly slow process of scan, adjust, save, scan next picture/slide etc.


When I?m done I want to archive to whatever media is currently recommended so I can put it in a safe deposit box. I think I?ve read that burning to DVD isn?t necessarily a ?forever? solution but maybe I misread that.


What does everyone recommend for software and hardware for this project?


Thx
 
When I decided to archive all my slides in the mid nineties I ended up deciding it wasn't worth the time and effort.  So I threw all the slides away, a few thousand slides mostly underwater. Yes I regret the decision but I was looking at a years work at least. I have taken thousands of digital shots since 1997 and I have been using Google to store them since 2003. Google gives away tons of free storage, I don't know how much it is but I have never come close to filling it up. All my images are always available on Google 24/7 and Google will be in business a long time so they are pretty safe. You can check out their site here:

https://photos.google.com/

You can also click any of the links below in my signature to check out my photos there. You don't have to make them publicly available but I do so anyone can enjoy my shots. No CDs are not forever but then again no storage really is forever. Lots of people on my surround site are complaining about older CDs becoming unreadable. It is a bigger problem with CD-Rs than with commercial CDs.
 
Ok thx, sounds like things haven?t changed much.


Probably burn to DVD, copy to external drive which is backed up to Carbonite, plus copy to another external drive I have. One of the external drives plus DVDs will be offsite in case of fire.
 
Have you checked into Walgreens (or other professional service) to have it done? Or do you prefer pain?  ;) :)
 
BruceinFL said:
Have you checked into Walgreens (or other professional service) to have it done? Or do you prefer pain?  ;) :)


I begrudgingly admit to typically doing things the hard way  ::)


I would love to just go ?poof!? and have the job completed, but there?s no way I?m dropping a box of irreplaceable photos off at Walgreens and hope they don?t lose them. Then there?s the photo correction. And the many hundreds of dollars. Looks like pain.
 
Talk about pain.  Yours is easy compared to my problem which will not only be painful but I'm sure very expensive!  When my sister died we found Daddy's rolls of 8mm movie film in a box in her garage.  We had been trying to find them for years and she didn't have a clue where they were, in fact didn't know if she even had them.  So they sat in her South Carolina garage for a few years.  We have no idea what shape they're in by now.  There are about a dozen rolls taken before I was born and afterward, during the 1930s, 1940s, and maybe 1950s.  I'm trying (in my not-copious free time) to find someone who can make the transition from 8mm to DVD.  For all I know they're blank by now but I remember Daddy spending many hours splicing film to keep the good parts.  He was in the Cavalry back then so there are reviews on horseback on the parade ground of wherever we were stationed.  I'd like to see them again and pass them my nephew and his kids.  This nephew already has Daddy's dress sword and all his medals.

ArdraF

 
That's what I thought it would be until I found out that we can't do it without some expensive equipment which we would use once.  Better to find someone else who knows what they're doing and let them have the love!  ;D ::)

ArdraF
 
I'd suggest VueScan for scanning the photos at hamrick.com. I've had the "professional" version for several years -- it comes with unlimited updates at no extra cost, along with a few extra features.
 
I still have my 8mm projector, Ardra. From that you can capture them on a camcorder, then use any of several video editors to transfer them to DVD, or even just digital movie files, or both.
 
I had a service in Denver copy all my mother's 8mm and super8 to digital media a few years ago.
It was not cheap, but it was not "Break the bank" expensive, either.
A few hundred bucks well spent.

 
Hi,

Do*not* trust DVDs for long-term archival. I lost a bunch of them (thankfully with nothing irreplaceable) despite taking all reasonable precautions (using the greatly acclaimed Taiyo-Yuden blanks, NEC DVD drive writing at 2X, vertically storing them in proper carriers, etc), and after only a few years everything suddenly turned unreadable.

Since them I've been storing my long-term data on redundant sets of hard drives with great results, and more recently I've started to also upload everything to Google Drive. I'm fully confident this setup will probably last a few decades...

Cheers,
--
  Vall.
 
Somebody used to make archival quality DVD media.  I believe they were glass instead of plastic.  With that said I would not trust them either.

Storing things 'in the cloud' just puts them on someone else's computer.  A few cloud companies have failed, exited the business or are otherwise gone.  Google may some day be gone too.  All it takes is a corporate takeover.

Multiple redundant disk drives stored in secure locations in addition to cloud storage is the safest answer.  I use 3 3TB external drives from different manufacturers and a series of dockable SATA drives.  Photos & music are most important to me so they get backed up most carefully. 

I'm not sure Google would allow my 3 Terabytes of backups.
 
If you are doing this yourself you could buy a big USB drive such as from Seagate and use Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 Organizer that would allow you to tag the images.  It has pretty good face recognition so that one you begin to identify people it would make the process easier.  You could also tag locations.  As for safe storage you could keep that USB drive in your own waterfproof and fireproof safe.  That said, it seems like  a big project if you are doing this yourself.
 
I would not use any Cloud based storage or any storage servers operated by someone else, for files of importance ie. Google etc. for the simple reason when they are out of your hands who knows what or where they may end up.  My recommendation is to store them on at least 2-external hard drives, ideally kept in 2-differnet locations.  Putting them on a DVD is not a bad idea in addition to external hard drives so you can have easy access to them for viewing or sharing on your computer if you have limited hard drive capacity.
 
[quote author=8Muddypaws]A few cloud companies have failed, exited the business or are otherwise gone.  Google may some day be gone too.  All it takes is a corporate takeover.[/quote]

I went through this with my personal image archive and the large number of images stored for a club I belong to. The company was acquired, and all the albums and images were lost. Fortunately, I had backups.
 
Tom said:
I went through this with my personal image archive and the large number of images stored for a club I belong to. The company was acquired, and all the albums and images were lost. Fortunately, I had backups.

Another good reason not to use these storage services, at least for important and especially cannot replace files.
 
Tom said:
I went through this with my personal image archive and the large number of images stored for a club I belong to. The company was acquired, and all the albums and images were lost. Fortunately, I had backups.

There is also something known as a personal cloud device.  You can get to this over wireless internet and can access it from anywhere.  For about $250 you can buy 3TB.  This is a physical drive that you own an connect to your router via ethernet.  Still, I would also back this up to a large USB hard drive.  With these devices you avoid the monthly charges of cloud storage and never have to worry about the service being acquired or hacked.
 
ArdraF said:
Talk about pain.  Yours is easy compared to my problem which will not only be painful but I'm sure very expensive!  When my sister died we found Daddy's rolls of 8mm movie film in a box in her garage.  We had been trying to find them for years and she didn't have a clue where they were, in fact didn't know if she even had them.  So they sat in her South Carolina garage for a few years.  We have no idea what shape they're in by now.

Ardra, you want a company that pre-inspects and treats the film, then does frame by frame transfer.  This is gentler on the film as it's done at a reduced speed and gives superior results to projector/camcorder transfers since the "shutter speeds" of the projector and camera aren't synchronized.

Google "8mm film transfer".  Here's one company that looks good:

https://www.digmypics.com/8mmfilmtransfer.aspx

Send them one reel, then if you're happy with the results send them the rest.
 
Thanks for all the explanations.  Lou, that's a good link.  I was aware that DVDs might not last as long as intended.  Probably at this point I just need to get the films digitized.  I can always put them into my computer or an external drive so they can be used.  Jerry got his family 8mm films put onto video tapes which were then converted to CDs.  That's when we started looking for my family films which we didn't locate until years later.  Meanwhile DVDs came on the market.

ArdraF
 

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