I just finished my archiving for the previous month, whereupon I burn my cr2 files onto DVD, convert everything to dng format, and load those onto the appropriate hard drives and off-site hard drives. The conventional wisdom is, data that you don't have in three places is data that you don't mind losing. In my case, I like the security of having my backups in more than one format, hence my commitment to optical disks.
This was a big shooting month: several out of town assignments, a wedding, a couple magazine jobs, and my daily personal work. I shot a massive 114 gigabytes of images, almost 9000 pictures. Actually, I kept 9000 pictures. I throw out the bad ones, probably one in five, every day when I go over the day's take. I burned 30 dvds to store them all.
When archived as dng, this expands to a 292 gigabyte hit on my storage capacity. For one month.
What's going to happen when I get a 5D MkII, which captures at 21 megapixels?
I take it you embed the original CR2 inside the DNG?
I am still trying to decide whether (when I get my 5D MkII) to switch from storing the CR2 files to storing DNGs. And, if I choose to do that, whether to embed the original CR2 files. It is a big storage hit to do that but, on the other hand, storage is by far the cheapest part of the digital photography workflow, even when stored in triplicate (I keep three copies as well--4 for recent photos just because I tend to go back to those more frequently--but all on hard drives).
Posted by: Tommy Williams | November 10, 2008 at 05:25 PM
Believe it or not, that's the file size without the embedded RAW. Embedding it increases it yet again by the original size of the raw file. I'm not compressing it however (I worry about decompressing it years hence), and I include the full size jpg.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | November 10, 2008 at 05:39 PM
I think it's time to go back to those 3.2 Megapixel Canon point and shoots. Otherwise your life will be consumed by data management! (grin). It's sort of like those folks who can't help buying stuff and their life is consumed by looking after it..... oh.... that's us!
Posted by: Les Richardson | November 12, 2008 at 05:22 AM
Do you use separate hard drives or those multi-drawer "hot swappable" bays?
thx
Posted by: FG | November 19, 2008 at 01:18 PM
I have two 4-bay "Burly Boxes" filled with 1tb drives, plus the four in the computer (also 1tb). I don't know about the "hot swappable" part, as the Mac OS yells at me if I try and do that. This is my on-line archive. I also copy onto internal hard drives in a single bay eSata box, and those live offsite.
Posted by: Doug Plummer | November 19, 2008 at 01:23 PM