CD-rs can go bad - Photography

[Orrin]

A recent post asked about image storage. For those who think CD-Rs
are a good archive medium, take a look at the following:

http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/Bad_CD.txt
and
http://www.metalworking.com/DropBox/Bad_CD.jpg

Make backups of backups and store them in separate locations.

Orrin

[Ed]

You usually get what you pay for. That looked like a generic brand.

I found it somewhat surprising that 7 months of pictures takes up less than
one CD, though.

[Mikey]

7 months=1CD?
I guess you don't take many photos then or have a low resolution camera,
unless you don't save them all? I just took a quick count, my last years
shooting is backed up on 55 CD's..not all are full but most are. This
represents about 10,000 5 megapixel images. I think I'm going to switch to a
new backup medium, this is too many CDs to keep, they are starting to pile
up.

--

Mikey
http://www.mike721.com


"Ed E." <MyPants.net> wrote in message
news:supernews.com... 
than 

[Carole]

Now that I'm getting into photography more, I'm looking into ways of
filing negatives, slides, digi images. Once you get them onto a CD, what
method do you use for being able to locate a photo when you have
thousands of photos? Is there a program that will print out small
images of what is on the CD after you burn it?

Thanks,
Carole

Mikey wrote: 

[brian]

"Carole" <com> wrote in message
news:bo67pn$14b49o$news.uni-berlin.de... [/ref]
years [/ref]
to a [/ref]
pile 
>[/ref]
Windows XP allows you to view thumbnails in a folder, just load in your CD
and go to explorer, then click on a folder within the CD ,then click view,
then thumbnails.
You can even view them as a slideshow using windows XP's picture and fax
viewer.

DVD's store gigabytes of information, as opposed to CD's holding a maximum
of about 750MBs, Then you could always add one , or several, extra hard
drives to your system and store, at the moment, upto 250GB's on each drive.


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[Ed]

That's what I was thinking. I'm up to my 16th DVD for the past year, but
I'm also scanning older film for posterity. The last wedding I shot barely
fit on 2 DVD's.

[Mathias]

Orrin Iseminger wrote: 


a) as was said before: You get what you pay for. Buying cheap
"see-through quality" CD-Rs you can't expect much.
b) CD-Rs as all digitalmedia have got a certain read-write
lifecycle which amounts to close to infinity for quality cdrs,
although atm one is advised to store CD-Rs in *dry* and
dark places, as they are prone to oxidise in the long run.
The latter being a problem of *all* CDRs and DVDRs alike
at the moment, although already a new coating has been
anounced that won't oxidise. Don't know when those are
to hit the market though.

All I can recommend:
* Only Buy quality CDRs (with jewel or slim cases)
* One Shooting, one CDR (usually amounts to 600mb for
me anyways).
* Store them in a location that is suited

and you're likely to not encounter any of the problems
mentioned.

Mathias

[Mikey]

I see you note to use jewel cases..is there an advantage to storing them
that way?

I keep mine on a spindle, I don't handle them much at all, just keep adding
new ones to the pile, since I also have a full archive on hard disk and
these are just backup storage. 1 spindle per year seems a logical way to
organize them, though this could change.

Keeping them on a spindle makes them much easier to keep in one place. I can
see that if I was pawing through them all the time this could potentially
scratch them, but since I don't, I think a spindle is a good way to store
them.
Comments?

--

Mikey
http://www.mike721.com


"Mathias Schmid" <com> wrote in message
news:bo6g8k$pki$07$t-online.com... 

[Paolo]

Ed E. wrote:
 

Huh? Do you shoot at 320x240 or do you just take 10
shots per month? ;-)

DVD-R is the way to go. New +/- 4x burners can now be
had online for $120 or so and blank discs cost as little as
50 cents each, when bought in bulk (yeah, bulk disc are
probably not top quality, but for that kind of price, anybody
can afford to have 4-5 or more backups...)

[Paolo]

Carole wrote: 

Windows XP does that, but it's terribly slow with a CD/DVD.
Firehand Ember (shareware) is MUCH better.

[Paolo]

Mikey wrote:
 

....but a nightmare when you have lots of them and
you're looking for a particular one. :-)
 

Exactly, that's another valid issue.
 

Not needed, you answered yourself. :-)

[Jud]

On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 07:03:49 -0800, Orrin Iseminger
<com> wrote:
 

One thing that might be a factor - write on them only with pens that
are designed to write on CDs. I was at Staples looking for a pen
designed to write on CDs, and they said "we just use these". From
what I read, standard felt-tip pens will bleed through, making the CD
unreadable. (I've never experienced that, but I use the proper pens.)
They said "we just use these". Sure you can write on them with
standard felt-tip pens, but can you read the disk back in a year
later?

[S]

After reading all the various viewpoints on the subject, I'll still
stick with my method of having multiple hard drives in the computer
for redundancy, and a firewire harddrive externally so I can transport
them if need be. Granted this requires the other computer has to have
firewire, but in my world that is exactly why I chose firewire. And
if I need to burn some files to cd, I can copy them there and treat
that cd as if were totally expendible.

2 more cents for the pot.....

steve

[Jud]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 02:04:32 GMT, net (S Smith) wrote:
 

I have 3 computers on my home network, and I have copies of important
stuff on at least 2 of them. I also make backups to CD.

[Carole]

Paolo Pizzi wrote:
 

Thanks, I'll take a look at Firehand Ember...I don't have Windows XP. I
have an old computer which has to do me until I can find a job in
Seattle somewhere...a new computer is on my wish list though :-)))

[Paolo]

Carole wrote: 
>
> Thanks, I'll take a look at Firehand Ember...I don't have Windows XP.
> I have an old computer which has to do me until I can find a job in
> Seattle somewhere...a new computer is on my wish list though :-)))[/ref]

Sorry, I forgot the URL, it will spare you a google search. :-)
Here it is:

http://www.firehand.com

[cvt]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 02:04:32 +0000, S Smith wrote:
 

for sure!

I store on 2 hdd's on my pc, and on another computer, and backup on cd
about once every 3 months (reburning all the cd's)
it might cost me 15 cd's or so each back, but that $5 of cd's is a cheap
insurance for a lot of images!

[Ed]

 

Not me - I was talking about the original thread author - Orrin.

[Ed]

> After reading all the various viewpoints on the subject, I'll still 

For what it's worth, I have the same setup. A couple of drives in a RAID-1
(mirror.) Lightning hit near my house and made it's way up my telephone
line and fried my motherboard while my PC was on. The motherboard was kind
enough to mangle the array just before it died. So much for redundancy in
that case. I had everything backed up onto DVD, but imagine if I depended
on the drives for archival use.

Also, hard drives go bad after a few years. You may not even notice that
bad sectors are popping up under your image files until it's too late. You
really do need more than one backup method. I personally burn two or three
identical DVD's on quality media and keep them in separate locations.

[Martin]

I personally have very strong supspitions about lightfastness of CDR's.

The company I used to work for lost quite a lot of data because of CDR
failure. The thing is that the CD's were only used for a short period, like,
one month, while a new computer was being built. Of course we checked them
as we wrote them, and then left them in a pile. The disks were all
unreadable, and they had all been left in a pile together in the sunlight
from a window. The pattern on the top was visibly faded.

So I can't guarantee, but I'm convinced that you should keep CD's in an
opaque box.


"Mathias Schmid" <com> wrote in message
news:bo6g8k$pki$07$t-online.com... 
>
>
> a) as was said before: You get what you pay for. Buying cheap
> "see-through quality" CD-Rs you can't expect much.
> b) CD-Rs as all digitalmedia have got a certain read-write
> lifecycle which amounts to close to infinity for quality cdrs,
> although atm one is advised to store CD-Rs in *dry* and
> dark places, as they are prone to oxidise in the long run.
> The latter being a problem of *all* CDRs and DVDRs alike
> at the moment, although already a new coating has been
> anounced that won't oxidise. Don't know when those are
> to hit the market though.
>
> All I can recommend:
> * Only Buy quality CDRs (with jewel or slim cases)
> * One Shooting, one CDR (usually amounts to 600mb for
> me anyways).
> * Store them in a location that is suited
>
> and you're likely to not encounter any of the problems
> mentioned.
>
> Mathias
>
>[/ref]