Archive photos to DVD

[Jens Benecke]

I agree.

Up to about 10 years ago, I used to do regular archival backups to DVD. 
I waited until I had roughly 4.5GB of data to get off the harddisk, then 
prepared and burnt a DVD, made a file listing of it, and put it away.

Long story short: It was a mess.

First the actual burning process was always an extra task and it was 
"final" so I delayed it far too long because it needed to be "perfect" 
(regarding labeling, ordering and sorting out what to actually archive).
Then I noticed the DVD discs started to deterioate after ~5 years, far 
sooner than everybody said, and read errors occured, and I started 
making two copies of all DVDs, and regularly testing them, which was a 
huge amount of work.
Then actually *finding* a photo turned out to be much more difficult 
than I thought, with filenames being non-unique and metadata search not 
properly working across multiple offline media.
And finally, there's the price. One DVD is cheap, but 8GB of data today 
is just about 1000 JPG images with today's cameras. You'll need a LOT of 
DVDs long term.

I am now using a 1TB SSD ($50) in the PC to keep my complete image 
collection online (around 360GB as of now), and do a daily incremental 
encrypted backup of all images and the rest of my $HOME directory to a 
NAS using BorgBackup <https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/>, 
which works like a charm and just takes a few minutes after the initial 
full backup. You could also use online storage, you can get 1TB for as 
low as $6 a month. Or better yet, both (follow the 3-2-1 rule).

I bought the NAS 13 years ago to do backups. It has two harddisks which 
are in a mirroring RAID setup, and so far I have had to replace a 
failing harddisk twice - both times without data loss and with minimum 
fuss; rebuliding a RAID array takes time, but is completely automated.

My take: Don't use DVDs for archival purposes. When (not if) they rot, 
your data is gone and you might not even notice.

:-)

Jens


Am 24.02.24 um 19:03 schrieb James Orr:
> I generally agree with the cautions in this thread. Especially with 
> the need for redundancy. My workflow includes storing all my images on 
> a Win 11 workstation to mirrored 3TB HDDs. I make daily incremental + 
> monthly full backup to NAS. I worry about losing the corpus to a 
> sudden disaster and don't have a solution yet. Uploading to the cloud 
> seemsto be too slow to be practical, and no family is nearby.
> However, the basic truthis that the best archival storage for 
> photographs is an excellent print on archival media. The only tech 
> needed to view the output is available light and functional eyes.
>
> All digital media are evanescent. Have you recently tried to access 
> images from a 5.25" SSFD? Who knows what will be here 40 yearsfrom now.
>
> James Orr
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Digikam-users <digikam-users-bounces at kde.org> on behalf of Art 
> Zemon <art at zemon.name>
> *Sent:* Saturday, February 24, 2024 8:59:49 AM
> *To:* digikam-users at kde.org <digikam-users at kde.org>
> *Subject:* Re: Archive photos to DVD
> On Sat, Feb 24, 2024 at 8:41 AM Kjetil Kjernsmo <kjetil at kjernsmo.net> 
> wrote:
>
>     Hi!
>
>     On fredag 23. februar 2024 02:43:56 CET Mark wrote:
>     >  Since the image files have been burned to one or more disks (of
>     the same
>     > name) they can then be deleted from the hard drive to make room
>     for more.
>
>     Without really answering your question, I would challenge the
>     workflow. 
>
>
> Also be aware that the DVDs that you can burn at home have a limited 
> lifespan. They vary a lot, from as little as 20 years to maybe 100 or 
> more. See 
> https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cds-truth-cddvd-longevity-mold-rot/ for 
> some detailed info.
>
> You might consider making digiKam collections on removable media, 
> whether DVDs or SSDs or spinning hard drives. Once you have created 
> the collection, you can just drag 'n' drop some albums onto it to make 
> a backup. Then remember to refresh/replace the backup media every 
> decade or so.
>
>     -- Art Z.
> -- 
> My blog: CheerfulCurmudgeon.com <https://CheerfulCurmudgeon.com/>
> ///In a place where there are no humans, strive to be human. [Pirkei 
> Avot 2:5]/

-- 
Regards, Jens
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