Backing up 100-200G of photo images?

[W. eWatson]

You've received a lot of help about storage media, but if I'm right you
have the additional problem of locating the images themselves. What you
need is some cataloguing program to scour your system and locate them all.

Just google for "image catalogue program". There are lots available for
free.

Ed

Probably not in my case. Each shot is not labeled. Folder names are. If
someone other than myself looked at what's in the folder they probably
wouldn't have a clue where I took the shot. Way too much work to add
info to them. Ultimately over time no one in my family will care about
them at all. Of course, they have meaning to me, and how my life flowed.

 

[Ken Blake]

I was ready to reply by saying that I don't know of anyone who rents a safe
deposit box, but two things came to mind:
1. I actually do know a lady who rents a box. I know because she and her
late husband stored their wills there, which is a major mistake.
2. It's not something most people bring up in casual conversation, so the
percentage could be higher than I expect. Still, I suppose the percentage of
US adults is around 5 or 10%, give or take.

I have no idea what the percentage is, since, like you, I've never
asked anyone. But my guess would be considerably higher than that.

I don't "rent" mine. At our bank it comes with the accounts we have
there. But with other banks in the past, we've paid a rental fee.

 

[Paul]

Probably not in my case. Each shot is not labeled. Folder names are. If
someone other than myself looked at what's in the folder they probably
wouldn't have a clue where I took the shot. Way too much work to add
info to them. Ultimately over time no one in my family will care about
them at all. Of course, they have meaning to me, and how my life flowed.

You could:

1) First, create a list of all the filenames. Then, sort the list
by creation date. If you're shooting pictures at events, then
the "sessions" should all end up together. I suppose it depends on
whether the tools you used, messed up the date stamps on the files
or not.

2) Next, using a movie editor, import the list and do a slide show.
There are movie editors, which will present a picture for a
fixed interval, with a fade in and out at the end of each picture.
Once the slide show exists as a long movie, lie on the couch
and do a voiceover as the slides go by.

That avoids a lot of typing, or sorting into folders, or
changing the file names. If you sort the pictures
chronologically, at least clumps of them will have
some kind of relationship to one another.

As for "can you make a movie that big", I've had 140GB movies
before. They come from my WinTV card, at 20MB/sec. If you're
working with videos that big, I recommend staying away from
WinXP. It's possible NTFS is less buggy on Win7 or Win8.
The last time I needed to work with 500GB files, I
got the least trouble by doing the compression step for
them on Windows 8. I may not work in Windows 8 every day,
or "do Facebook on there", but there are occasions when
the bug fixes that exist in the OS, come in handy for
big projects.

A downside of the method, is it is not likely to preserve
the resolution of the originals. The purpose of the movie,
is mainly for the less appreciative of your family members,
if they need some background on what the pictures are about.

Paul

 

[pjp]

You could:

1) First, create a list of all the filenames. Then, sort the list
by creation date. If you're shooting pictures at events, then
the "sessions" should all end up together. I suppose it depends on
whether the tools you used, messed up the date stamps on the files
or not.

2) Next, using a movie editor, import the list and do a slide show.
There are movie editors, which will present a picture for a
fixed interval, with a fade in and out at the end of each picture.
Once the slide show exists as a long movie, lie on the couch
and do a voiceover as the slides go by.

BUT - you can expect to not have the guality when watching them in a
standard dvd player and/or you burned a "standard" dvd. The original
pics are likely way more than 720-480 or so.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I tip my hat to you. I'd venture to guess that not many of us have our own
bank vault.

Jack Benny did.

Also, there's a music venue in Santa Cruz, CA, called Cayuga Vault.

The building is at Cayuga Street and it used to be a bank.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I do not expect to add to it. Just protecting as much as I can. It's
unlikely I would add anything to say the 2004 photo folder.

Your time machine is broken?

 

[Char Jackson]

Jack Benny did.

Also, there's a music venue in Santa Cruz, CA, called Cayuga Vault.

The building is at Cayuga Street and it used to be a bank.

I fold my arms and say, "Well..."

 

[Char Jackson]

As for "can you make a movie that big", I've had 140GB movies
before. They come from my WinTV card, at 20MB/sec.

That should probably be 20 megabits per second, not megabytes. There would
be no reason for a TV tuner device to be spitting out 20MB/sec unless it's
housing about 10 tuners inside, which the WinTV doesn't.

If you're
working with videos that big, I recommend staying away from
WinXP. It's possible NTFS is less buggy on Win7 or Win8.

I used XP for quite a few years with files that big and never had a problem.
Are you saying that NTFS is implemented differently on XP versus 7/8? AFAIK,
NTFS is NTFS is NTFS.

 

[Paul]

That should probably be 20 megabits per second, not megabytes. There would
be no reason for a TV tuner device to be spitting out 20MB/sec unless it's
housing about 10 tuners inside, which the WinTV doesn't.


I used XP for quite a few years with files that big and never had a problem.
Are you saying that NTFS is implemented differently on XP versus 7/8? AFAIK,
NTFS is NTFS is NTFS.

So you've never seen the problem where the amount of CPU used by
NTFS goes up and up... Until eventually you can get a delayed
write failure after about eight hours of writing to the same file ?
That's what happens on WinXP. Doesn't happen on Win8. And is
related to memory management somehow. (Pool getting fragmented?)
It may not be NTFS itself - but it is related to both
an application attempting to write, and the NTFS file system.
(Could never happen on FAT32, because of the tiny 4GB
file limit ) I've not tested on EXFAT to see
if the same problem is there or not.

It's so bad, I can't reliably record a two hour movie
with the WinTV card, because it starts dropping frames
in the second hour of capture. I have to capture an hour
of uncompressed video, reboot, capture the other hour,
glue them together.

I never even guessed this was happening, until I was examining
the movie credits closely, and noticed a glitch. And then,
I started watching Task Manager, and seeing how at the beginning,
very little CPU was being used, while at the end of a two
hour capture, the system component of CPU usage was more
than anything else. And it was causing frames to get dropped.

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

So you've never seen the problem where the amount of CPU used by
NTFS goes up and up... Until eventually you can get a delayed
write failure after about eight hours of writing to the same file ?

Nope, never. Nothing even remotely resembling that.

That's what happens on WinXP. Doesn't happen on Win8. And is
related to memory management somehow. (Pool getting fragmented?)
It may not be NTFS itself - but it is related to both
an application attempting to write, and the NTFS file system.
(Could never happen on FAT32, because of the tiny 4GB
file limit ) I've not tested on EXFAT to see
if the same problem is there or not.

It's so bad, I can't reliably record a two hour movie
with the WinTV card, because it starts dropping frames
in the second hour of capture. I have to capture an hour
of uncompressed video, reboot, capture the other hour,
glue them together.

I never even guessed this was happening, until I was examining
the movie credits closely, and noticed a glitch. And then,
I started watching Task Manager, and seeing how at the beginning,
very little CPU was being used, while at the end of a two
hour capture, the system component of CPU usage was more
than anything else. And it was causing frames to get dropped.

From here, it looks like the major problem, and quite likely the only
problem, is the WinTV card. I never had any such problems with my
HDHomeruns. Even with all 4 tuners going, the HD light just blips and CPU
usage is in the weeds. Of course, I'm not trying to capture uncompressed
video. Why would you do that?

 

[Paul]

From here, it looks like the major problem, and quite likely the only
problem, is the WinTV card. I never had any such problems with my
HDHomeruns. Even with all 4 tuners going, the HD light just blips and CPU
usage is in the weeds. Of course, I'm not trying to capture uncompressed
video. Why would you do that?

The WinTV card is just one test case.

This also happens if compressing a large file with 7ZIP.
I was compressing a 500GB image collected from a 500GB drive,
and instead of taking a calculated 2 hours, it took 12 hours.

When I moved the same project to Win8, it completed in 2 hours.

The difference, is the high system CPU component, as the
500GB file is read, and compressed down to around 230GB or
so.

A common component to the problem, is writing very large
files.

Paul

 

[SC Tom]

No matter how one cuts this ultimately the photos will be unusable at some
point as technology moves forward. If not that, some catastrophe.

That's somewhat of a defeatist attitude, isn't it? Feeling that way, why
bother saving them at all? Take the pictures, look at them once or twice,
then delete them. No sense saving them since the bank may blow up tomorrow,
the Mayans said the world will end, that asteroid is getting awful close,
and don't forget, global warming is going to drown us all

 

[Char Jackson]

The WinTV card is just one test case.

This also happens if compressing a large file with 7ZIP.
I was compressing a 500GB image collected from a 500GB drive,
and instead of taking a calculated 2 hours, it took 12 hours.

When I moved the same project to Win8, it completed in 2 hours.

The difference, is the high system CPU component, as the
500GB file is read, and compressed down to around 230GB or
so.

A common component to the problem, is writing very large
files.

Granted, it sounds like you have problems with your XP-based system when it
comes to dealing with large files. If you had tried a second XP-based system
rather than trying a 7- or 8-based system, you would have discovered that
the problem wasn't XP or NTFS, but something specific to your current
XP-based system.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I fold my arms and say, "Well..."

 

[Ant]

I fold my arms and say, "Well..."

For me, I say "hmmph".
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Ant is currently not listening to any songs on this computer.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

You could: []
2) Next, using a movie editor, import the list and do a slide show.
There are movie editors, which will present a picture for a
fixed interval, with a fade in and out at the end of each picture.
Once the slide show exists as a long movie, lie on the couch
and do a voiceover as the slides go by.

BUT - you can expect to not have the guality when watching them in a
standard dvd player and/or you burned a "standard" dvd. The original
pics are likely way more than 720-480 or so.

[]
You didn't read to the end of his post, where he said

A downside of the method, is it is not likely to preserve
the resolution of the originals. The purpose of the movie,
is mainly for the less appreciative of your family members,
if they need some background on what the pictures are about.

(I think he was suggesting leaving the movie as a sort of index [with
the added bonus of including your voice doing the commentary], with the
originals being put on the disc too.)

 

[Ashton Crusher]

I probably have 100-200G of photo images on my PC. I would like to put
them on DVD or some other device for backup purposes. A DVD hold about
5G. Is there some software that would automate this process? For
example, I start at the root, and let it rip. Each time it fills a DVD,
it would ask for the next one. This would be a one time shot. That is, I
would not meddle with the storage again, or add to it. Sub folders
represent years. If I wanted to do this again for say 2013-2015, I'd do
the same process on a new set of DVDs for those years.

I could probably use an external drive, but somehow that isn't appealing.

I presume you value your photos or you wouldn't be worried about this.
Under that presumption, I'd recommend you get TWO external HDs which
would cost you perhaps $125. Back up all your files to both. Put one
in the vault and keep the other home and periodically recopy all your
photos to the home one and then swap it with the one in the vault.
Repeat monthly. I read that as a backup media DVDs are not that good
as they were never designed for that purpose and are actually less
robust in terms of error protection then CDs are. And CDs have been
known to go bad. Don't know about blue ray. In any case. HDs are
just so much faster and easier to use as backups I really can't see
why not to use them. And with the HDs you'll have plenty of room to
back up ALL your documents.