today we realized that the way we have been archiving all of our photos is not working. until today we have been burning dvds after we finished every order and puting them with the costomer's invoice. we have only been digital for a short time and we now have hundreds of cds and dvds and are running out of room. so we are trying to think of what to do. the only idea we have had so far is to put just the images that were ordered from on to dvds so we could get sevral costomers on each disk maby even a few months worth. then get some sort of database program that can catalog all of this by costemer name, date photographed and invoice number. my question is first what do you do? we want to keep all of the dvds because we do get a fair amount of reorders so i think selling them back to the costomers six months down the line is out of the question. also do any of you know of a good data base software that can organize in this way? (we use mac) who makes the best archival dvds? do you think blu ray will be worth the the extra money? (i'm not looking for a blu ray vs hd dvd debate just wanted to know if it is worth the money) sorry for all of the questions but please let me know if you have a better way. thanks, Ryan

my subject matter is a bit different but my methodology could easily be adapted to your situation.

Just name folders by the name of the client and or date (Jones-Smith Wedding, Jan 12) and burn several folders to a DVD or CD. The one disk will then have (as an example): all the shots taken between Jan-Mar 2006, separated into folders by the name/date. RAW files and completed images should be kept in separate subfolders under the name/date folder. 

The next disk would have Apr-June 2006 or whatever. And always make 2 copies of each disk, stored in physically separate areas (miles apart). Once a disk gets to be 5 years old (10 years is probably adequate) make new copies and toss the old disk.

Your paperwork will give you the date, and therefore the disk to find the pics. Or you could just use a simple Excel spreadsheet to contain the name, date, invoice #, order, etc as well as the disk number and folder name.

I think it's tough this time.
Because blue ray can fit 25GB, but - at 16.99$ per disc?
Hard drives are cheaper . . .
External HD, or I'm thinking external disc, like the  one from Maxtor, which is for about 600$, with 1 TB capacity (1024 GB) - which would come close to price or blue ray, except it's plug-in, no burning, no discs, no hassle, no new burner.

I'd determine how long it will take you to fill up 1 TB or 2 TB external disc.
Then, if you'd fill 2 TB disc in estimated for example three years - go for it.
Store, store, store, you have your customers files for three years, then you delete oldest ones and fill it up with new customers.
This would probably the most cost and time effective solution for you.
I think.

Tomas

I would stick with archiving on DVD's rather than going to an external hard drive... or any other hard drive for that matter.  Hard drives can fail pretty easily compared to a DVD that you will store somewhere.  Hard drives have moving parts which can fail or ware out.

I use both DVD and an external HD for archiving. With the HD, I only turn it on when I am archiving images. Other than that, it sits alone on my desk. It is not even connected to power unless I am using it. I think this greatly reduces the risk with HD.

I don't think I will upgrade to Blue Ray any time soon. DVD's are cheap so I use on per client. Until I start doing weddings, I dont forsee myself taking over 4.7 gigs of pictures at on sitting.


Ryan

I started out with one external HD and DVDs.  But for some reason, they've made DVDs much more complicated than they ought to be.  All of the DVD + / - garbage, some readers read some disks but not others, etc.  Awhile back I tried to read some backup DVDs that I had made a few months earlier, and my computer wouldn't read them.  I just think that DVDs in general are a big PITA.

I now have one 300Gb internal HD, and two external 300Gb HDs.  I keep the two external drives turned off until I copy things to/from them, so that they don't just sit there running all the time.  The second external drive is configured so that it will back up the other external drive with the push of a button (it will only copy over the files that were added/changed since the last time it was backed up).

Another think to keep in mind is, how long will you archive customer files?  I think six to twelve months is adequate, but some would disagree.  Even though I'm against selling digital images for the most part, I kind of like the idea of contacting a customer a year or so after a shoot, telling them that you are getting rid of their photos, and offering them everything on CD for $x.  I think a fair number of people would go for it, and then you could get rid of those files.

I just bought an 320GB external harddrive for archiving.  There is a microsoft program that I can't recall w/o searching but it automatically copies files to a specified location.   The plan is to have negs on a) my main computer b) an external harddrive and c) and DVDs.

So, 3 copies of negatives! If there is ever a fire in my house, I'm grabbing my son, my wife and my external harddrive!

Edit: it's called SyncToy