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bizzybuzzybee

Photographers

Forum posts: 40

Age: 41

#1784 2008-05-07 07:31 GMT     

Just wondering what the general consensus is on using USB Drive/Flash Memory for archiving the more important photo files. In the main this type of storage is quite robust as apposed to CD or DVD. What is the longevity of the file on the medium?

rick

Administrators

Forum posts: 109

Age: 33

#1788 2008-05-07 14:24 GMT     

well, I use external hard drive for storage , you can buy I bought a 500 gb external hard drive from bestbuy for $100 which is pretty cheap comparing to cds or flash drives not mentioning the ease of managing your files.

davles

Photographers

Forum posts: 98

Age:

#1789 2008-05-07 14:49 GMT     

Another vote for an external hard drive here,but the way the price of memory cards are falling we could soon be using them once only and keeping the images on them for permanent storage!

Les.

Dewbius

Photographers

Forum posts: 31

Age: 26

#1791 2008-05-07 20:24 GMT     

Flash memory is quite durable, but they also cannot be written to as many times as a hard disk before starting to fail.

From what I can gather flash will last more or less indefinitely unless you exceed its maximum number of writes or some sort of physical damage occurs.

If you are constantly adding/removing and are only concerned with shorter term backups (2-3yrs) an external hard disk is a better option because you will get far more space for your dollar and it will survive a great deal more writes. The down side is they do tend to fail in a fairly short time span (4-5yrs).

snowbird

Photographers

Forum posts: 11

Age: 53

#1792 2008-05-07 22:38 GMT     

I too bought an external drive and it is just fantastic, I can easily take it and use it on another computer (should my computer die on me), because I lost quite a bit of photos after a major crash of my pc and did not have backups, hence the importance now of backups on my external drive.

bizzybuzzybee

Photographers

Forum posts: 40

Age: 41

#1793 2008-05-08 06:34 GMT     

Thanks for the responce, just clarify. I do not want to constantly read and write just store and occasionally access when someone wants a copy or a printed of.

I have a memory stick that I have been using for work. It has spent most of its time in the car enduring cold night and 40C. day for about 3 years and still I can read the data. Would really like to know if images would stand up the same.

Cheers

rick

Administrators

Forum posts: 109

Age: 33

#1795 2008-05-08 12:32 GMT     

it all depends on how many images you have if you think the memory stick has enogh space to store your images it will do just fine cuz its smaller and more portable than a "external hard drive"

Dewbius

Photographers

Forum posts: 31

Age: 26

#1797 2008-05-08 21:56 GMT     

Data is data, if other files have stood up to such treatment then so will images.

Files are all the same as far as a storage device is concerned, just a block of binary data. Its up to the application to make sense of it.

Hope that clears it up.

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