Camera Labs

Hello everyone,

How much storage does everyone use, and what would be a good amount to have? I will be going to University next year, and am in the market for a laptop.

Cheers.

Eric D.

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Eric D.
Nikon D90 | 18-200 VR
"Less is the new Black"---Chase Jarvis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947744@N03/

My photos take up almost 40 gigs but that could be more or less than average, I don't know. Storage is cheap. Get as much as you can afford.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

Would 160gb be enough? I don't know how to check how many pictures I have taken so far

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Eric D.
Nikon D90 | 18-200 VR
"Less is the new Black"---Chase Jarvis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947744@N03/

I have no idea. Would 160GB be enough? Only you can answer that. If you take a couple of photos a month, then yes. If you take a hundred photos a day, then over time, probably not.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

I probably take around 200-400 per month.

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Eric D.
Nikon D90 | 18-200 VR
"Less is the new Black"---Chase Jarvis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947744@N03/

Hi Eric,

My best advice is "don't keep your photos on a notebook". Obviously they will live on it for as long as it takes you to sort out the discards and do whatever post-processing you need but I suggest that unless you plan to hold duplicates on an external hard drive you might be better off archiving the keepers to an optical disk. It's a sad fact of life that hard disks fail and an even sadder one that sometimes notebooks are so portable that they vanish.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

So it would be a good idea to make copies of my images and put it on a backup hard drive?

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Eric D.
Nikon D90 | 18-200 VR
"Less is the new Black"---Chase Jarvis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947744@N03/

Yes that wouldn't hurt but that hard drive could also fail. Bob is suggesting you use CDs or DVDs as an additional back-up. You would probably find this article by Gordon useful:

http://www.cameralabs.com/features/backup_part1/

Mark

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Canon EOS 40D / EF-S 17-85mm IS / EF 50mm f/1.8 / My Flickr

i use a similar procedure bob has mentioned, but i also keep them on my laptop... this way, if one of the copies are corrupt or just dissapear, i have two more copies...

... i back-up to external hard drive once new photos are downloaded and sorted on the laptop... and once at the end of every month onto an optical disc...

my brother picked up 500gigs at Frys last week for less than 100$.

get as much as you can...

for por- i mean term papers and such...heeheh

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WHO I AM BLOG, WHAT I DO BLOG
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*most of my photos nowadays come with a blog post. Please take some time and stop by

It doesn't matter what you backup on to, more that you backup at all! I tend to dump photos on my main computer, and manually copy them to an external USB 500GB drive every couple weeks or so. That 500GB shouldn't fill up too quickly And cheap enough to get more if needed. Key is to keep at least two copies in different storage devices just in case.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

If you're really serious about safety and back up it would be wise to carry all/the most important of your photos around with you on a USB stick or some other small device. If there's a fire or burglary at your house it doesn't matter how many computers or external hard drives you have so an out-of-house back up is useful. Of course, you can never have too many hard drives at home either.

Mark

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Canon EOS 40D / EF-S 17-85mm IS / EF 50mm f/1.8 / My Flickr

It's not smart to invest in a high capacity HDD. One thing goes wrong with your PC and you never retrieve your pictures again. So it's best if you record them on to two DVD's, the second one is for backup . They are also very cheap. 160 GB HDD= around 40 euros. 1 DVD .20 euro cents and has 4.7 GB. 160/4.7= 36 DVD's; so 36DVD's make up your HDD. 7.2 euros for an entire back up of the HDD. Cost efficient hah?

Hard to backup my 700GB data on DVDs and much to much hassle.
Just throw another 1TB drive for 100(!)€ in and do the backup to that drive. Disconnect the drive after backup so it keeps "fresh" or use an external USB or NAS drive with 1TB that you can put in the locker after backup.
I have currently 67,000 files in 41,000 folders (260 GB in total) in my "image" folder including the Lightroom database and previews which I also regularely backup...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

You wouldn't buy a 160GB disk these days... not checked recently but the capacity/cost optimal point is probably at least 500GB, and USB ones are minimally different in price compared to bare drives. So to me hard disks are the only practical and cost effective method of storing large amounts of data. Note we're not saying only have one copy on one hard disk. We're saying keep copies on more than one hard disk, just in case. USB ones are easy to connect and move around.

A 500GB USB drive is from £50 at one big online shop I quickly checked. That's about 68 euro or 0.136 euro per GB. So a little more expensive than Thomas' example. I have no idea on DVD media prices as they're too small and slow for me to bother with. Taking the example earlier for DVD prices that works out at 0.043 euro per GB, or 1/3 the cost per capacity of the HD. Fair enough, it is cheaper per capacity. But realistically, unless you really have no money, would you rather work with a USB hard disk, or 36 DVDs which you will need to write one at a time...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.