Digital photo archiving

[stevie_b]

I copy all the photos from my digital camera onto a recordable DVD. I was browsing them on the DVD the other day and one or two of the jpegs seem to be corrupted (they failed to load or even display as a thumbnail in Windows Explorer).

 

I'm quite @nal about treating CDs and DVDs with care, so I don't think the DVD's been scratched. It's reminded me of a web article I read a while ago about how recordable CDs/DVDs degrade over time. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's not something you want to get right by first losing most of your old photos first either!

 

My question is, what do people on here use for storing digital photos long-term?

 

Things like these archival DVDs?

 

Also seen this article advocating a specific manufacturer.

[martini]

My question is, what do people on here use for storing digital photos long-term?

 

Multiple hard drives, stored in various locations.

 

I have a local library on my computer, which is duplicated onto a hard drive.

 

This hard drive is copied, and this duplicate is stored off-site for safe keeping

 

Firewire 800 is much faster than burning DVDs and I don't hold optical media in very high regard for long term backups.

[JustGav]

Spare hard drive in a caddy with something like SyncToy once a week. Pull the drive out and store it somewhere.

 

There are a few online services that offer this sort of thing as well.

[stevie_b]

Thanks chaps.