A Viewfinder Darkly
Phil Northeast is Feature Writer for Photography at 
Stock photography by Phil Northeast is available from Ozimages International
How to Protect and Store Digital Photos
Philip Northeast
Storage Options to Keep Your Digital Camera Images Safe- simplifying photo archive techniques for the long-term storage of digital images and highlighting common pitfalls of trusting precious memories to CD, DVD, or hard disk.
As technology continually evolves, the debate over the methods of storing digital picture continues. With each new development, the choice seems to get harder and having finally made a choice that technology eventually becomes obsolete.
In the film era the choice was simple, there was only the original negative or slide. The quality of every copy or print would be less than the original. However, the technical means of retrieving the images that is making a new print is still available. Film or slides kept in a dry cool dark spot will last a long time.
The digital era delivers exact copies of the originals and this overcomes some of the drawbacks of film. With new technology comes a new problem, obsolescence.
Bye Bye Floppy Disk
The passing of the floppy disk is the prime example of a storage medium. Over the years, the disks got physically smaller as they increased in storage capacity, requiring a new drive for each generation, now they are a rarity on new computers.
Floppy Disk
This highlights one difficulty that whatever storage medium is the current flavor of the month you will need to transfer picture files to a new storage medium before the software and hardware required for the old technology becomes unusable.
Hard Disk
These are mechanical devices with moving parts, and like all such devices, they will break down. While modern hard disks are more reliable than their predecessors are they are still disk crashes waiting to happen. The normal strategy is to disk mirror, where the system writes data to two disks at once, so when one fails the other has a complete and current record of all the data files. This may be a bit excessive for the normal photographer and other forms of storage are common.
Compact Disc
Manufacturers promoted the CD as the indestructible storage medium of the future, as they work on patterns of light reflected from a layer within the disc.
Problems did appear as surface scratches could render sections of the disc unreadable and some discs started to fall apart after excessive exposure to light. Even labeling of the discs could cause problems in the long term, with acids in label glue or marking pens damaging the disc.
To give a CD the best chance of survival it should be stored in a dark, cool, and dry place. A fire resistant home safe is one storage suggestion, and is useful not only for your photo CDs, but for important documents as well.
Compact Disk
Only use special felt pens to labels the disk such as the Staedtler Lumocolor.
For special photos make two CDs, and store one in a separate location so one should survive a catastrophe.
As digital cameras become more sophisticated and the resolution increases so does the file size. This is now starting to limit the practicality of the CD, as more are required to store the same number of digital pictures.
DVD
These have evolved from the CD and offer far greater storage capacity than the CD. New computers usually come with a drive that can read and write to both CD and DVDs so they are now a practical solution for storing large digital picture files.
The concerns and limitations about the handling and storage of CDs should also apply to DVD’s.
Another common aspect is the quality of the CD or DVD that you use for storage. Manufacturers offer different grades of disc with higher quality types suggested for longer-term storage. Do not use CD-RW or DVD-RW, as these are not for permanent storage of data.
Off Site Storage
Another level of protection comes from off site storage services such as Carbonite.
originally published at 