This probably sounds a bit basic but what are the ways to keep/store digital images long term and secure and what kind of price figure are we talking here? There would be about 900 images. Thank you to those who answer.

-- jonathan gammond (jonbatine@hotmail.com), February 29, 2000

Answers

I dont know how long the long term you are talking about here... most cdrs have a live expectancy of about 10-50 years... and if that's long enough, it should be a secure way to store information due to it's read only media.

-- Keat Lim (keatlim@my-deja.com), February 29, 2000.

As mentioned, a CD-RW or CD-R drive ($200-$300) can save these files so that they can be read on any CD-ROM drive. Might as well buy a CD- RW drive, it's more versatile.

A CD will hold around 600+ meg of data. If your files are 20meg, you will be able to store 30 files per CD (at about $1 per CD-R disk.) At 10meg, 60 files, and so on.

Use CD-R disks, it's a lot simpler and cheaper than CD-RW disks, especially if you will fill disks and store them. (Both CD-RW and CD- R drives can write to CD-R disks.) Make 2 copies, a master and a backup - just in case.

If your files are small enough, you could also buy a 10gig hard disk for $200. and store all of your files on one disk (500 20meg, 1,000 10meg.) This is a little more dangerous, as a disk can "crash", but a lot more convienient (ready access to files.) You may want to do both.

Save files at the largest file size you have - disk space is cheap, so are CD-R's. Store in a well known, "lossless" format (do a search to review JPEG, TIFF, etc.)

Copy files to DVD-RAM or similiar in 3 or 4 years when prices for those drives come down. Keep copying as technology changes every 5 years, so you don't get stuck with the digital equivalent of 8 track tape.

Pretty simple once you do it - a weekend project if the files are already on your hard disk. (OK, no flames here ;)

- 2 hours to buy a drive - 3 hours to install and learn (maybe 1/2 hour, maybe 5.) - 6 hours to write out 15 disks (at 10 megs each file.) - 6 hours for a 2nd set of disks for backup

-- Michael T. Murphy (mmurph@ix.netcom.com), March 02, 2000.