Since I have past history in photography, I have a ton of photos stored on my desk-top computer hard-drive right now. Yesterday, I was searching for a photo I had taken 5 years ago and it took 2 hours to find it because my photo files are not organized. I did eventually locate the photo but it was stored on a Thumb-drive I created years ago and did not label it.

Back in the Windows 2000 and XP days, I use to burn the 740 Mb 'CD-Rom disks' and those worked out great at the time.

In today's computer world, how do most people or businesses store massive amounts of data? I am tempted to go back and start burning CD Roms again,...is there a better way?

Storage is cheap

Roy, the trend of everything today is toward "the Cloud." Basically, online data storage.

I tried to give you a more detailed answer but the SPAM filter kept catching it for who knows what reason.

Anyway...if you've got a G m a i l account, you've already got a G o o g l e Drive account with 15 GB of free storage, which will store somewhere between 5000 - 15000 photos.

Also, I do monthly backups on a thumb drive. You can buy a 250 GB drive for $30 on A m a z o n that is easy to use and portable.

Sid,

I have 2 desk-top computers in my home office. My Windows 10 box is for 'Internet only stuff' and all of my really important data files (LL documents, business files, & photos etc.) are stored on my Windows XP computer/hard-drive which has never been (or will be) connected to the Internet. I love my Windows XP machine.

So, the Cloud is not really an option for me. I am tempted to buy an External HD which I should have done years ago.

Does anyone burn CD/DVD disks anymore? I am still clinging to my past here. If yes, what are you using to do this with?

I'm a big cloud user and use google drive stream and have it set up to automatically store offline as well. All of my landlord files are there which is really convenient as I can access them with my phone. Basically, my office is mobile.

There are a couple of problems burning them to CD/DVD:

1. Contrary to popular belief, they do not always last as long as people would expect. In a perfect world where you stored them in a nice, airtight container, they could last 100 years. But some put estimates as low as only 2 years if you just put a stack of them on a shelf. It probably shouldn't be trusted as a long-term storage solution.

2. They just don't hold that much. 4.7GB used to seem like a huge amount of data. Today, that is tiny. HD Video is about 1.5GB per hour. If you JUST have photos, sure, you can get a lot on there. But once people started also taking a bunch of video -- they suddenly need hundreds of GB of space to back that up.

I think your best bet is an external drive. As said above, you can get 1TB or more for like $50 today. (Or, if you really want easier portability for some reason, you can get a smaller thumbdrive for that price.)

The only downside is going to be that your Windows XP box is very unlikely to have USB3 ports. It'll have USB2 ports -- which means copying all that data to the external drive is going to be slow. But, if it is just for backup, you can just start the copy and let it go for hours if you need to.

- John...

The Cloud is a service hosted on a server by a company. With G mail account, you already have access to Google Drive. Just have to log in and set everything up the way you like it. Fairly intuitive "drag 'n drop". You can also set up auto-sync so any time you load more photos on your desktop or other digital device, they automatically upload to the Cloud.

I set mine up to only do this when I'm connect to WiFi so I'm not burning thru tons of data. No having to remember to back them up: it just happens whenever you hit a WiFi spot. Google Drive offers 15 GB for free, which is more than enough to store thousands of photos in high resolution (1-3MB).

If you do the math that's around 5,000 - 15,000 pictures. Only when you get into video do you start using up tons of storage. If you run out of space, you can purchase more storage for a nominal cost. You can also store any kind of files on Google drive.

Yahoo!/Flickr used to offer 1 TB free storage, but that was only allowed for photos/videos. I haven't used that service awhile and don't know if it still exists, but if you had a Yahoo email account you could get a Flickr account for free.

Thanks John for those helpful tips.

Roy, I can understand not wanting to hook up to online with all the issues that presents.

Either an external HD or thumb drive works fine. If it's going to sit in your house and never go anywhere else, then I'd probably go with the external HD. Why? Not as easy to lose! I've lost a thumb drive or two because they're so tiny. Also, cheap ones can fail occasionally. Maybe have a thumb drive as a back up for your back up external HD, in case the external hard drive crashes. Storage is too cheap to risk losing data. You can store the thumb drive off site in a bank safe deposit box, in case your house ever suffers loss from fire or burglary. A good data backup plan should always include on "off site" storage area. A bit inconvenient to pick up/drop off every month at your bank, but if you don't want to do Cloud then such is the price.

Sid,

Allow me to explain what my 'real problem' is. I can count a min. of 5 thumb-drives sitting on my desk right now. They all have photos and business files backed-up on them. However, I can not look at any one Thumb-drive and tell at a glance what is actually on that particular TD drive. I have to plug the gizmo in the box and open it up to see what I have put there.

Roy good advice here. But I also feel the same as you about privacy. I consider the cloud storage almost public. Lets face it just about every place can be hacked. Banks, FBI etc...

And yes you can go to amazon and buy a portable dvd burner you just plug into a USB slot on your PC

But the external hard drive is the way to go. Instead of labeling CD's

Just setup folders on that drive. Very easy to do. And name them whatever you want.

So you click on drive. See all your folders at once. Can then click on the folder and even see a sub folder. Click on sub folder and see all pics in that folder.

You can group them into as many folders as you would like. Quick and easy.

You may like this one and is a good deal.

With the capacity of today's USB thumbdrives, I think external hard drives are outdated if you actually need portability.

But yes, cloud+local copy is the way to go. I can access my LL documents (forms, spreadsheets etc) from my phone, my laptop, anywhere in the world (some places may need VPN ;)

We use an external HD for our landlording files, QuickBooks, and business documents. I have used a Passport for years. It is about the size of a deck of cards and comes with the software for use. It plugs into our business computer's USB port. It is very convenient and easy to lock up. You could set up a file system on the Passport for your photos and back them up to the external HD to that file.

David,

Portability is not what I need. I need external data storage in case my desk-top XP hard-drive crashes. I have 2 back-up XP boxes sitting in the corner just in case my primary XP box does not want to boot-up someday. I use thumb-drives right now but I can't tell by looking at them what file is located on what Thumb-drive. I just need to get organized with a system that I feel comfortable with.

My primary XP and Windows 10 boxes does have a built-in DVD burners which I have never used but I may give it a try and see what happens.

I am not a big fan of the "cloud" either. CDs are not long lived and even with an external read/write drive, it is still going to be outdated.

External drive is my preferred backup. Sometimes 2nd drive for the more important stuff with one being stored in an other location. I store my files especially pictures by year and then in a folder titled by group ( location, project or event). Think of how you would search for the file and name it that. (Smith Rd, Smith kitchen remodel, 50th anniversary, John's party) Sorting them in a searchable way is important.

Personally, I'm not interested in the cloud. Part of my biased inability to trust others for personal data and important data.

I suggest you buy 2 external drives. Copy all your photos on both. Keep one at home, connected to computer, and keep other in safe place, locked up. Just remember to update it.

I don't chime in here much but read a lot. I'm not a great IT person but I can do some computer work. I built a server from scratch and installed FreeNAS on it. It has 2 3TB drives that are set up to have redundant copies of whatever I put on them in case one fails. I put that in a closet and access it over my network from my main PC or laptop.

I keep all of my years of photos on it in folders labeled by the year and in some cases with a file description so I know what it might be.

I also keep a backup on a 4TB USB drive because I still don't trust the backup drives completely.

I'm a bit late but I concur with buying external solid state drives as needed. We have a couple of 1-2 TB.

And I hate to admit it, but as the developer of one of the early photo management databases in the 90's my own photos are in disarray.

My software allowed pro photographers to track sales and rights, along with income. You could search by things like # of people, sexes, demographics, all kinds of stuff for stock photos. Also a version for weddings, etc.

ROY let's go back to mid 80's. You saved everything on a floppy 5.25-- then onto the NEW 3" hard disk.

ROY now look around-- if you had to pull up anything for say the IRS that was copied on 5.25 or 3 inch-- who's even got one to load it into?

So as you point out-- you save and save this stuff and where the heck is it 1 year later? 5 years later?

Doogie,

With still photos, if you learn to edit what you shoot, you will not need 100 Terabytes to store it. Editing means deleting all of the bad photos (about 90% of what you shoot) and then only burn a DVD with the remaining 10%. Most people feel like they have save everything, even the garbage, to a whatever storage media they are using.

Same applies to video. Edit all of the boring parts out and only keep the good stuff. 6 hours of boring vacation video edits down to about 15 minutes of anything worth keeping.

Roy I am going to give you suggestion that runs contrary to much of what the others have given.

IF you are most comfortable with the dvd discs, AND have a good file system for archiving them, why not stay with that? You love your XP box, AND it has a DVD burner so why not use it? Stack of blank DVDs is cheap. Yes others have mentioned that DVDs are not forever, but how many of your burned DVDs have given you trouble?

CX (WA)

Thanks for the information. The real reason I love my XP box is because it runs my Adobe PhotoShop Software (v.7) that will not load on Windows 10. Also, my old version of Rental Property software (v.2) will not load on Windows 10 either.

I use TWO external hard drives. Western digital and seagate, both are good companies and good products.

I do a backup and put it in my safe deposit box at the bank. Very important to have off-site backups, in case of fire, flood etc...

Every few months I take the current hard drive and exchange it from my safe deposit box.

The other nice thing about the external drives is you can access all the photos by simply clicking on that drive and going into your photos on that drive. Very easy access to all photos. So no flipping in and out other small memory sticks or discs.

I bought another DVD burner today, more disks, CD jewel case labels and I am now burning/labeling CD's again. If it ain't broke, don't fix it,...my old school system still works and I am getting organized like I use to be.

AllyM: Just so you know (because you tend to care about who owns what), Flickr hasn't been owned by Yahoo in over a year or two -- and has had TWO different owners since then. Verizon bought Yahoo a while back -- which included Flickr -- and then rolled it into a new entity that they made along with some other Yahoo and AOL pieces. Then Verizon then sold Flickr out of that new entity to SmugMug. So, Flickr is really owned by SmugMug now and has nothing to do with Yahoo (pre or post Verizon).

- John...

LiveTheDream: I think you probably misspoke? While I am a big fan of solid state drives (SSDs), it is unlikely that you bought a couple of 1-2TB ones unless you are really throwing money around. A decent 2TB external SSD runs around $500 these days -- and that has come down from the $800+ that they were around the beginning of the year if you didn't buy them recently.

SSDs are great and I highly recommend them for new desktops or laptops -- but anything over 500GB right now is a bit too much. For primarily STORAGE like Roy is talking about here, it is not worth paying $500 for a 2TB external SSD when a normal spinning disk 2TB external can be had for well under $100.

- John...

Roy: As said above, Photoshop v7 actually runs fine under Windows 10. The only "issue" is that it won't see drives with more than 1TB free due to an old Windows issues. So, as long as you have less than 1TB free, Photoshop v7 will run fine on Windows 10. Just FYI in case you want to move from that XP box one day.

I still think you're better off moving to an external hard drive for all of this instead of a box full of DVDs, but to each their own. :)

- John...

I also have some things I am insist on doing the old fashion way.

Just keep in mind, The portable drive.

On my PC

One click I can open and see a list of files on one page.

Files are just like your CD's and labeled.

One click on the Property ( cd/file)

And next page shows all my pics and videos for that property.

So really just like using CD's except quicker and easier.