Help Needed with Large Archives

Strongly urge that you have additional backup storage solutions. Many photographers make a practice of having multiple backup disks and have them stored in a variety of places--for security. If you main computer and your attached external gets taken out with a power jolt, you need to have additional alternate solutions.

If you have a few minutes, I recommend you spend it by reading the various postings in item #12 inside my signature index. After reading, you may have other questions.

From a standpoint of using automatic consolidation, I would suggest an alternate solution which is to use Chain2Gen to manage how many archives are to be retained. It is also listed in my signature below.

In addition to Grovers post, I am not a pro photographer but it is a hobby and the amount of data used by photos is by far more than anything else for me.

A few years ago it became obvious I needed some kind of strategy to store originals and any edits for multiple purposes. What I did was to simply store every original in folders using a Photos only partition with 'CAMERA-TYPE' - ORIGINALS - YEAR - MONTH - DAY strategy. Edits or copies are kept using the same sort of thing. Over the years the partition got larger and lager of course but it was easy to make backups by year or whatever. When it comes to saving edits and albums you make up it is of course very dependant on each owns needs.

You have many options to archive and to keep the archives both safe and accessible as possible but it is paramount in my opinion to form a strategy and keep to it and this makes the management of anything a lot easier. Keep your options varied - I backup the photos on a yearly basis but also by month and using different formats such as DVD and external HDD and flash drives. Photos are something we treasure and I go over the top really to back them up.

I am writing a photo management application currently using Visual Basic and C++ but that is for my amusement and own use and not for selling on. And its not for backups either, just tracking, labelling, sorting, and whatever, but without physically copying or moving actual files. I have never found any software on the market which does photo managment how I want it so I do it manually!

Thanks for your advise on backups. As to image file management I use Adobe Lightroom 2, which appears to be a good match for my needs and maybe yours - good workflow for photographers, database is built-in (collections, virtual copies, etc), has many great features, good support, and relatively cheap. Check it out.

Hi Dude, you are welcome.

I shall have a look at the Adobe product if only to see if I can mimic what it does:) Cheers for the info.

Thanks. I've downloaded Chain2Gen and will try it. Is there no solution just using the features of ATI?

PhotoDude9,
Also download item 3-B inside my signature index. It is a supplement tutorial for users who want to try Chain2Gen.