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Backing-up and Archiving Your Photos or Files
to CD ROMs or DVDs
First, let?s consider the difference between
backing-up and archiving:
Backing-up is copying (burning) the files to CD-ROM or
other storage medium on a regular schedule without deleting the
original files from your hard drive. This should be done for all
your personal files under My Documents in case of hard
drive or system failure. You should back up on a regular and
frequent basis ? say monthly.
Archiving is copying the files to CD-ROM or DVD or other storage
medium, and then deleting the originals from the hard drive to
make room for more files (photo image files can be very large,
and fill up your hard drive in a relatively short time). The
obligation is on you to organise and save the CD-ROM or media so
you can find, review and restore old image files if needed. The
files have been removed from your hard drive. You should
Archive: either when your hard drive fills up or you decide its
time to archive older image files to better organise your active
files.
Since a CD-ROM holds over 700 Mbytes of data, you will be able to
hold many hundreds of JPEG images on one CD. If you have many
uncompressed files such as in TIFF or Photoshop ?.psd? format,
the CD may hold less than 100 files. If you have a DVD-R writer,
you can hold about seven times more data on the DVD-R than on a
CD-ROM.
Imaging catalogue software (such as Adobe Photoshop Album) help
you manage the backup and archival process. They keep track of
those images you have archived to CD-ROM, and display low
resolution thumbnail images of these archived files linked to
specific CDs.
Good file and folder management on your hard drive pays off. When
it comes time to burn a CD-ROM, simply drag and drop the relevant
folders (say Jan 2004 and all sub-folders) into the CD-ROM
burning software and burn the CD. Also, if you go back and edit
or add a file to a folder that?s already been backed up ? you?ll
need to back up the folder once more.
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Backing-up
and Archiving
