Archiving RAW files

[cookielida]

Hey all!
Everyone has it's own strategy and "taste" of archiving pictures, RAW or JPEGs at that, but I would like to read your opinion on the subject.
Currently I am archiving ONLY my RAW files with their perspective settings (I am using RAW shooter) and I was pondering whether it is necessary. As I see it, the big plus of keeping those RAW files is the ability to get back and start from scratch, like any film negative you store for later use. However, the downside of it is that (a) it takes up almost twice as much as hard drive space and ( it is a time consuming step once I decide to re-convert again in future time. As most likely "b" is less relevant for me, the only question that still hangs is whether to keep the RAW or convert everything to almost loseless JPEGs full res and throw those RAW files, saving up half of my hard drive but loosing the freedom of reconvertion in future time...?
I would be happy to read your opinion on the subject, maybe get a new perspective...
10x
Chen

[Thomas Krüger]

Here I'm keeping all my raw files with the settings and some of the converted files.
It's all on the harddisc and I have two backups on external IDE drives via an USB-IDE adapter. Next step is to get faster external ESATA drives.

[Kirk Gittings]

Throwing away the Raw file and keeping the Jpegs is like throwing away your negatives and just saving your prints in traditional photography. You are discarding or severley limiting your ability to reinterpret the image in the future.

[Richowens]

I throw away nothing, not the good, the bad nor even the downright ugly.  

I just buy more hard drive space to archive them.

Occasionally I will go through them and I will find something of value. Perhaps one I just couldn't make work before, but can now due to increased skill. Or one that I failed to see before and just wrote it off.

My suggestion is to find a way to keep them.

Rich

[deelight]

Never throw away the RAWs, they are the most important files!!! Like negatives, as Kirk pointed out.

Due to the loss of data (only 8bit, compression, loss of highlight- and/or shadow details) JPGs are absolutely no option, and RAWs are only 1/3 of the filesize of 16bit TIFFs.

Clem

[djgarcia]

My raw's are only 10% of my 200MB PSDs . Of course I have many more raws than PSDs (thank God!). But yeah, I'm kind of like Rich, and only the ludicrously ugly and unusable get taken out and trashed. The rest get stored / archived by shooting session, though so far I don't really archive, just keep getting bigger and bigger backup images ...

[cookielida]

Hey All!
Thanks for your opinion, I appreciate it!

Chen