Backup and cataloguing, again.

[sergio]

I guess this has been covered but haven't found recent threads about this. If there is a thread about this then I will be greatful for the pointer and spare everybody the hassle to reanswer this.

I have literally thousands of DVDs and many HDs with all my images. Not everything that I have in DVDs is in my HD and many of those DVDs are deteriorating.
I use Portfolio to manage the database but at 150K images it is painfully slow, even though it is on a dedicated computer just for itself. I don't like the way it handles previews and xmps, it doesn't read zip compressed tiffs, which by common sense is the way I archive my tiffs, and it doesn't see DNGs.
I think I will start transfering all to 500gb HD that I will put in closet and pull out whenever I need an image. There's basically two approaches to manage a database of all this:

1) Keep using Portfolio, and suffer the forementioned penalties,

2) Start a new database using another method/software.

To clarify a little about my requirements. I don't keyword so strongly my images. I just keep track of clients, locations, model names, and basic stuff. Anybody using LR or Bridge for this, is it good enough for databases this big? When I do catalog work for example it can easily go somewhere between 20 to 60 gb per job.
Any ideas to help wade thru these oceans of very vulnerable data?

thanks.

Sergio

[Alaska]

I will be greatful for the pointer...
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Have not tried any of the commercial systems, but have had good luck with Picasa 2.  It works fine for 12,000 images.  It is a consumer product, but for free it may be worth a try.

File types supported include:

Images: jpg, bmp, gif, png, psd, tif
Movies: avi, mpg, wmv, asf, mov (QuickTime)
RAW data files, including cameras from Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Minolta and Pentax.

[a href=\"http://picasa.google.com/features/index.html]http://picasa.google.com/features/index.html[/url]

Jim

[Ken Bennett]

Hola, Sergio,

I gave up on DVD backups a long time ago. It just takes too much time and effort to keep up, plus you don't know a DVD is bad until you need the images on it. Now I use hard drives, and keep everything on at least three different drives in three different places.

You might look at this blog for a decent system to archive huge amounts of data:

http://www.deathtofilm.com/

The top entry today is on the system, with links to more information.

I do use keywords and other metadata, and so I don't bother trying to keep a huge database of my RAW files. I keep photos organized chronologically, and I can use the Macintosh Spotlight search to look inside metadata (captions and keywords) and find files that I need.

Hope this helps.

--Ken