http://disqus.com/by/jonschultz/enThu, 18 Jun 2009 00:17:52 -0000http://blog.phanfare.com/2009/06/archiving-and-preserving-digital-photos-and-videos/#comment-11074751<p>I should have added that I also use an online service (JungleDisk/Amazon) as an additional backup for some files, so I'm not against online services. In fact, I'd be glad to use Phanfare as an additional backup for photos when the features you list above (especially #1) are in place. Thanks for the good news!<br>Are there any plans to always keep the original filename when photos are downloaded? That's another big thing keeping me from using Phanfare for more photos.</p>jonschultzThu, 18 Jun 2009 00:17:52 -0000http://blog.phanfare.com/2009/06/archiving-and-preserving-digital-photos-and-videos/#comment-11071530<p>I would expect you to be biased towards online services, but your post is too biased :)</p><p>My first premise is that most people don't archive digital photos (or music) or don't really need to. Storage is inexpensive, so most people can keep all their digital photos on an internal drive or external drive. But people do need to backup.</p><p>There are more options or variations than the three you list. For example, consider using two external hard drives, one that you keep at home and one that you keep in another house (family or friend). You can backup/image your main drive to the external drive, and swap the onsite/offite drives every so often:</p><p>Geographically distributed: yes<br>Survives device failure: yes<br>Media available: yes<br>Deals with shifting formats: sorta (if you choose to convert), but JPEG will be around for a long time<br>Easy to put data in: yes<br>Easy to take data out: yes<br>Secure: yes (if you trust your family or friend)<br>Around in 20 years: yes (purchase different external device when the time comes)<br>Less expensive than online storage: yes</p><p>There are negatives to online storage that are not listed:<br>- Time and work needed to upload the initial several GB of data (except for Amazon)<br>- Time needed to download several GB of data (when data needs to be restored)<br>- Changed files names and folder structure (Phanfare changes filenames)</p><p>I think we can agree on the following:<br>- good backups are a necessity<br>- online storage is a valid backup option<br>- people should use more than one backup option (for example, online + external drive)<br>- with some work Phanfare could be a much better backup option for digital photos :)</p>jonschultzWed, 17 Jun 2009 22:07:16 -0000