Or if you really want to do your edits and adjustment first, use two catalogues, a temporary one for edits and a master one for final archived files in buckets.

This is the most complicated part for me. Managing and moving files and/or folder in LR2. I end moving them outside LR and then mess up everything grrrrrrrr

Physical storage with a coherent naming convention that takes advantage of the operating system sorting abilities, combined with a simplified and consistent approach to applying metadata should work well for anyone. Both aspects are very important and should not be ignored.

As far as backing up…hmmm….all the approaches suggested have strong points but they also have weak points since there is no backup strategy that is perfect. I do agree however with Pete about having an account and uploading most pictures to online sharing services like Fotki or SmugMug.

Might I suggest offsite DVD and on-site HD x2. Burning two sets of DVD s is tedious for one thing, but using two HDs means you can automate the process by backing up from one HD to another. There are plenty of backup apps out there which will effectively mirror two drives. This is a big topic in itself but it’s a very effective strategy. I use SynchBack myself for HD mirroring and Acronis True Image for system backup.

I work in technology and higher education and I have seen far too many flash drives fail–I would not rely on them as my only means of backup or storage. I have seen a lot of people lose important documents such as their thesis and other important files due to hardware failures. Those flash drives have limitations.

I have found flash memory cards to be more reliable. They are not as convenient due to their size and the necessity of having a card reader, but far more reliable.

Whatever method you choose, diligence and consistency is preferred. Even servers fail and if you use their services just hope they have an active backup and recovery system of their own.

I am going to try Nick’s program and keep 3 copies–computer, DVD, and DVD off-site.

BluRays is pretty good, 40GB, but my LTO4 at 800GB/1/6TB compressed archiving a 4TB Drobo is solid.

That the achive stragtegy, for accessing images I have the loosest RAID0 3 x 2TB. But it works at 300MB/sec which is wonderful for catalouge access, then a slow overnight sync to the Drobo.

I hope they come out with a larger capacity usb key; presently at 64 gigs. that’s what I’ve been using to store my images. I’m finding it way cheaper then DVD, cd, ehd, etc. & less time consuming. I stored 12 months on 24 keys so far. I’m not planned to move the disc images over until they come out with a larger capacity key, which, croossing my toes, should be out by next summer as I hope they got my message to increase them, That’s the way to go for pretty much every thing in the future right now. Image your hard drive in the future being a usb flash drive with a 1 terabyte capacity, oh, Nelly, watch them doggies roll.
Have a great one!

Agreed that DVDs are limited – but if you use them as you progressively shoot new stuff they are fine. A 40GB shoot still takes only about 8 discs but you need to do it each time you shoot new stuff – keeping on top of your cataloguing tasks is critical. Going back and writing 1TB to DVDs would be a chore all right.

I’m looking at moving to BlueRay soon myself.

Such a physical filing strategy can work fine as long as you only ever want to search for the metadata that you have based it on – in your case, locations and dates. What if you want to look for a date range, or shots with a certain lens, or non-location specific subjects like beach, flower, animal etc.

Using a decent cataloguer like Expressions Media allows you to keep your chosen folder structure intact (it doesn’t care where files are) but also lets you search all your files for ANY metadata. That’s the power of proper catalogues vs folder-based directory structures.