archival of wedding CDs

[Adcadet]

My wife and I just passed our 3 year anniversary, and our photographer has released our pictures to us on CD. We have been very happy with the one we chose - very professional, very modern. Earlier today my wife picked up the 7 CDs. Now...what do we do to make sure they're archived properly? I'm starting by copying them all to my hard drive (can I be sure that the Windows copy system is accurate?), and then copying my copy to my wife's HD. And then I'll burn them to DVD (any reason to believe CD is better for archival?). I'll make multiple DVD copies from my HD, and give sets to my parents and my wife's parents to store. Any problems with this system? Something I'm missing or should do? I realize that using a fireproof safe would be a good idea, but I don't have one, and I figure the distributed system is just fine for non-secure information that I simply want redundancy of. Oh, and of course after making the initial copies, I plan on never touching the original CDs again unless something goes wrong.

 

[mubs]

Looks like you've got all the bases covered. The only thing I would add is to test the media for readability every couple of years, and/or burn a new set of DVDs every few years. How the optical media is stored is also important; like medicines, in a cool, dry place. Storing them in the attic would be a bad idea.

 

[Mercutio]

There are such things as Archival quality CDs. They're very expensive but might be worth looking in to. Also, it should go without saying that pictures should be printed out and stored on paper as well.

 

[Adcadet]

why should we print all of our pictures? We never printed all of them in the first place - there are just too many!

 

[Mercutio]

Paper isn't prone to data corruption issues and it isn't likely to become obsolete in the near future.

 

[Sol]

Paper isn't but most inks are, you'd need a very good printer with high quality ink before a printout will outlast a hard drive... And that would mean that the printouts would probably cost a fair bit too.

 

[Mercutio]

Almost anyplace that does photo processing will print photos for $.29 apiece. dotPhoto sometimes runs $.19 specials. In either case you get real photopaper and real photo ink.

 

[time]

... you'd need a very good printer with high quality ink before a printout will outlast a hard drive

Sorry Sol, but that's nonsense. Some paper and pigment ink combinations are good for at least 100 years (i.e. in a completely different league to traditional prints), and pigment inks are now widely available on photo inkjet printers.

You're absolutely right about the cost of the prints, though.

 

[Sol]

I guess my point was that there are plenty of printers arround that will output photos that are more prone to fading than your optical media... I probably over stated it a bit though.

Like Adcadet I don't really see any reason to print the things out, but if your wedded to the idea of physical photos then Mercutios suggestion is definately the best, for the price of professional prints from digital images these days it just isn't worth owning a colour printer IMHO.

Personally I don't think you need to worry so much about archiving... If you look at the photos at least semi-regularly then you'll always be transfering them to whatever media is convenient and you'll move them from hard drive to hard drive. If you never look at them you won't miss them. But that may be a more pragmatic approach than most people would be comfortable with...

 

[sechs]

Paper isn't prone to data corruption issues

Actually, paper photographs are subject to a high level of corruption and data loss. You just don't notice it.