How do you arrange your photos?

[ukgovsucks]

Over the last few years of me transferring photos from a variety of digital cameras to my pc, I have stored them into seperate folders. i.e...

D:\Photos\Dogs\Charlie\Walkies 11.9.10
D:\Photos\Dogs\Charlie\Visiting Melody 5.6.10
etc.etc..

Now as Windows Live Photo Gallery has some Search/filtering options, I am beginning to wonder whether I should just put all my photos together into one folder and tag them all with the necessary info. Then when I use Windows Live Photo Gallery I can filter out say all the 'Charlie' pics for me to view.

What do you think?

How do you all store and view your photos?

Any good tips would be very much appreciated, as I have accumulated 100's!!

 

[Gornot]

I organize my pics just like you, but still use Picasa for quick access and viewing. It would be a bad idea to shove all pics in one folder, unless you are certain that you won't ever need to access them in explorer for something like copying on a CD or a memory stick or something.

 

[ukgovsucks]

Thanks for that mate. It was just a thought. I shouldn't take so many pictures! lol.

 

[Gornot]

Nah, you should just continue being careful and have them organized. When I see a mess on someone else's PC, I wish I was blind xD

 

[ukgovsucks]

lol!
I know what you mean. I think actually you would be quite impressed the way I have organised my pics so far. I have them all backed up to an external hard drive and also on Windows Live Skydrive (which took forever!).

I'm just always looking to improve things the best way I can, like a true geek!

 

[hybridfan]

E:/PHOTOS/YEAR/DATE/P1010276(etc).jpg

 

[strollin]

I create Albums with sub-albums to organize my pics. For instance I would use a structure similar to this:

Family
Family\strollin family
Family\strollin family\dad
Family\strollin family\mom
Family\strollin family\kid1
Family\strollin family\kid1\Graduation
Family\strollin family\kid2
Family\Smith Family
Trips & Vacations
Trips & Vacations\Hawaii
Trips & Vacations\Hawaii\Dec07

 

[Max Peck]

My Pictures\Year\yymmdd-CameraName

 

[1Bowtie]

I also use folders within Win Live Photo Gallery, Grandkid's graduation, Summer fun, etc. then make a folder for the year Pic 2010 move all the pic's folders in there then store on flash drive, i have 05, 06 thru on 09 on flash drive. That way if i'm looking for a pic from 05 i can just look in those pic's

 

[Maxxwire]

lol!
I have them all backed up to an external hard drive and also on Windows Live Skydrive (which took forever!).

I'm just always looking to improve things the best way I can, like a true geek!

I have my 100+ GB of pictures redundantly backed up on 4 different drives 3 of which are inert because like the old timer's say- "If you only have your data backed up twice you don't really care about it that much".

~Maxx~
.

 

[ukgovsucks]

Bloody hell Maxxwire, 100Gb?? lol.
Puts my 7Gb to shame.

 

[Maxxwire]

ukgovsucks- I have that many photos because I as a photographer it takes a lot of shots with plenty of lighting and white balance adjustments, to get what I consider 'just the right one' although I keep them all just in case I change my mind after seeing them on the 32" monitor. There is a link to a compressed collection of some of my photos in my signature if you want to check them out.

I've gone through a lot of Western Digital 160, 250 and 1TB hard drives over the last few years with one after another failing. The worst though was a 1.5 TB Seagate which completely failed within 6 months!

After investing over $500 in external HDD's that quickly failed I finally took the advise of a friend of mine who works at a local Pro photography store and got a LaCie Hard Disk MAX 2TB Quadra eSATA/RAID Portable External Hard Drive which cost 1/2 as much as I had spent on the failed HDD's. The secret to the LaCie's longevity is that it has a built in cooling system and it benchmarks at over 150 MBps in Raid 0 which produces some excellent transfer speeds over eSATA that are more than 5X faster on average than transfering photos over USB.

~Maxx~
.

 

[hybridfan]

Bloody hell Maxxwire, 100Gb?? lol.
Puts my 7Gb to shame.

I take it he shoots in RAW

 

[whs]

Maxxwire, this LaCie box looks interesting. Someone complained about the high pitch noise from the fan - is that actually the case (I hate noise). I found a USB only version on Newegg for $185. Would suit me because I have no eSata.

 

[Maxxwire]

Maxxwire, this LaCie box looks interesting. Someone complained about the high pitch noise from the fan - is that actually the case (I hate noise). I found a USB only version on Newegg for $185. Would suit me because I have no eSata.

If the LaCie is being used (which usually isn't for long because it is very fast in Raid 0) the cooling fan does make a high pitched noise, but as with all high frequency noises it is highly directional and can only be heard from certain listening positions and with the simple turn of the head it can't be heard at all. When the LaCie is idle it is completely quiet. The trade-off is that I've had 3 external HDD's without cooling fans fail within a year and a 4th one is in the process.

~Maxx~
.

 

[Maxxwire]

I take it he shoots in RAW

That would be the logical explanation, but my Sony DSC H-9 camera shoots in .jpeg format and that is how most of the photos are stored although when I uncompress the photos they are 7-10 MB in size and a finished photo in .psd can be 40-50 MB each.

~Maxx~
.

 

[ukgovsucks]

Wow! Nice camera there mate. You definitely have got yourself a good setup.

I will be investing in a Drobo FS shortly for my Media Centre. It runs as a Hybrid Raid 5, with up to 5 hard drives (any size and make - must be SATA) and plugs into your router. It has a built in fan to keep the drives cool. It allows for up to 2 drive failures without losing any data. As it plugs into the router this will allow me, my Mrs and my step-son access 24/7 to all movies/tv series stored on the drives and also allow them to upload their own precious photos to it for secure storage. The Drobo FS is around £500-550 here in the UK, probably cheaper in the U.S. as it's usually the case! :sarc:
Might be a lot, but for piece of mind this will be priceless to us.

 

[Maxxwire]

ukgovsucks- The Dorbo FS in Raid 5 sounds like a great solution! It sells here in the States for $700 MSRP. How many drives does it come with? I once tried a WD Ethernet HDD out, but I found that the 100Mbps/ 12.5 Mbps maximum speed of ethernet transfer restricting. The eSATA LaCie in RAID 0 benches about 160MBps, but when transferring to a USB Drive the rate can go down to 25-30 MBps.

Speed is not the only consideration though because it looks like you gave found a great long lasting convenient storage solution for the whole family!

~Maxx~
.

 

[LauraM]

My Pics\Year\mounth-place; I have them all backed up to an external hard drive, too.

 

[ukgovsucks]

ukgovsucks- The Dorbo FS in Raid 5 sounds like a great solution! It sells here in the States for $700 MSRP. How many drives does it come with? I once tried a WD Ethernet HDD out, but I found that the 100Mbps/ 12.5 Mbps maximum speed of ethernet transfer restricting. The eSATA LaCie in RAID 0 benches about 160MBps, but when transferring to a USB Drive the rate can go down to 25-30 MBps.

Speed is not the only consideration though because it looks like you gave found a great long lasting convenient storage solution for the whole family!

~Maxx~
.

It's quite an expensive solution. It doesn't come with any hard drives at all! I do like the idea that if say one drive fails a red light next to it comes on to let you know. You pull it out, then insert any size or make of hard drive to replace it, with NO loss of data!

More info here...

Drobo FS