How do you maintain your digital DeLorean archive?

[Dangermouse]

Like many, I would imagine, I have a hard drive full of images of both my car and other DeLoreans, engines, modifications etc as well as manuals, newspaper articles, PDFs etc. I also have a large selection of links/favorites to useful sites.

However after the recent experiences with a certain website :wave: I was wondering how best to archive the good stuff from these other sites just in case they were to disappear, as well as organize the documentation I have now.

Anybody got a good system they would like to share?

[CuriousBystander]

I take a two-pronged approach. I have the browser's Save options set to full HTML + images, but for peace of mind, I also use CutePDF Writer (free download) to "print as PDF".

Opening the saved HTML page in Chrome (and other browsers) after saving will add it to history, so if your original resource is gone, a file by the same name will still come up in history search.

I also save full-sized images by hand

[Lenny]

I have a folder called Data under which are hundreds of file folders. Every file I create or save is in a folder within that directory.
One of those folders is called Pictures.
There are hundreds of folders under that with names like "Celebration Car Show 2011" Disney World May 2011, etc, etc, etc.

I have a Laptop that I take on the road and use a program called Syncrho Master it keeps everything in the Data Directory synched between both computers.

I have a HP EX 470 computer on my home network running Windows Home Server. It backs up both the Laptop and Desktop computers.

I also have a standalone hard drive that I back up the data directory Monthly from the desk top.

Lastly I have a Dell Portable computer that I use for conferences. 90% of the time it is in it's sitting in it's case. When I go to show I synch the data directory to that.

So basically I have 5 copies of each photo stored.

For those of you who think this is over kill I have lost 2 hard drives at the same time. I live in Florida and even though I have battery backups Lightening hits can really cause problems whether the computer is on or not.

I use Google Picasa to look through the photos. It also has facial recognition built in. It scans all the photos looking for faces. Then it automatically compares them with those people (mostly my family) and I have identified. It has correctly identified my daughters baby picture with her picture as an adult.

Thanks,
Lenny

[Dangermouse]

That's what I call being prepared. I guess I have 'just' 3 copies of each picture, but I just archive manually

In a semblance of order, I try an store photos by vin number, but it is still impossible to find the one I want.




I

I use Google Picasa to look through the photos. It also has facial recognition built in. It scans all the photos looking for faces. Then it automatically compares them with those people (mostly my family) and I have identified. It has correctly identified my daughters baby picture with her picture as an adult.

Thanks,
Lenny

I must try Picasa -

[CuriousBystander]

Ahhh forgot the storage part...

I use a netbook most of the time, and have found decent storage solutions that fit that form factor... So, i keep a SD card in its built-in reader almost permanently and also use an "invisible" short thumb drive made by LaCie, which you can almost say doesn't stick out. For long term storage, I have a shiny black pocket-sized WD Passport, 750(?)GB...

The disk drives are mapped to their own reserved letters, so I don't have to worry about broken file paths... The big drive is always "R"...

In saved HTML pages, i use a relative rather than exact file path for linked stuff like large images, so my archive pages have almost as much functionality as the real thing.

So it's like "../images/whatever.jpg", always works as intended...

All other pics are just "soup by category", but I don't really care about it

[Farrar]

I had absolutely no "digital archive" and lost almost all the pictures of my car between a hard disk crash and the loss of DMCTalk.com. Now that the local Big Lots is selling 8Gb USB sticks for $13, I am thinking of buying a few and turning them into my own "digital archive." My brother knew an artist who did that with her work; whenever she met someone who was interested in her paintings, she said "Well, if you have a computer -- I can show you all of them."

Farrar