Author Topic: Question for archiving art files  (Read 2166 times)

Offline Dottonedan

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Question for archiving art files
« on: January 19, 2015, 12:00:36 AM »
I have tons and tons of jobs and each year, I create a new work folder and I archive or "save to a backup drive" last years orders. Each job for a customer has a folder and inside can be 2-10 other files. I have never compressed (the entire job folder) but have been considering a compression method to save more space. I'm sure I could save half my space.  Easy for me to locate old jobs tho and use them or send off to a customer again quickly. If compressed, that will slow things down a bit.


So, Im wondering how the artist out there handle the old jobs. Do you compress for storage space or leave it as is?
Artist & high end separator, Owner of The Vinyl Hub, Owner of Dot-Tone-Designs, Past M&R Digital tech installer for I-Image machines. Over 35 yrs in the apparel industry. e-mail art@designsbydottone.com


Offline Command-Z

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2015, 12:04:28 AM »
I leave it as is, but sometimes I'll turn off visibility on layers in Photoshop at job's end to reduce file size. I back up to multiple hard drives and portables that get rotated off-location.

Compression for storage is a little concerning to me. I have some very old files that are self-extracting archives that I can't open now. So I don't do that any more.
Design, Illustration and Color Separation for the Imprinted Apparel Industry for over 20 years. SeibelStudio.com
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Offline Gilligan

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2015, 10:05:51 AM »
Certainly not my area of expertise, but Scott how does that really reduce file size since the information is still having to be stored, whether it's visible or not.

Offline Command-Z

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2015, 10:19:37 AM »
Certainly not my area of expertise, but Scott how does that really reduce file size since the information is still having to be stored, whether it's visible or not.

I dunno... it just does. It was a trick I learned from a client when transferring 200+ megabyte files via Yousendit years ago.

Design, Illustration and Color Separation for the Imprinted Apparel Industry for over 20 years. SeibelStudio.com
 Custom art not in the budget? Check out Bad Bonz Designs

Offline 3Deep

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2015, 11:31:53 AM »
I back up files on CD still dig that LOL and store them on thumb drive (Zip drive) and always on the hard drive.  I've learned over the years to always name the font and create outlines as I had a computer to crash or do a cd with all the fonts.  I'm not to hip on storing stuff in the clouds just yet.

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Offline mk162

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2015, 11:52:22 AM »
with how cheap you can get enterprise drives and cloud storage...i wouldn't compress anything...

we use 1TB drives in our raid that is backed up nightly.  Most of our work is simple vector stuff, so it's small, but there is a ton of it.

Offline jonbravado

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2015, 05:06:39 PM »
at the very least have a redundant backup should a fire happen at your business, you have a copy in your car/home/etc. to retrieve files.  That is the BEST reason to do cloud storage, but i don't do cloud storage like i should - i fear it'd slow things down in the art dept or we'd come in in the morning and it'd still be uploading and put us further behind. 

I need to practice what i preach a bit better, though, for sure.

How often do you guys backup your files?
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Offline Dottonedan

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2015, 05:12:05 PM »
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Artist & high end separator, Owner of The Vinyl Hub, Owner of Dot-Tone-Designs, Past M&R Digital tech installer for I-Image machines. Over 35 yrs in the apparel industry. e-mail art@designsbydottone.com

Offline jvanick

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2015, 07:52:26 PM »
we have a 3tb raid-5 array (4 1tb drives) at our office and at my house.

changes are synced with 'unison' hourly from the shop to my house.

weekly, I run a backup of the entire array to a removable sata drive that we then rotate offsite with 2 other drives.

Offline GraphicDisorder

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Re: Question for archiving art files
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2015, 07:30:22 AM »
at the very least have a redundant backup should a fire happen at your business, you have a copy in your car/home/etc. to retrieve files.  That is the BEST reason to do cloud storage, but i don't do cloud storage like i should - i fear it'd slow things down in the art dept or we'd come in in the morning and it'd still be uploading and put us further behind. 

I need to practice what i preach a bit better, though, for sure.

How often do you guys backup your files?

Here each computer has it's own Windows drive and a separate Data Drive.  That drive is copied by our server (5x 3tb drives in a Raid) AND a external hard drive copies the Data drives each night as well.  We can grab the external for each computer or the server and have ALL data in this building.  We also do a offsite back up from time to time.  I am not as religious with that as I should be. 
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