Question for archiving art files

[Dottonedan]

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?

[Command-Z]

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.

[Gilligan]

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.

[Command-Z]

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.

[3Deep]

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.

darryl

[mk162]

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.

[jonbravado]

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?

[Dottonedan]

Every day at 4 am

[jvanick]

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.

[GraphicDisorder]

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.