Backup of edited photos, any ideas?

Question

Hi everyone,
Im a happy owner of LR running on a PC. (Yes you read it correctly). I have one problem with my work flow that I hope I can get some comments or suggestion on.
I import my photos into folders organized around year, disk and shoot. This structure is backed up to a secondary hard disk.
2005
2006
Disk1
Vacation
Paris
Disk2
Football
2007
Disk1
Christmas
When a "disk" folder is full, containing around 4Gb of pictures I store the whole folder to a DVD for long time storage. This is a scheme that has worked for me in the past years and it seems to work now except for one thing...
When I feel a picture needs some serious work I select Edit in Photoshop. Fine so far. The resulting picture goes into the same folder as the original. It is here that things starts to break down. I do want the picture to be associated with the original but end up in a different folder. The reason is that I do not want to burn a new DVD just to have a complete backup.
The thing I do know is to move the edited file to a folder called Edits, one for each year at the moment. Then I regularly backup this folder to a RW-DVD disk. This fulfils my needs as far as the backup to external storage goes. The remaining thing is to create some sort of association between the edited file and the original. My current approach is to store both files in a collection structure like this
Edits
2005
2006
2007
This keeps the photos together. But I would like to find a better way to do this. The best solution that I can think of is if LR would allow stacking to work across folders. If the destination of the edited files could be configured, great but not neccesary.
This works as long as the list of edited files don't grow to much. Is there anyone out there that has a better idea? I welcome any suggestion but solutions that don't interfere with my initial approach is most welcome.
Best Regards
/Thomas

Answer 1

Thomas,
You've brought up a complicated and confusing issue. You didn't mention one of the most perplexing parts for me. You mention editing in PS but you didn't say how much editing you do in LR, nor how you make your backups. You do know that the images LR has edited do not look like the edits have been applied if you take them from the LR folder, right? The edits are non-destructive (only in the "mind" of LR) and only applied if you view them in LR or export. So I presume you are exporting before you make your DVD backup?
I also would suggest that disk drives are very cheap now. I don't bother much with internal drives any more. Most of mine are external and the LR database and its repository are on external drives. As is the backup drive. I use something called Second Copy for backups. What you would prefer depends on your desires with respect to backup -- there are many philosophies. My "backup" is a direct copy.
I put all originals on CD or DVD. So far those are in this house, although I am planning a change to that. I sometimes put processed files on CD or DVD as well. In particular, we are scanning poor quality slides now and although the scanning program does a good job of trying to repair them, there is still a lot of hand work to be done on each one. So when I'm "finished" (is one ever finished?) I export that bunch and write a DVD.
However, I've also started a new project -- moving files to internet-based offline storage. A colleague in a photography club mentioned that she's using mozy.com. I looked into that and it didn't quite meet my needs (I use multiple computers in multiple houses) and I discovered that the web hosting company I use, bluehost.com, now offers 300G of storage to all customers. So I simply asked that my quota be raised and I'm using that for an additional off-site backup.
Which brings me to non-destructive editing. What I'm backing up there are the files directly from the repository and the LR database. I do have LR write out its metadata before I copy them. But being non-destructive, without a program to turn the XMP into edits, the files will not show the edits. Hence storing the LR database there as well.
Because everything is not yet written to the offline location (uploading is slow), I have an extra smaller disk drive on which I'm going to put the LR repository and LR database to take to our summer house to leave there so I have an offsite repository, albeit always out of date...
I would like to load all of the images from CD and DVD onto the computer before we leave, but it probably isn't going to happen. I think I have enough disk now to do that. -- It's not SO much storage because they are all jpgs and the older the digital images are the smaller they are.
My solution is not easy nor is it really satisfactory but it should save me from disaster, when I get it implemented. By which time I'll probably think up a better plan.