How Do You Manage Your SD Card Library?

txmadman writes "Like a lot of my colleagues and all of my three children, I have several SD , mini-SD, and micro-SD cards for various purposes: cameras, cell phones, my laptop, etc. These things are handy to have around, offer easy and significant storage, but are very easily lost. We have also have run into some instances where it wasn't clear whose SD card was whose, and have also started to see a need for a storage mechanism. I have seen SD card 'wallets' and such, but have never seen anyone actually use one. So: How do you manage and keep track of your SD cards?"

Comments

Labels

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Put labels on them and keep them in a credit card pocket of your wallet.

This is seriously not a difficult enough problem to warrant a /. story..

Re:Labels

[rm999]

Having 100s of memory cards around makes about as much sense as having 100s of rolls of used, unlabeled film laying around. Even if your uncle is taking 20 megapixel RAW pictures, he can fit 800 pictures on eight 2-gig cards. In this extreme example, he shouldn't need more than eight cards if he takes 800 pictures a shoot, because the first thing he should do when his shoot is over is empty the pictures onto a hard drive with an automatic backup, then format the cards.

If you are having trouble organizing your memory cards, you can probably simplify some other aspect of your life to fix the problem.

Re:Labels

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so he needs a few cards because he isn't always at the computer. How does that equate to "hundreds"?

Anyone who *really*needs raw mode on the camera can buy one of those nice portable things you stick the CF card into and it gets copied to the hard drive automatically.

Then you only need one or two cards and the hard drive device.

Alternatively, he can have a bottle labeled "empty" and a bottle labeled "full". This isn't that hard to need a special story. I happen to have a lot of MicroSD cards, but that's because they are super cheap, and it's much cheaper to buy 4 2gig cards than 1 8gig card.

Re:Labels

[hairyfeet]

Actually I have a customer who does those jobs, and you do actually need them to be in high res. Why? Because it makes it easier for him to photoshop out all those zits, whiteheads, scars, etc. And from talking to him he has gotten a lot of business on the side from parents who look at the nice school photos and who are happy to pay the cash to have nice photos of their kid without giant blemishes.

Re:Labels

[dotancohen]

You can't put labels on the cards because then they bind in the devices. But you can write on them with a black marker.

SD cards support a physical name for their top level directories. Give them each a name in a series (For instance: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, ...) and make a text file listing which card belongs to what. This doesn't only have to work for SD cards, we do this for our USB flash media as well.

Re:Labels

[theheadlessrabbit]

no, you would need at least 16 cards, but likely more. much more.

800 shots per job is not an overestimate, it is actually a very reasonable number.

I use one set of cards for each particular job. each set of cards is numbered and lettered. (1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 2a, 2b, 2c ...etc.)
for one job, i use my '1x' set, while the next job, i use my '2x' set.

use a sharpie, never pencil, to label your cards. different colours can help, too.

I copy the images to a properly named folder on a hard drive at the end of the night, and put those memory cards into a clearly labeled box. (I use an Altoids tin with some padding material thrown in)
at the start of the next day, I insert the next set of cards into my camera bag for the next job.

you ONLY format those cards and re-use them after the job is complete. before then, a minimum of 2 copies of the data must be kept. even after the job is complete, i keep the data on the cards until i need to format them for another job.

A professional has no excuse for lost data. but even at the amateur level, you don't want to lose your data. those photos could become treasured memories for generations to come.

Re:Labels

[Klaus_1250]

Except you don't use 6 euro memory card with 4GB capacity if you are a professional photographer. They're too slow and fill up fast if you shoot in RAW and in high resolution (which is likely if you're a professional). Memory cards used by professional photographers are about 10x to 20x more expensive.

Re:Labels

[Jason1729]

Your 8 gig cards are garbage to any real photographer. Not even getting into reliability they're too slow. Think cameras that are writing 20 megabyte+ image files and can shoot 6+ frames per second.

Suggesting bigger cards is just stupid. A photographer is not going to put a whole shoot on one card because they are not going to risk losing an entire shoot when one card fails.

When you're being paid $2500 for a shoot, you really don't care if you pay $15 or $150 for a card, you get whatever is best for the job. When are you going to start spouting off how we should back up to 15 cent DVD media? The media I use is about $3 each and the reflective layer is 24k gold. I know I should stop. $3 is just so expensive to store the images for $2500 shoot. I should really risk my reputation to save a few dollars.

Re:Labels

[jocknerd]

If one 16GB card fails, you've lost 16GB's of photos. If one 2GB or 4GB card fails, you've lost 2GB or 4GB of photos. Better to have multiple cards around 4GB's than a single 16GB card in my opinion.

Re:Labels

[clone53421]

Although Websters apparently agrees with you, that usage is antiquated. See wiki for the correct meanings as used today.

Basically, if the receiving device initiates a transfer, it's a download. If the sending device initiates it, it's an upload.

Since I'm directly controlling my PC, and my PC is initiating the transfer to the PLC, it is an upload.

Ummm... write something on the label?

[WoTG]

It's not a new concept... labeling media goes all the way back to cassette tapes. (Eight tracks are before my time, were they writeable?)

uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I leave them in their damn slot.. be it camera, phone, vibrator, etc... no need to keep multiple ones around... save the data, or delete! jeez... lame noobs....

Wipe them

[dargaud]

Plug them in a PC, move everything over to the PC, reformat the card. Now they are all identical and it doesn't matter who they belong to or if you lose them. Why do you ask ? Incidentaly I use the following Linux/Cygwin script to sort out the files.

What's to organize?

[nsayer]

I haven't found a need to have more than one SD card per device - that is, one in the camera, one in the Wii (to back up the WiiWare), etc. You just empty them onto your computer every so often (this doesn't work for the Wii, but that hasn't filled up anyway, and it doesn't look likely to anytime soon).

Buy big, don't bother.

[mcrbids]

I have a 6 MP digital camera, with a 4 GB card in it. I also have an old 1GB card, but I almost never use it - 4 GB is enough for me to take hundreds of pics and a few hours of VHS-quality video with no complaints. So I download my pics and stuff to my laptop every month or so, and it takes about 3 minutes - less than it takes to drive to my local Rite-Aid photo booth. (which is about 1.5 miles away!)

I think a 4 GB card costs about $10 nowadays, if even that much. And I say "buy big" but 4 GB is pretty ho-hum nowadays. 4x the space costs just $25.

Seriously, who cares? How many pictures do you TAKE?

Throw all of them away, except one

[webreaper]

I only have one SD card.

When it's full, I move the files off onto a large data filing and storage system that came with my PC (called a 'hard disk'). That renders the SD card empty again, and I can start filling it with data, photographs, video etc., and then repeat the process.

The PC's 'hard disk' can be accessed by an 'operating system' which has lots of functionality that allows you to easily organise the data into hierarchical 'folders', making it easy to keep track of the contents.

There. Solved that problem for you. Next?

How do you feed/clothe yourself?

[Joce640k]

If a few SD cards leaves you confused...

SD wallets, why not?

[ChrisRnlds]

Since you mentioned the SD card wallets, why not buy one and tell us if they help?

Use cheap NAS for primary storage

[mrthoughtful]

Don't use SD cards for long term storage. Use them for capture only.
Having a wireless Network Attached Storage is a great way for all the family to store, without having to use just one computer for access. We have a 4TB Terastation Pro for the family - and HDV, DV, RAW, and JPG capture is stored there. Getting used to uploading a shoot as soon as arriving (back from holiday, or an event) didn't take so long. When going on holidays that will use more than a couple of 16G SDHC cards, we label them A-G and writelock them once they are finished. We writelock our DV/HDV tapes also. And we use a separate storage for empty cards/tapes than we do for filled cards/tapes.

If your holidays are not remote, you can always use commercial online storage as a temporary cache. Also secure network connections to your own NAS is not really very hard to set up if you belong to the standard slashdot demographic.

Re:Get big ones

[Abreu]

...well unless you have a cheap point and shoot to take on vacation, then you're fine with the 512 meg card you bought when you bought the camera -- and if you have one of those you're also too stupid to realize that in that kind of camera there's no diference between 2 and 10 megapixels because the optical quality is garbage

Just wondering... in your opinion, where do cameras start having "non-garbage" optics? Do any of the "point and shoot" ones qualify? Or do you have to get a DSLR?

Not meaning to troll or anything, but some comments in this story make it sound like the audio people who swear you never get any decent sound unless you spend thousands of dollars on it

Re:Get big ones

[Jason1729]

The difference between a mid-range Nikon lens and any point-and-shoot is just stunning. There's no games like "maybe your eye can't see it but a photophile can". I understand if I mention the size of the lens, elements, etc and especially price I'll sound like one of the audio fools, so leave that aside. I wish I had some samples on line, but when I take a picture of my dog with a point and shoot, you can see it has fur, get a notion of the texture of the fur, etc, but the fine detail is mostly a blur. When I use my DSLR, I can see every strand of fur. With a portait of a person, I can zoom on the eye and see every eyelash and the pattern of the iris.

The reason I say no difference between 2 and 10 megapixel, when I zoom in a point and shoot 10 megapixel image, it gets blurry beyond recognition long before it pixelizes; the pixels are much finer than needed and only show that the lens fails. With my 12 megapixel DSLR, when I zoom, it's the pixelizing that breaks down the image and I can see the sharp image degenerating because of pixelization.

All that only talks about the lens itself. When you get into the body, a point and shoot has a typical 6x8mm sensor. A DSLR has an sensor around 18x24 for a prosumer or 24x36 for a professional model. The effect is that each pixel is physically larger on the sensor, so it can gather more light and be less affected by noise. The result is a picture that's more vibrant and sharper.

Then there's a lot of other factors, like the dinky flash on a point and shoot (and front light is the worst kind too - it makes an image look flat), I have a wireless external flash, I usually put it around 60 degrees from me and it brings out side shadows that emphasize surface texture and make the picture pop. Or I can put the flash 20 feet away pointing at the background -- ever take a flash picture of a person and have the background come out black?

Seriously

[tknd]

I had this problem and realized that the amount of time I spent sorting socks was ridiculous. The solution? Flatten your socks down to 1 or 2 types (white and black) and now the sorting problem goes away. Anytime your socks start developing holes or you feel you need to replace them, throw out the entire batch and buy all identical ones. By now you don't even have to pair up the socks when sorting the laundry. Just throw them in the drawer/basket and you're done.