Data retention is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, most businesses only need to keep records for 7 years, a family would like to keep their pics for at least 40 years, so often after I hear of years of images being lost after an upgrade/hardware failure or even a child playing on the computer.

Quite simply THAT is why the service is NOT included with any package and carries a yearly fee equal to the compensation I expect to receive to do the work, and the fee can and will grow with time. If in my old age I’m no longer shooting but simply acting as the archives manager for the clients of a lifetime, and I’m being paid for it, I’m ok with that. I do NOT push the service as something I specifically recommend. In a sense I’d prefer not to do it. I only have one client who has signed up so far and I can say I respect her reasons (a family member had a fire, lost photos, negatives, everything) but I don’t try to scare anyone into buying this.

I have been doing this with our own family photos but of course we generate maybe one DVD every other month, if that.

After 8 years how much time will you be spending a week verifying data? The reason I ask is I implemented a similar process and it all fell to bits after 6 years, for the following reason

Let’s assume you save on average a very modest 3 sets of DVD’s a week (A&B) after 8 years you are have 24 DVD’s to verify and re write each week, assuming it takes no longer than 20 minutes to check each DVD that is 8 hours work a week, then you have the four year DVD’s to check which is another 6 hours this is severally eating into your weekly working time.