Maintaining both working copies and backup copies of high-quality images, as well as associated metadata and archive management software, often takes up a large amount of your desktop’s storage space. Using external hard-drives and cloud-based storage allows for more space to store growing personal archives.
Personal Archive Platforms
Both ARIES and Airtable are web-based platforms and will store metadata within their systems – the metadata and platform will not affect the storage space on your desktop. Nonetheless, it’s good practice to export copies to be stored elsewhere as a backup.
Tropy is a desktop-based platform and is stored on your desktop. Your archive will be saved as a .tpy file, which can be copied and saved elsewhere (to cloud storage or an external drive) as a backup.
Image, Video, Audio, and PDF Files
Most archiving platforms will not store the files themselves, or will only store a smaller copy of the files. Platforms will often reference back to your files’ location, so you will want to make sure the original files are able to be maintained in one place.
Cloud-Based Storage
Cloud-based storage options store data online. These will require an internet connection anytime you want to access your files. UChicago provides students and faculty unlimited storage space in Box and Google Drive.
External Storage
External drives can be moved between any desktops/laptops, and can be used offline. Other World Computing is a reputable maker of external drives, including single drives.