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Disc Stakka transforms photographer's business
An archived job that hasn't seen the light of day for two years and a client needs it—now. This not unusual request to a professional photographer could be a time-consuming nightmare, or it could be a breeze.
Ian van der Wolde , who runs Altered Images Photography in Dandenong, would sometimes spend hours searching for archived images stored on removable hard drives.
“With thousands of images stored on 700 gigabytes of six removable hard drives along with more than a hundred CDs scattered throughout the studio, to search through and find one image was quite painful. I'd have a good idea in terms of datelines, but sometimes I would have to search two or three hard drives to find the right one,” said van der Wolde.
Ian van der Wolde and his Imation Disc Stakka
The process of checking a hard drive means turning off the computer, loading up one of the archived hard drives, turning the computer back on and checking the contents, then repeating this process until the right hard drive was found.
Fortunately this frustrating process is no longer necessary, following van der Wolde's installation of the Imation Disc Stakka and OpdiTracker software into his business.
The Disc Stakka, from world leading supplier of magnetic and optical removable data storage media, Imation, is an automated carousel that stores, protects and retrieves discs, including CDs and DVDs.
The compact Imation Disc Stakka unit holds up to one hundred 12 cm discs and is linked to a PC or Mac computer via a single USB connection supplying both power and data. Units can be stacked up to five high to create a tower that holds 500 discs without needing additional cables or desk space. The system can be expanded so that 50,000 discs are managed from the one computer.
“Using the Disc Stakka has completely turned around how I handle archived images. Now, when a client calls and wants an image, it only takes a minute or so to locate it and within seconds it can be on its way across the Internet,” said van der Wolde.
“Getting to this stage has meant transferring files from hard drive to DVD and loading them into the Disc Stakka. While it would have taken a couple of days all up, it was time well spent and because I spread it out over a week or so, it wasn't a hassle. It is a great system and it is so easy to use.
“The beauty of the system is the fact that it doesn't matter what mixture of clients and images you've got on a DVD or CD because the OpdiTracker software that comes with the Disc Stakka finds the individual folders or files, looking through as many discs as you have.
“This meant when I was taking the images from hard drive and burning them to DVD, all I had to do was group them into 4.7 gigabyte lots and copy them to DVD. I've now got archived material on 25 DVDs and CDs that are accessible with a few keystrokes,” he said.
From now on it isn't necessary to allocate CDs or DVDs to particular clients or particular jobs. Many studios keep a CD for every different client, adding to it when the next job is completed. This is an extremely inefficient use of disc space, with most CDs/DVDs never reaching capacity.
Whenever there is 4.7 gigabytes on the hard drive that can be archived, even if it is made up of ten or twenty different clients' jobs, it can be burnt and placed in a Disc Stakka.
When a disc is placed in the computer drive, the system asks if the user wants to record its details in the OpdiTracker database. When it is a new disc, the system then immediately stores all the contents on the database.
Searching for an image is an easy process of right clicking on the OpdiTracker icon on the toolbar, clicking search and entering a reference, which doesn't even have to be the full name. A list of all the files containing that reference is shown.
Alternatively, because the OpdiTracker software is integrated with Microsoft Windows Explorer, a search and ongoing management can also be handled from here.
“I just select the file I want and double click it,” said van der Wolde. “Out pops the CD from the Disc Stakka and it prompts me to put it into my CD ROM or DVD drive. I click OK and the actual image I've selected comes up on the screen. It is very, very simple,” he said.
There's no need to remember where a disc or file is stored; it's all done seamlessly in a matter of seconds.
Van der Wolde has decided to run the Disc Stakka on a dedicated machine that is networked with others in his studio. This way, if he is in a middle of a shoot and a client calls asking about a previous job, the queries can be handled straight away without disrupting the shoot.
The winner of several awards for his work, van der Wolde is chairman of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography and immediate past president. He specialises in commercial advertising and PR photography.
“Discs are an integral part of my business. I've now got a system that provides the security of not having any more lost or damaged discs and one that will make my day a whole lot easier,” he added.