Archiving client work

Ayka

Member
On average, what do people think is a reasonable amount of time for storing archived work? Typically I hate to get rid of anything 'just in case', but I also don't want to be a storage facility. What do others think?
 
On average, what do people think is a reasonable amount of time for storing archived work? Typically I hate to get rid of anything 'just in case', but I also don't want to be a storage facility. What do others think?

Ouch, tricky one. Depends what you stipulate in your Ts & Cs but, in my experience, customers expect you to keep their artwork forever (no matter how unreasonable that sounds). You know that the 'law of sod' says that, the day you delete a client file, they will send you an email asking for it because their hard drive died six weeks ago and they've lost all their stuff and people never back up properly. If you like to keep stuff 'just in case' (and I am the same) then perhaps look at a NAS Box or Home Server setup to keep your computer hard drive from collapsing under the strain of it all.
 
I've got all of my stuff backed up onto an external hard drive.
There's also the option of Cloud Storage, depending on how comfortable you are with that.
 
I use Dropbox. 2GB of space, free and accessible wherever you go. If that's not enough, upgrade to 102GB for £6 a month.
 
Thanks. That's what I was thinking (keeping everything forever, haha!) Sod's law, yes. That has happened in the past and of course I was glad I had the artwork. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some industry standard whereby long term storage was charged for, for a nominal fee. When I worked at a small agency years ago we used to charge for digging out and re-sending artwork that was archived. Some clients were ok with it but most squawked about it.

Thanks everyone for your responses - always helpful :)
 
A print firm I worked for have an archive room which contained a series of filing draws with discs of clients work. It started off with floppy discs, then zip discs then cds & dvds. A pretty bulky way of storing everything you've ever done but horses for courses I guess.
 
I have artwork that goes back 10 years - I did have older stuff but as I went to working from home I chucked much of it... Sods Law immediately came into play! Always happens! If you do keep artwork and get asked for it again charge for the digging out and re-sending - you have to make a living!
 
It is a tricky one. We've got artwork dating back over 12 years and have had occasion to dig out the old Zip Drive.
I would think that there has to be a limit of something like 5 years, then you could possibly offer the artwork to the client for a charge or offer to archive it for a reasonable cost.
In saying that, I don't think we've got a detailed policy on the matter, so I think I'll have to rewrite something on the T&Cs. :icon_smile:
 
Bung everything on an external hard drive: they're cheap enough these days and take up no more physical space than your average paperback book.
 
I agree with DaveL - external HD's are so cheap these days. Who remembers the old SyQuest drives and how unreliable they were!!:icon_rolleyes:
 
I have most on an external hard drive and really old stuff on CDs. It was more a question of what people think is a reasonable amount of time. I guess forever is the answer to that, haha!
 
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