Exterinal Hard Drives & Cases......

[big pix]

now it has been a little while since there was a rant about external hard drives....... WHICH ONE DO I BUY & HOW MUCH DO I SPEND........ because I have filled my 500 external, 250 & 350 internal's, the only fault with a D2Xs shooting in burst mode.......you fill your drives very quick......

Looking around various sites it seems to be, Western Digital, Seagate, and Lacie....... oh great computer people please guide me in the right direction........

[Thommo]

my suggestion would be to go with WD or Seagate. try and buy a unit with a fan inbuilt to the case.

[Chaase]

In terms of bang for buck it is hard to go pass the 500GB Lacie drives.
Considering your using it for storage a fast read write speed is not critical.

So a USB 2.0 would be a good low cost solution. ie 500GB for approx $200-$220 is only 40 cents a GB which is a bargain

Have a look here for prices http://www.staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/sea ... acie+500GB

If you want a faster R/W look and more storage you can get a 2TB for around a grand (2000GB still blows my mind).

There are plenty of options in between all comes down to $$$

Regards
Bruce

[Oz_Beachside]

share with you two lessons of mine, 1. rate your pics, be harder on yourself and scrap the unrated images (I was kidding myself that I would ever get back to them), and 2. I use the lacie USB externals, just stack them if needed.

[the foto fanatic]

Another option is to buy a hard drive and place it in a caddy yourself - it's cheaper.

You can buy a Vantec enclosure for about $80 and a 500 Gb Seagate Barracuda for about $190.

[foonji]

share with you two lessons of mine, 1. rate your pics, be harder on yourself and scrap the unrated images (I was kidding myself that I would ever get back to them), and 2. I use the lacie USB externals, just stack them if needed.

spot on. i used to keep everything no mattter what.

then it got out of hand, i started being harder and only keeping the best of the images.

[Greg B]

There always seems to be a best value point with hard drives, and I think it is still at 320 gig. The WD or Seagates are now around $95 - IDE or SATA.

I have three external cases - a couple of USB2/IEEE 1394, and a very nice shiny black Coolermaster (approx $70 I think)

[Marvin]

I got a brochure from Aust Post today that had 320 gig external hard drives for $169. Maxtor, I think from memory.

[olrac]

I brought a Lacie Bigger disk 2tb drive. it is a little noisy no louder than say a desktops fan... and if you have a mac or firewire 800 it is like writing to an internal disk absolutely no lag at all..


http://www.epowermac.com.au/product.asp?numRecordPosition=5&P_ID=485&strPageHistory=&strKeywords=&SearchFor=&PT_ID=76

[big pix]

Thanks for the help, links and advice....... I guess I will order AM on line....... will let you know what I purchase

[Wocka]

Gidday,

I just bought 2 x Samsung SATA 500GB HDD 16MB Cache for $139.95 each. I then bought a SATA USB caddy of Ebay for $33.00.

So now I have one HDD internal in my PC and one external and they are sync'd with MS Sync Toy.

It was cheaper do put together myself than to buy a pre-compliled HDD/ Caddy from Ebay as the going rate was around $230 + postage.

Cheers.

[big pix]

I brought the Western Digital pro series 1TB with fire wire @ $549.00, if I shopped about might of got it cheaper but as I have had australia post destroy 3 parcles, friends are comming down to stay for a few days, and are picking it up in Sydney........ now to start the day backing up onto DVD as well....... and I am retired

[sirhc55]

The reason I run 7 external H/D’s is based on an experience this week. A H/D died, now if I was running 1TB and it died without having all info backed up where would I be.

[big pix]

The reason I run 7 external H/D’s is based on an experience this week. A H/D died, now if I was running 1TB and it died without having all info backed up where would I be.

........ looking for a big paddle......

this drive will be my second or 3rd copy of files to keep, I also have 5 other desk drives...... I am now burning to DVD what goes onto the new drive....... bit like having a large box of goodies to look through...... with the black outs we get down here who knows..... and yes I have a very large surge protection on the mains

[PiroStitch]

buy a hdd and external case yourself The cheapest casing is around $20 with an inbuilt fan. Spend the rest on a decent sized hdd and bob's your uncle

[Glen]

I was going to post the same as Chris, Bernie about a year ago I was looking at 1tb drives. At the time most were made up of 4 x 250gb drives. I rang 3 manufacturers who all told me the same thing, if one of the drives fail the others would not be accessable. No hot (or cold) swapping to bring it up either. As these units have 4 times the chance of failure (as there are 4 drives) I decided on individual drives whilst waiting for a cheap raid hot swappable box.

With larger drives you might find yours has only 2 x500gb but might be worth a call before your friends pick it up to see how many drives inside and what happens upon failure.

[big pix]

and what happens upon failure.

....... you look for the Scotch bottle......

2 x 500 in this one..... it will be second or 3rd storage only...... as I am filling a 500gig in about 3 months...... might go back to using the D70s......

[Glen]

[big pix]

this what I will be getting...... I am not sure what raid does but sounds impressive....... I could become a hard drive nerd......naaaaa

My Book Pro Edition II WDG2TP10000 - Hard drive array - 1 TB - 2 bays - 2 x HD 500 GB - FireWire 800, Hi-Speed USB, FireWire 400 (external)
Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II dual-drive storage system offers RAID mirroring for extra peace of mind or RAID striping for extraordinary capacity and performance. Triple-interface and a powerful combination of features and performance make this system the storage solution of choice for creative professionals, workgroups, small offices and anyone looking for extra assurance that their data is safe.

[ATJ]

I have something similar to this:

Lenovo USB 2.0 Portable 120GB Hard Drive

I say similar because I bought 2 of these a couple of years ago when they were still IBM badged and they were only 40GB. They take standard ATA drives so I have since replaced the 40 GB drives with Western Digital 120 GB drives. The case is only slightly larger than the drive itself so they are great for traveling. My plan is just to keep buying new drives as I fill the old ones.

[Glen]

Bernie, you are in business! RAID (random array of independant drives) has different numbers 0, 1, etc but mirroring is where you end up with 2 identical 500gb drives (everything is written to both drives so there is always a back up) and striping is where it uses both drives together to give 1,000gb with no backup.

[big pix]

Bernie, you are in business!.

....

...... no not anymore, retired to Narooma, so I thought....... but still shooting, and off again soon on location

EDIT: thanks for the info, it is hard enough to keep up with new cameras...... then new computers, and all the new bits that hang off the main unit is mind blowing....... maybe I should look at a raid box of tricks and drives

[who]

If you are shooting that much, you need to look at file server style storage.

ie a computer box running appropriate software and holding some serious storage....

I am playing with Windows Home Server Release Candidate at home in an older AMD XP2400 box. Currently only has a 320Gig HD in it, but if it gets working properly, the motherboard supports 4 PATA channels (too early for SATA) so I could cram in 8 drives - 1 would be a DVD-RW so the other 7 could be HDD, 4 of which could be a big RAID array.

[moz]

RAID (random array of independant drives) has different numbers 0, 1, etc

RAID actually originally stood for "REDUNDANT array of inexpensive disks", but then some monkey came up with RAID-0 where there's no redundancy, which is why I call that Clayton's RAID. I run 4x750GB disks in RAID-5, so if one fails I don't completely lose the plot. Plus a couple of 500GB external disks for backup.

[Glen]

I agree with your comments MOz on Raid 0 (is it 0 which is just striping), seems like a waste not to be backing up if you have the capability.

[big pix]

...... thanks for the info....... but I am on a G5 PowerMac

[ATJ]

I wouldn't rely on DVDs as the only form of backup. It is my understanding they are nowhere near as reliable as CDs.

[moz]

I agree with your comments MOz on Raid 0 (is it 0 which is just striping)

Yeah:
0=striping, full capacity of all disks
1=mirroring, half total capacity (2 disks only)
3&5=checksummming, capacity=(N-1)*disk capacity (min 3 disks)
6=double checksums, capacity=(N-2)*disk capacity (min 4 disks)
10=1+0, half capacity but lots of speed (min 4 disks)

RAID2 and 4 are not generally used any more, technology has passed them by. There's also a simple concatenation option in most controllers which lets you use randomly sized disks. Most of the above require the disks to be all the same size (or more accurately, the accessible capacity of all disks is equal to the smallest capacity of any disk - a mirror of a 10GB and 100Gb drive gives 10GB usable space, RAID5 with disks of 50,100,100,200 gives 3*50GB=150GB. Most controllers will not let you access the extra space either).

Note that some of the NAS units out there will let you use odd-sized disks without losing space, but that's not mainstream yet so I would want to see extensive test results before I put anything important on there. So they let you shove in your 80GB + 100GB + 250GB disks for a total of 430GB and get some significant fraction of that of that as protected storage.

My preference is just to swap all four drives at the same time, which works as long as I triple the capacity at each upgrade (copy the whole array to one new disk, build a new array with three disks, copy the data, "live upgrade" the array with the 4th disk once I'm convinced it all works). That way I always have at least two copies of the data as well as my backups. It means I sell a lot of second hand disks and those are worth very little, but I tend not to lose data very often.

FWIW, I'm going to buy a 1TB external disk soon, and swap my 2x500GB disks to being the second backup, so I will still have two backups (one at work, one at home) but one of those backups will be split over two disks. Then I'll swap one of those for a 2TB disk and buy a second 1TB disk to continue that pattern. (yes, I know you can't buy 2TB disks today... but they will be).

[Steffen]

I agree with your comments MOz on Raid 0 (is it 0 which is just striping), seems like a waste not to be backing up if you have the capability.

For sure, you need a good backup strategy with striped disks. People stripe disks for performance, since the good old disk is the biggest bottle-neck in today's powerful machines.

I'm striping 3 250GB disks to get half-decent disk IO performance, but I also have a fourth disk (750GB) that I perform nightly backups to. In addition I have an external disk to keep extra copies of important stuff (this is where I keep my Aperture vaults, for example).

I haven't quite gone full-turn as far as disaster recovery goes. I probably should get another external disk and rotate them for off-site storage...

Cheers
Steffen.

[Steffen]

I wouldn't rely on DVDs as the only form of backup. It is my understanding they are nowhere near as reliable as CDs.

It's the other way around. DVD-Rs are far more dependable (and long living) than CD-Rs. CD-Rs are prone to corrosion and mechanical damage, since the data layer is protected by just a coat of paint. With DVD-Rs the data layer is hermetically encased between sheets of polycarbonate.

DVD-Rs with high-quality dyes (such as metal-azo) will outlast any magnetic medium by far (assuming proper storage, away from sun and heat).

That said, don't even think about wanting to keep anything for longer than a few months on DVD-RW...

Cheers
Steffen.

[ATJ]

It's the other way around. DVD-Rs are far more dependable (and long living) than CD-Rs. CD-Rs are prone to corrosion and mechanical damage, since the data layer is protected by just a coat of paint. With DVD-Rs the data layer is hermetically encased between sheets of polycarbonate.

DVD-Rs with high-quality dyes (such as metal-azo) will outlast any magnetic medium by far (assuming proper storage, away from sun and heat).

Thanks. I must have heard wrong then. I thought it was to do with the density of the data on the disc which is far higher on a DVD and more susceptible to damage/errors.

[xorl]

In the past I've read that DVD+R has much better archival qualities than DVD-R. Here is the first article I could find with a quick search:
http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/ ... val-media/

[ATJ]

Mark,

The article also implies that CD-R is better than DVD-R.

[big pix]

I am pulling information off 5-6 year old CD and DVD's with no loss of quality......... I think !

[Steffen]

Mark,

The article also implies that CD-R is better than DVD-R.

The author's final recommendation is for TY DVD+Rs.

I'd take the write-up with a grain of salt, though, especially the DVD-R vs DVD+R bit. A number of factual errors and lack of citation doesn't help, either.

Cheers
Steffen.

[xorl]

Here is another article which goes into a bit more depth on the topic:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/reviews/Why-DVD ... -to-DVD-RW

[kipper]

Best policy in my opinion is to rate your images and get rid of the images that you view in your mind as being non-keepers (eg. out of focus, subject too small in frame, bad exposure etc).

Not that I have fully implemented this policy but I'm working towards it.

[moz]

Best policy in my opinion is to rate your images and get rid of the images that you view in your mind as being non-keepers (eg. out of focus, subject too small in frame, bad exposure etc).

I go through and immediately delete any technically crap images - OOF, missed the subject and so on. The I go through and pick the best two out of any duplicate series, then sort by composition and repeat. That usually gets rid of about half the shots if I'm shooting one subject, or a third if I'm shooting an event. But after that I tend to keep everything except intermediate files (Bibble is useful that way, it stores what i do to the raw file as a tiny script instead of a series of TIFF files).

[big pix]

it is not about storing crap pix's....... I shoot every day, anywhere from 1 to 6 gig...... there are about 20% very good 40% good, to be used elsewhere, and the rest go in the bin....... I spent 2 days looking for an image, that was on my web site, that was fine but not 100% as I had a use for the image..... gone into the bin......

then you convert 15% of the above to tiff at around 35mb per file, put a poster together 700 to 1000 mb, and the numbers keep counting, before long you have filled another 500gig hard drive.......

I am about to go on a 2 week location shoot to central Queensland for a client, and I know that I will shoot around 12-16 gig of shots per day... along with DVD storage an 80 gig portable hard drive and about 25 gig free in the Powerbook, I could be looking at buying an additional external just to be on the safe side........ and yes I spend around 3 hours per night going through the days shot, doing an edit, sorting, filing, and on this job some PP in the field as some shots have to get back before I do.

The last shoot I did for this client I ended up with over 125 gig of information shot over 3 months in different locations around Australia with a return to home base in between each job for PP. The files were a mixture of RAW files, Tiff files, and jpg Files....... I keep all this on Hard Drive for 6 months, and DVD....... the client does the same, but longer.......

....... what happened to the days when you just gave the client the finished Transparencies....... if he lost said transparencies you went out and re-shot the job......... and yes I did a bit of that

I Know that I tend to over shoot any subject today because it is easy and you are not counting the cost of film and processing, but with the cost of storage for digital files from hi end cameras is there much difference........

[gstark]

Bernie,

then you convert 15% of the above to tiff

Why?

I just store my stuff as raw compressed.

[big pix]

Bernie,

then you convert 15% of the above to tiff

Why?

I just store my stuff as raw compressed.

On the client side I find that clients do not know how to get the best from a RAW file, so I do all the PP at a very healthy hour rate and only supply tiffs and jpg on disk. So the more you shoot the more time it takes so the more you charge so the end result is you are happy and the client gets more and is happy......

for myself I find it is easier to work with files already processed than to have to reprocess...... as with my personal files I am doing something
every day or so and always looking

[kipper]

I go through and immediately delete any technically crap images - OOF, missed the subject and so on. The I go through and pick the best two out of any duplicate series, then sort by composition and repeat. That usually gets rid of about half the shots if I'm shooting one subject, or a third if I'm shooting an event. But after that I tend to keep everything except intermediate files (Bibble is useful that way, it stores what i do to the raw file as a tiny script instead of a series of TIFF files).

Yeah sounds like a good policy to have. At the moment I'm taking a rest from taking any more photos until I've gone through and deleted duplicates/similar shots. I guess some of us at times get a bit trigger happy instead of pre-visualisizing a shot.