Re: Re: DIGITAL PHOTO STORAGE

**"* P* L* <t*@spamfodder.com>**

> If you are storing your scanned images or, heaven forbid your digital
> captures (which are now your original slides) on a CD or DVD I would rethink
> it. New testing has shown that CD's are not as stable and once assumed. The
> most stable CD's use gold and they cost more and are not as readily
> available. CD rewriteable have been known to not be stable but now there are
> heavy duty questions and doubt about CD's too. For DVD's, try reading the
> DVD you burn on another computer, even a MAC to MAC or PC to PC, and forget
> going from, MAC to PC or vice versa. We're still in the Beta VHS stage with
> DVD's. And are they stable?

There is one benefit to DVDs.  I use these for off-site backups of my
material.  I have a safe deposit box at the bank that I keep all copies 
of my digitally scanned slides in, just in case.  Remember what happened
to Asiatica Nursery a little over a year ago?  Barry Yinger lost a big part
of his slide collection in that fire.

> I decided that hard drives were the safest bet for now. However you must
> make backup copies of your hard drives. I use several Network Attached
> Storage disk RAIDS for storage of all digital media. I've had one disk go
> down in one unit an lost no data. That's the advantage of a RAID.

I should mention that there are different types of RAID configurations
out there, so if you decide to go this route make sure that you research
things first.  For example, level 0 RAID provides no redundancy at all.
One other issue is that if two disks go bad, you lose all of the data.

Funny related story...  Where I work for my day job (NCSA) we had a RAID
lose a drive.  This was a pretty important system that had all of our
Web pages on it, user's files, etc.  We were using hot-swappable drives
so that the admin could just pull out the drive without powering things
down, and hopefully nobody would end up noticing.  Unless, of course,
someone accidentally removed the wrong hard drive.  :)  Yup!  The guy
who went to fix the system pulled out another one of the working hard
drives instead of the failed one, and suddenly our RAID (level 5) was
down by two disks.  Disgusted, it threw its virtual hands in the air
and proceeded to lose all of its data.  Fortunately we had backups...

> Additionally each RAID is backed up each day to a portable FireWire drive.

This is a great solution, and I do something similar myself.  Melanie,
this is probably the cheapest and easiest route that you can go.

Here's my recommendation:

Store your data on your main computer's local hard drive.  Burn DVDs every
once in a while and store them off-site, 'just in case'.  And finally, go
out and buy a USB 2.0 external hard drive (it's faster than FireWire).  You
can buy a 120GB disk for about $150 at Sam's Club and it's portable.  You
just plug it into your computer, make backups, and then disconnect.  But
since it's portable, you can take it with you to an editor and plug it
into their computer to show images, bring it to your family to share images
with them, etc.  (although I wouldn't carry it around too much unless you
have those backup DVDs as well).

If you have money to buy another disk, you can do what Charles does and
buy two hard drives instead of burning DVDs.  They're small enough that 
they could fit into a safe deposit box as well.

Chris

http://www.hort.net/gallery/      3479 online plant photos and growing!
http://www.hort.net/gallery/date/2004-04-25/       The latest additions
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