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Post by kiev4a on Feb 19, 2007 18:31:15 GMT -5
My final solution may be to store photos on on hard disk and "mirror" that drive on a second hard disk. Hard disks do crash but the odds of two crashing at the same time are pretty slim. Of course if I do keep all of these pictures safe someday our kids will be sorting things out a say "what the He11 are we going to do with all this stuff!"
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Feb 19, 2007 19:58:42 GMT -5
Hard drives do not last for ever either. Mine passed on 18 months ago. System and programs are not the worry, they can be reinstalled again. Lost data is gone forever. A professional recovery job costs more than £1000 in Europe, somewhat less if the attempt proves futile. I had a manic period lasting 3 months working on family history without backing up, followed by a depressing 12 months trying to reconstruct what was lost, working out what was missing and what I had, and what I would have to do all over again. Photographs were OK, they were backed up.
The only real protection is something like a RAID system, where you have a second hard disk shadowing everything that happens on the working disk, complete with operating system too, so that when one fails you can automatically continue from the other. Then you install a brand new replacement disk that takes on the shadowing task until ...
Of course Muggins hasn't installed a RAID ssytem, but the new hard drive has at least been given its own fan in the faint hope that it will keep the temperature down. I have two external drives for temporary storage, one for a copy of the day's work that accumulates, and one for a complete image of the data drive every week or so. And "permanent" backup on DVDs. Eventually double backup on DVD about five years apart. Use best disks from well known manufacturers, it's the cheap anonymous disks that go first (or so they say). Write CDs or DVDs at a moderate speed, not maximum speed.
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Post by Peter S. on Feb 20, 2007 9:42:18 GMT -5
SidW wrote: The only real protection is something like a RAID system, where you have a second hard disk shadowing everything that happens on the working disk, complete with operating system too, so that when one fails you can automatically continue from the other. Dear Sid, I agree that You can overcome disk failure by the means of a suitable raid system. But this by no means can be a substitue to a dedicated backup strategy. Raid is completely useless when it comes to virus attacks, to operating system failures (e.g. poor configuration), or to user errors (e.g. important data were deleted). Finally the replacement of a raid disk needs to be exercised by the sysadmin (this is by us under the most common circumstances). I hate DVDs, but those seem to be the only media that could store the crazy amount of data the photography hobby results in - but I don't rely on that. I simply keep all my slides and negatives. I find DVDs however being too sensitive to scratches or suboptimum storage conditions, so that I backup my important data on CD-ROM. I selected Verbatim Datalife Plus brand for doing so. Noname CD-ROMs are way to unreliable, too. I also use a 3 1/2" magneto optical (MO for short) drive. These media are said to be super reliable - but they are rather big in size - and rather small in capacity - the standard size is 640 MB only. But the media are ISO standardized and I prefer its SCSI interface over USB, too. The worst headache I got are the file formats however. Can I be shure, that the current jpg's will be readable in 20 years? I fear I can't. A final thought to harddrives: I do pay much attention that my harddrives are running cool. I have a 80mm slowly running fan mounted under most of my disks. Even that 147 GB 10k SCSI disk is only 4..5 °C above room temperature. I also pay attention to the noise of the disks, i.e. as soon as they become louder (happend to a few IBM drives a couple of years ago) I replace them. Moreover I examine the Smart status of the disks whenever I got troubles to open a file or run a program. The last errors I found here were plugs that became loose. Anyway I fixed it before I ran into severe troubles. Most external USB disk cases are running the included disks too hot. I use one of those by myself - but I never have it switched on for more than 15 minutes. After that the disk's temperature is up to about 40°C. We bought five or six of these units for the departement where I work. Needless to say, that one disk died already, I would not dare to rely on the ones used by the less anxious colleagues. The situation might be better for the units that are based on notebook disks, that use less power and hence generate less heat. I think these USB disks are a godsent anyway! I would second the idea buying one to do backups. Just keep the time it is switched on down to the required minimum. That would also minimize the risk that the data were ruined by the user. All in all I managed lose data only two or three times, and all were caused by user malfunction ;-) SidW:... the new hard drive has at least been given its own fan in the faint hope that it will keep the temperature down... Well I use a infrared thermometer to check the efficiency of the cooling. A fingertip might do as well. As an engineer I don't rely on hope ;-) SidW:... Write CDs or DVDs at a moderate speed, not maximum speed... I found that good CD writers (e.g. the old Plextors, or Liteon 52x CD burners) are pretty reliable even when burning full speed. The situation is completely different for DVDs. I wasn't able to write a single flawless DVD at 16x speed. Even as I used good media. I would not burn important data on DVD faster as 4x (which is a pretty high datarate though). HTH & best regards Peter |
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Post by kiev4a on Feb 20, 2007 10:34:06 GMT -5
Peters:
You are probably correct about CDs being more reliable since the density isn't as high as on a DVD.
My plan with the external drive is to only have it running when I need to access something.
My daughter, who works for HP, makes fun of the huge server case that my computer is in--the case weighs 35 pounds by itself. But it provides lots of cooling space around my drives even with three attached. And if anyone ever takes a shot at my computer, I don't think any bullet under 45 caliber could penetrate the case!
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SidW
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Post by SidW on Feb 20, 2007 19:38:22 GMT -5
Thanks for the detailed comments, Peter. The external drives are are 2.5 inch, and they're only running for as long as it takes to do the copying.
My backed up pictures are not JPEGs. I save the editing layers so I can go back if I wish, and can always produce anything smaller in any format at any time. I believe the JPEG standard is being modified already. Maybe TIFF is more general and not program dependent like PS files. It's easier to look back than forward. Our VAX computer just expired one day in 1984 (of all years) leaving me with massive reels of half inch tape that I could no longer read. The 1.2 Mb floppies also disappeared very quickly. You don't like hoping, Peter, but that's all we have for the future. Let's hope there'll be plenty of warning when the next storage medium disappears, so that we'll get a chance to transfer stuff.
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