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WTM Member
Joined: 03 Jul 2003 Posts: 231 | TRs | Pics
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WTM
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Wed May 12, 2004 8:06 am
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MCaver Founder
Joined: 14 Dec 2001 Posts: 5124 | TRs | Pics
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MCaver
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Wed May 12, 2004 10:37 am
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It really depends what you want to do with your photos and/or how sacred to you they are. I'm hoping to turn my photography into a small on-the-side business some day once I get off my lazy duff, and here's what I do, or willl do once I get it all in place:
I have 2 firewire hard drives that I can hot-swap from my computer. One stays attached and is my primary archive point for photos. The other stays in a secure offsite location (probably a safety deposit box). I pick it up periodically and sync the two so I have offsite duplicates of all my photos. I also burn them to CD for quick use and local backup, but if these go away or are damaged it's no big deal. Because of this, though, I store my photos in 700Mb folders on my hard drives. In each folder, I create parity files with 5-10% redundancy in case of corruption or damage. This system protects me from minor scratches on the CD to something taking down my house. A regional disaster would be required to wipe out everything.
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dazza Member
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 25 | TRs | Pics
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dazza
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Tue Jun 08, 2004 11:42 am
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I build my own 1.26 Terabyte RAID-5 server that stores all of my images. It has 8x180GB drives. If one of the drives fails, it alerts me (via email) and I simply replace the failed device and rebuild the array.
It all boils down to just how much your images mean to you. To me they are worth the $3000 in hardware plus $500 a year to keep a 550W server running. BTW, if you think $3000 for such storage is mad, check out the cost of similarly sized commercial devices!
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MooseAndSquirrel Member
Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 2036 | TRs | Pics
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Ooooookay......that's impressive - now for the majority who aren't going to spend the dough or build their own server....Dvd or an extra hard drive storage seems the most practical approach. Dvd is viable for long-term storage as long as you transfer your data to another disc every few years to be safe.
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dazza Member
Joined: 14 May 2004 Posts: 25 | TRs | Pics
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dazza
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Tue Jun 08, 2004 12:28 pm
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I should note that my array stores more than just pictures (mp3s, iMovies, DVDs, etc)! A terabyte just for images really would be overkill
I started to burn DVDs of my pictures for a while but I found that you really really need to be regimented about organizing, cataloging and storing the DVDs. I do still burn DVDs though as a backup to the array (hey my basement could flood). I use DVD-RWs so I can just keep refreshing the backup every once in a while.
The one thing you need to ensure is that you have a backup for ANY storage method used - unless you don't care about the data. If you use DVDs - burn two copies and store them separately. If you use external harddrives - burn a DVD as a backup, or use 2 hardrives. There are few things worse than putting in a DVD full of some great images only to discover that it cannot be read. This happened to me after a trip to Austrailia.
The RAID-5 array just maximizes the storage I get from the various drives since I hate paying for 4 drives but effectively only getting the capacity of 2 (i.e. mirroring). Some motherboards are now coming with RAID setups but RAID-5 is not very common as it's computationally intensive therefore the hardware costs more.
However, I am about to spend a year in Europe so I am also looking at external harddrives as a backup method since the server will cost too much to ship over. The two external firewire drives method looks like the best way to go right now.
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MooseAndSquirrel Member
Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 2036 | TRs | Pics
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Per the laziness of most in backing-up stuff, it all comes down to how important the stuff is to someone, like you said. It's just another habit to learn I guess like making sure you have your vehicle insurance current and paying yer bills. Probably in the near future there will be a no-sweat way of having copies of music/pic/text files automatically routed to a backup source.
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Backpacker Joe Blind Hiker
Joined: 16 Dec 2001 Posts: 23956 | TRs | Pics Location: Cle Elum |
I store my photos on CDRW disks, and two separate hard drives.
TB
"If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."
— Abraham Lincoln
"If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide."
— Abraham Lincoln
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Larry Member
Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 1084 | TRs | Pics Location: Kitsap |
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Larry
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Sun Jun 13, 2004 8:45 am
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Removable hard drives for me. The duplicate hard drive is updated every month or so, and stored off-site.
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Ned Flanders Member
Joined: 23 Jul 2004 Posts: 23 | TRs | Pics Location: Seattle |
External firewire hard drives are the way to go. Although I am not one to talk because I am too lazy to go and buy one myself.
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