Hard disk storage for photo's???

S

shooting star

Suspended / Banned
Messages
35
Edit My Images
Yes
I have about 14GB on my computer already and am starting to shoot in RAW occasionally, so I see this going up greatly, I thought a plug in hard drive might be the best solution for a back up - what should I be looking for?
 
shooting star said:
I have about 14GB on my computer already and am starting to shoot in RAW occasionally, so I see this going up greatly, I thought a plug in hard drive might be the best solution for a back up - what should I be looking for?
Click to expand...

I have 2 320gig external drives I use to back everything up to.
Yours for about £60-80 these days!!!
 
Thanks Gilly. Confused.com about all the partitioning talk, but I only need the storage space. Still have 54GB left on my computer so I think it will take me a while to fill that.
 
shooting star said:
Thanks Gilly. Confused.com about all the partitioning talk, but I only need the storage space. Still have 54GB left on my computer so I think it will take me a while to fill that.
Click to expand...

You are confused???? What about me??? :lol::lol::lol:
 
Never never never trust your images to a hard drive alone.

Back up to dvd or some other medium at least your most important ones.
 
I use Western Digital USB drives. Mine range from 40-120Gb
and cost between 30-90 quid. They're plug and play and are quick enough.
Bob
 
Steep said:
Never never never trust your images to a hard drive alone.

Back up to dvd or some other medium at least your most important ones.
Click to expand...

Just use multiple backups (2 or 3) on hard drives of different manufactures (just in case of product failure) still cheap and as safe as cd/dvd.
 
A hard drive is constantly in use and it's mechanical, mechanical things break down, the drive is also open to other kinds of failure as happened to me the other week, the drive I keep my current images on 'lost' it's file structure and there was nothing I could do to fix it but reformat.

A DVD is inert, once written you put it away safely till you need it and even when it's in use it's in a non destructive manner. That said, nothing is perfect even DVDs are meant to degrade with time but as long as you buy decent ones and store them properly they'll last a lot longer than a hard drive will imo.
 
:agree:

I used to work in IT, had this manager who saved all his work to the hard disk, which failed. He lost about 2 years work and went mad on me, as if it was my fault:shrug:. Especially when we backed up everything on the servers every night.

He learned his lesson the hard way, once a HDD fails theres nothing you can do to get the data back. DVD is currently the most economical way of storing your photos safely.

Please do not fall for this one as its very annoying and if you are a professional could be very expensive.
 
You could get an external hard drive and synchronize the the copying of files to folders with a local drive. This way you've got a backup if one of the drives fail. This is something which i'll do with my external drive.

If a hard drive does fail there are companies which offer recovery services, but it can be expensive. Therefore, never store only one copy.

Also, it's not just failure, but theft. I'd imagine that if I was a pro photographer I'd have my valuabe shots backed up on some external service provider, rather than having them all in my house.
 
The idea of hard disk back up you dont keep just 1 back up, but 2 or 3, so you have your working drive and 2 or 3 backups of that working drive.
CD/DVD can be corrupted by what and where its kept if they are kept near paper or in certain plastic containers the chemicals react with the disc and corrupt them.

Anyone who rely's upon 1 backup of anykind is f***in stupid.

I use 3 backups, 1 is a Raid array via Xserve, 1 is in a fireproof safe, 1 is off site.
 
Off site is a very good idea, I wish I could remember where I read a story by a pro phot who lost everything in a fire, it was back in film days and all his negs were kept in proper storage in his basement (U.S.) a house fire took the lot.
 
It doesnt cost a lot to implement a secure backup syatem, my fire proof safe cost about £150 but its quite big, and off site storage costs not a lot, I have a small fireproof safe at relatives house again its not very big and cost around £50 cant remember exactly.

I must admit it is a part of photography people dont bother with but its as important as the rest of it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top