[SET Man]

Hi guys,

    Well, as a photographer I can't escape the digital photography and recently step into the digital world. I now have one foot in the digital photography... yet still have the other in the traditional film photography, especially B&W of which I love :love:

     Now my Apple PowerBook built in 40g HD is now almost maxed out so I have been looking for an external HD. Working with PhotoShop and many MB later. I now have to look for more storage space

     Thanks to this theard http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=23078&highlight=seagate and with some research on CNET.com Seem like the Maxtor HD are not very reliable... as showed from PhilNYC's exprience and the new popular LaCie are not that great either, acturally I've read from one of the review on CNET.com that LaCie use HD from Maxtor internally... great design though.

     So, I picked up a 400GB Seagate HD today to be my storage device http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4013371  Cost me $320 from J&R in NYC... ouch!  The Seagate performance is slow according to the CNET.com but that is fine for me. My only concern is the reliability since I will be storing photo files. The company had been around longer than most so I assumed that they know what they are doing.

      I hope I've made the rigth choice here since my works and my personal photos will be in there. Of cause I will be backing those photo files on other device too just incase. My other long term storage choice is CDR... the 300 years gold CDR eFilm from http://www.delkin.com/delkin_products_archival_gold.html I'm not sure if this is the same as the MoFi gold CDR of which they sell for more.. I think.

   Anyway, there is advantage in digital photography but dealing with digital file make me loose sleep sometime Unlike film when you know that you have stripe of films stored safely in archival sleeves, digital could corrupt, crash or lost.

    Imagine a kid born today and his/her parent take photos of the kid with digicam and than store them on a cheap CDR, will that kid be able open the files from that cheap CDR to see his/her childhood pictures 25+years from now? Scary isn't it?

   Anyway, if you have any exprience with bad CDR or Hard drives please share it with other so we could protect all those priceless photos and other important digital files.

Take care all,
Buddy

[JohnR]

I have negatives from 15 years ago (which I assume will still print fine) but I'm darned if I can get files off of my 10-year old external Mac drive

I guess that's not very helpful, is it

To be honest, my feeling is that if you really want your digital data to be preserved it has to be in the hands of people who will do things like make backups and copy the data to a new system periodically. Don't rely on the media itself, it is inherently unreliable.

[EchiDna]

After going through the old IBM 'deathstar' situation with 2 failed drives (out of 5 used), I switched to locally made Maxtors... so far I've had 3 out of 4 replaced under warranty. Not good.

Western Digital fluid drives are now my drive of choice, quiet and (by all accounts) reliable.

Look here for noise levels and the current testing results:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/leaderboard.html

Really past models do not point to current performance, as you can see in those tables, Hitachi (ex IBM) a leaders in quite a few categories.

Sorry can't really help you with removable media - not my area

[suits_me]

you cannot find a reliable hard drive. they don't market the old tank 5400 rpm drives since drives almost universally became a pure commodity. your drive will fail, or more properly, some drive you own will fail at some juncture. in the future go to dealnews.com and wait like a vulture for a cheap drive to come along.

that's why you have a drive and (likely) a dvd burner for backup. one dvd set on site and one offsite. (not a cd burner - you'll go mad.)

the first thing you do after making a backup is a test restore of, say, 5% of the files.

this business about the longevity of optical or laser or phase change media is a cannard. technology is advancing. whenever you upgrade your hardware you re-do all your backups onto the new media.

having stuff digitally is much safer than negatives if you do everything correctly and compulsively. if there's a fire or flood or hurricane your offsite/onsite backups have the better survival odds since they're in two places. i put my offsite in a safe deposit box.

i am eating buttery popcorn so no caps or typo fixes.

[jermmd]

you cannot find a reliable hard drive. they don't market the old tank 5400 rpm drives since drives almost universally became a pure commodity. your drive will fail, or more properly, some drive you own will fail at some juncture. in the future go to dealnews.com and wait like a vulture for a cheap drive to come along.

that's why you have a drive and (likely) a dvd burner for backup. one dvd set on site and one offsite. (not a cd burner - you'll go mad.)

the first thing you do after making a backup is  ...

What he said. Digital is much better for saving and viewing photos IMHO. I also highly recommend a free download,Picasafor organizing, touching up. and displaying photos.

[Levi]

I agree with the rest.  You will need to include a good backup strategy in your digital workflow.  

A better solution:  Use DVDs instead of CDRs for more capacity.  You can get an external DVD-+ burner for less than the price of a matched tube replacement for your preamp

One extemely expensive solution: You can do electronic vaulting.  It is simply transfering all your data electronically offsite.  Companies like IronMountain provides such services.

Always remember:  Any backup is better than no backup.  

Finally, always test your backup.  

[skchow]

I'm currently using flickr.com in addition to dvdrs and hard drives to archive photos.  25 bucks a year nets you 2 gigabytes of upload per month which is pretty good.  Does anyone have any comments as to the reliability of using flickr to store photos?

Sunny.

[SET Man]

You can get an external DVD-+ burner for less than the price of a matched tube replacement for your preamp

Hi guys,

    Levi, that is so true!   HD is getting bigger and cheaper by the minute.

    Anyway, thanks guys. Yes, I know that there is no such thing as bullet proof HD. So, I think I will get a 2nd one for backing up the back up And of cause using CD/DVDs and keep them in the closet.  

    I'm not big on offsite storage idea.

   suits-me, yes, film is harder to store and need more care to store them long term and harder to make copy of. In theory digital files could last forever if store correctly and as longe as the future machine could read it it should be okay

    So far digital is working fine for me... at least for color for now. Somehow when is come to B&W photography I still prefer the traditional way... real B&W films, the smell of the fixer in the darkroom... than after a few hours... holding a real fiber-based B&W print in my hands.      

Take care all,
Buddy

[Levi]

I'm currently using flickr.com in addition to dvdrs and hard drives to archive photos.  25 bucks a year nets you 2 gigabytes of upload per month which is pretty good.  Does anyone have any comments as to the reliability of using flickr to store photos?

Sunny.

Flickr.com is a Yahoo based company and not likely to disappear overnight.  It surely looks like a winner.  It also looks like a photo sharing site.  The problem with those sites is it compresses the pictures for easy uploading and sharing hence uses less storage space in the server.  I wonder if you can download it back without pixel degradation.

[skchow]

Well I ran a quick test and uploaded a full resolution 5 MP image onto the site. I downloaded the image again and the filesizes were the same.  I haven't done anything like bit for bit check of the files however...


Sunny.