Hard (Drive) Decisions

In the era of high-megapixel cameras, storing your large image files requires the use of a separate hard drive

By Jon Sienkiewicz

Labels: Gadget Bag

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Western Digital My Book Essential

External hard drives—in all of their colorful glory—are reliable, inexpensive and abundantly available. All are portable (and some are quite pocketable), and all are plug-and-play. One advantage is that they can be connected without opening your computer, so they’re perfect for laptops and sealed Macs. And they can be freely switched from one PC to another—providing a great way to share large amounts of data. Another popular option is the network drive. Everyone has a home network these days, often with several computers involved. A network drive allows all of the connected PCs and Macs to share images, music, videos and other files. Many models even have built-in print servers.

Seagate Barracuda 3.5-inch internal hard drives will add up to 1 TB of additional storage space—that’s 1,000 gigabytes. Available with PATA or SATA interface, the 500 GB Barracuda features 7200 rpm platter rotation and a 32 MB cache (for high performance and short access times) and comes with Seagate’s five-year limited USA warranty. Helpful hint: Make sure your PC has room to add another drive before you make the purchase.


Buffalo Technology LinkStation Pro Duo

Buffalo Technology offers a wide assortment of NAS (network attached storage) solutions, including the 1 TB LinkStation Pro Duo. It contains two separate 500 GB drives that can be set up in RAID 1 (or high-speed but insecure RAID 0) configurations. The LinkStation Pro Duo features a gigabit Ethernet connection for fast access from anywhere—all that’s needed is Internet access and a web browser. It comes preloaded with Memeo AutoBackup software for Windows or Macintosh. New or modified files are automatically backed up so you’re less likely to lose them. And you can add more storage by adding any USB 2.0 hard drive directly.

The familiar My Book series from Western Digital includes the My Book Essential, an easy-to-use, easy-to-afford storage platform that simply plugs in and is immediately ready for use—no tedious drivers or setup routines required. The Essential drives are very thin—about the thickness of a book—and they nest together as you add more volumes. Available in a broad range of capacities, the My Book drives are the ideal desktop storage and backup solution. Western Digital also offers pocket-sized storage in the form of the My Passport series. The My Passport Studio, for example, comes in sizes up to 500 GB, provides both FireWire and USB 2.0 connectivity and works with Apple’s Time Machine (or other Mac or Windows backup software).

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Paul makes this comment

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

I know I'm a dino (was cutting edge just a couple years ago) but I still put all my images onto DVD after a photo shoot, back it up with another copy and store all originals in a seperate building. DVD's are ultra cheap. What's the downside?
Lew makes this comment

Monday, 29 June 2009

Re- the previous comments. What happens when you have 2 TB of images stored on 3 separate external firewire hard drives, plus two internal hard drives close to being maxed out of 1 TB each. These internal drives are mirrored, plus backed up on another external hard drive. The images are the only thing now on the external drives. Obviously, you can just keep adding external drives but I believe RAID 5 with the enclosure having at least 6 TB capacity[or greater]] is the way to go. With newer cameras having huge files we must plan on capacity that may seem ridiculous now but in a year or two will probably be full [if not sooner].]
Le Phuoc makes this comment

Saturday, 27 June 2009

These HDD (Hard-disk Drive) could be eclipsed by SSD (Solid-state Drive) in the future. SSD has higher tolerance for wider temperature range, absorbs shocks well, and perform well in high altitude. The CF card is a form of SSD.
JP makes this comment

Saturday, 27 June 2009

JABOD is the way to go, by far. RAID and Drobo are overrated for most photographers. The only thing they protect against is mechanical failure; no protection against file system corruption, viruses, theft, natural disasters like fire and flood, etc. Much better: internal drive(s) for primary storage, two external drives for backups. One backup is kept on-site for nightly backups with the software of your choice (ideally kept in a data-rated fireproof safe), the other off-site, such as home/office or better yet a safe deposit box, for weekly backups. Much cheaper than a RAID with only two drives. When combined with a proper backup strategy, the benefits of RAID become insignificant to most photographers vs the complexity/cost. So why even bother?
JP makes this comment

Saturday, 27 June 2009

JABOD is the way to go, by far. RAID and Drobo are overrated for most photographers. The only thing they protect against is mechanical failure; no protection against file system corruption, viruses, theft, natural disasters like fire and flood, etc. Much better: internal drive(s) for primary storage, two external drives for backups. One backup is kept on-site for nightly backups with the software of your choice (ideally kept in a data-rated fireproof safe), the other off-site, such as home/office or better yet a safe deposit box, for weekly backups. Much cheaper than a RAID with only two drives. When combined with a proper backup strategy, the benefits of RAID become insignificant to most photographers vs the complexity/cost. So why even bother?
Dale makes this comment

Thursday, 25 June 2009

Another Drobo user. I just had a 500GB drive fail (thermal failure) and just hot swapped it with a new drive as soon as I brought it home. Still had full access to the all my data via the remaining drives through the entire process given the Drobo redundancy. Yes, the box is a bit pricey, but the backup and protection is very good.
Dave makes this comment

Thursday, 25 June 2009

Your article forgot to mention the DROBO www.drobo.com Many us are using this product and have found it to work well. The product generally gets rave reviews from photographers so I'm more than a little surprised that you forgot to mention it. It works great for me.

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Hard (Drive) Decisions

In the era of high-megapixel cameras, storing your large image files requires the use of a separate hard drive

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