Hard (Drive) Decisions

7 Comments

1. 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?

2. 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].]

3. 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.

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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.

7. 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.