Photography Thailand Forum

[Gary Dublanko]

Drobo is interesting if a bit pricey. I'm surprised they have not incorporated a Firewire 800 port for such a high spec.

[David Salmanowitz]

No, they purchased it from B&H in USA.

[kinginexile]

 Lately, I have been lucky (ext. HD crashed....On the floor!!! had 2 sets of DVDs for pix, some "read" problems but was able to reback all on new ext HD, thru an anxious evening) but had to give more thought to storage conundrums. Mark, you mention HD possibly crashing after 4 years, so do you mean not to back up at the same time on 2 HD, but maybe a year or 2 after for ex.?

[Marc Schultz]

I would not worry about it in that way Herve. The change of two of your hard drives crashing on the very same day is rather minute. So as long as you keep your backups up to date then most likely you will be protected in the event of a crash and the keep will to be to replace the crashed hard drive immediately so that you always maintain two copies of your data at all times. If you want to really be sure, and you have the extra cash to spare, then two hard drive backups would reduce the chances of all all of your hard drives crashing on the same day next to nil I believe. Unless however all your hard drives were all stored in the same exact place and the elements had caused one of them to be destroyed in which case would probably destroy the others as well. Thats why storing backup hard drives in separate locations is always recommended as well. Hope that helps...

[kinginexile]

Thanks Marc. 500GB (Western Digital) are about 129$  here in US, retail, cheaper on e-cost, the one I dropped had only 100GB on it, I'd say I shoot 150 GB worth of shots a year, so that would be a maximum 260$ investment for almost 3 years of pix, notwithstanding files on the computer, then sets of DVDs. My friend in Austria has all my travel shots on DVDs, and one of the 2 ext. HD could stay at my Mom's place in France. I mean, is that taking the bull by the horns or what?

 The story is, I have had my annus horribilus story (2006), and I never want to go thru that angst and loss again. 

[Marc Schultz]

Sounds like a good solution. My only other suggestion would be to keep a set of backups at a close location so that you can backup on a regular basis otherwise it defeats the purpose of having a backup if it is not updated on a weekly basis say. In my case, even pictures I have backed up before, constantly need backing up again and again from time to time because I am constantly working on and changing the processed image files from shots I have taken in the past. Best wishes with it all.

[kinginexile]

It all makes sense, though in my case I am still in the learning curve with photoshop, so anytime I would need to pull up an old archived pix (print, sale),  I would probably be able to re-refine my editing from the one 3, 6 months or 2 years ago. For ex.. I just discovered how to click off areas (and invert, wowww!)  with the magic wand a month ago....

You are right about the DVDs, 2 big CF  files on a 2 year old DVD will not be read  . Time  to e-mail my buddy in Austria...