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It's BACKUP time!!!!

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Thomas,

I won't get into the technical aspects of any program...that is the programmer's job...and frankly, I don't care. What I do care about is ease of use and the fact that the programmer has done his homework...the product will stand on it's own.

For me, the best thing about AC (yes, I am a registered owner), is the different options AC provides (which are NOT provided by WindowsXP).

I don't know Michael personally, but I felt he really did create AC out of concern for other photographers FIRST, and yes selling a product promotes future enhancements and developement..but mostly it provides food on your table and rewards one for the idea and the hard work.

I don't care what his motives were (are), it has made my life easier, and I am thankful for that.

As for someone who states that a program will not install on their computer (although it will on thousands of other computers, then my response is that more than likely...it is not program but instead either a configuration problem or more likely...computer operator.

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
 
Wally,

Be careful making assumptions. I'm an experienced software developer (for over 20 years), and using a very common setup. There is no reason why something shouldn't install on my PC.

Micheal has confirmed my problem is a bug, which he hopes to resolve soon.
Wally Jarratt said:
As for someone who states that a program will not install on their
computer (although it will on thousands of other computers, then my
response is that more than likely...it is not program but instead
either a configuration problem or more likely...computer operator.

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
Click to expand...
--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.
 
I wouldn't trust DLTs any more than CD/DVD, they can have issues too.....

By my reckoning, even from scratch, backing up 80GB with DVD-R would cost about $300 (including the drive). You could buy a lot of L glass with the difference!

I'm not criticising, just seems a curious argument.
Tom Boucher said:
If you're anything like me, you might have enough images saved that
you need to find something bigger than a 700MB CD-R.

DVD-R / DVD+R format can usually be found for about $2 - $4 US per
blank disc. These are write once & throw away.

4.7GB a disc.

Personally I've found that with my about 80GB of images (i take
lots of pictures since it doesn't cost me anything to develop them)
that'd be about 20 DVD-Rs roughly. I save all my files in RAW
format.

So, not wanting to invest in the DVD-R companies I decided to do
two things:

1) Design a redundant stoarge subsystem that could stand up to a
single hard drive failure

2) Invest in a tape backup solution that is high density.

So with the 1st option, I purchased the Adaptec 2400A IDE RAID
adapter and upgraded the cache to it's maximum of 128MB. I then
purchased 4 120GB IDE Hardrives (IBM) . Truth be told I also
store movies I've made with iMovie and MP3s here as well, but my
images are about 70GB so far.

The second, and more expensive thing I did was go to a tape device.
Not your usual find at CompUSA type tape dries, but a 40/80 DLT
tape drive and a SCSI card. This was a significant investment,
more so than the hard drives & associated controller. The drives
might have come down some in price, but they're pretty high dollar
(like another d60 body) price range and the media is $50 a piece.

but, being in the computer industry and seeing large corporations
loose things due to bad/no backups, i decided to make the
investment. That may be a bit of overkill to some, but I'm a
computer geek. However, if I were a pro and I had money riding on
these images, it would be worth the hardware investment to me. As
an amateur and a geek, it was fun to try.

Though I could have got my 24-70 F/2.8L and 70-200 F/2.8L IS lens
instead for the cost
Click to expand...
--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.
 
Michael,

You are right...I forgot my English 101 - Hasty Generalizations.

I apologize for that remark.

I am not a programmer, nor am I an expert on PC's. But working with PC's for over 12 years...in my experiences (and by no means do I mean ALL experiences), I have found many software issues are usually from those users that are lacking in computer skills. I meant in no way to insult the intelligence of those that use a PC everyday and familiar with installations and normal PC operations.

Thanks,

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
 
Wally Jarratt said:
Michael,

You are right...I forgot my English 101 - Hasty Generalizations.

I apologize for that remark.

I am not a programmer, nor am I an expert on PC's. But working with
PC's for over 12 years...in my experiences (and by no means do I
mean ALL experiences), I have found many software issues are
usually from those users that are lacking in computer skills. I
meant in no way to insult the intelligence of those that use a PC
everyday and familiar with installations and normal PC operations.

Thanks,

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
Click to expand...
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
 
Wally Jarratt said:
Michael,

You are right...I forgot my English 101 - Hasty Generalizations.

I apologize for that remark.

I am not a programmer, nor am I an expert on PC's. But working with
PC's for over 12 years...in my experiences (and by no means do I
mean ALL experiences), I have found many software issues are
usually from those users that are lacking in computer skills. I
meant in no way to insult the intelligence of those that use a PC
everyday and familiar with installations and normal PC operations.

Thanks,

Wally
--
Wally Jarratt
http://www.searcysports.com
Click to expand...
--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.
 
But way too expensive. I do the backups at my work, we use Mammoth II (60-150gb 8mm tape at $89 each), and keep 31 days worth (over 180 tapes). Even a 50gb tape backup would do, but at 1k-2k per drive plus tapes, I'd have to sell a lot of prints to even afford it.

Oh, well.

Ted
Tom Boucher said:
The second, and more expensive thing I did was go to a tape device.
Not your usual find at CompUSA type tape dries, but a 40/80 DLT
tape drive and a SCSI card. This was a significant investment,
more so than the hard drives & associated controller. The drives
might have come down some in price, but they're pretty high dollar
(like another d60 body) price range and the media is $50 a piece.
Click to expand...
--
'One click away from fame and fortune?'

http://svphoto.us
 
I am DROOLING over your RAID setup. 4x120gig drives. Is it raid 1+0 (240gigs mirrored?) or RAID 5 (120 gigs mirrored)? Either way, awesome setup!! Those DLT tapes are nice stuff. How many do you have?
 
Bogie said:
It's all automated. All I have to do is pull the removable on
Monday and take it to work, come home and slide in the other one.
Granted, I have to have the HD space to begin with, but I only have
about $500 in HD dedicated for backup purposes.
Click to expand...
You do have to admit, HDD are thankfully cheap these days:-)
Ted B.47613 said:
How hard is that?
Click to expand...
Sounds like you've got the automation worked out. I haven't a clue how to get the system to your point, so my setup is a tad bit less sophisticated:-)
Ted B.47613 said:
Work smarter not harder. Since I make (some) money selling photos,
I can't afford even the slightest chance I might lose my
'inventory'. Imagine having to start from scratch, re-creating all
those shots. Now THAT makes me tired. But if all you have are
family photos, you could live without them and just 'remember' what
everyone looked like.
Click to expand...
That's why my suggestion to back up your images as I think that losing the images, since I had it happen once, is not good.
 
MichaelT said:
Obviously the PITA factor is subjective. I do not consider the XP
capability because I always have more than a CDs worth of photo
files to archive, so any thing that does not automatcally span CDs,
to me is a PITA and I do not consder for my end user needs.
Click to expand...
But it does in a way do that. It tells you if there's too many bite to be stored on the CD than it can handle. So you choose a few less folders, write to the CD, the CD ejects. You put the next CD into the tray, pick the next set of folders and you're on your way. It's not subjective, it really is easy. If easy is subjective, then you have to say, "warning, anybody that doesn't have a brain shouldn't use this computer". The point, not too many brainless people using a computer:-)
MichaelT said:
I will stop here with another apology if I improperly stated my
"case" so that this does not turn into "one of those threads".
Click to expand...
Thanks, I'm expecting some of the children to pile on:-)
MichaelT said:
Your point of people archiving is a good one, and I was trying to
contrinute to that thought.
Click to expand...
When you describe an easy process as being a PITA, it has a tendency to cause some to not even try. I want to encourage people to backup their images as if the drive goes on the fritz, then they're dead in the water, with only an expensive, time consuming, service charge of up to a grand as the only avenue for relief. Oh! And there's no guarentees the recovery company will be successfull:-)
MichaelT said:
I will also go check out the XP native burning so that I can be
more up to date, rather than relying on my recollections of when I
had previously researched it.
Click to expand...
Good luck with your endevors.
 
Wally Jarratt said:
As for someone who states that a program will not install on their
computer (although it will on thousands of other computers, then my
response is that more than likely...it is not program but instead
either a configuration problem or more likely...computer operator.
Click to expand...
That's why Michael has a download program because he acknowledges that the program won't install on all computers and that you need to download the necessary files and make the necessary adjustments. He also states that he did this on purpose for convenience sake.

Siiiiiigh!!!!!
 
As I mentioned above, I'm an experienced user. I write software for a living (well enough to afford £10k of photography equipment easily), and know how to install it. I followed the instructions to the letter.

Michael has confirmed it's an (infrequent) issue, and in fact I spent some time last night helping him test fixes. You can see confirmation on the AC support site.

Do NOT assume I'm clueless, you don't know me! As a wheelchair user I face this attitude every day, I could do without it here.
Thomas Gardner said:
Wally Jarratt said:
As for someone who states that a program will not install on their
computer (although it will on thousands of other computers, then my
response is that more than likely...it is not program but instead
either a configuration problem or more likely...computer operator.
Click to expand...
That's why Michael has a download program because he acknowledges
that the program won't install on all computers and that you need
to download the necessary files and make the necessary adjustments.
He also states that he did this on purpose for convenience sake.

Siiiiiigh!!!!!
Click to expand...
--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.
 
Stuart Rider said:
Thomas Gardner said:
Wally Jarratt said:
As for someone who states that a program will not install on their
computer (although it will on thousands of other computers, then my
response is that more than likely...it is not program but instead
either a configuration problem or more likely...computer operator.
Click to expand...
That's why Michael has a download program because he acknowledges
that the program won't install on all computers and that you need
to download the necessary files and make the necessary adjustments.
He also states that he did this on purpose for convenience sake.

Siiiiiigh!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Stuart

Were you responding to me or to Wally. I'm in agreement with you as to the issue about the program having purposeful glitches in the installation process.
 
Archiving with CD-R (without something that spans media) is a real PITA, IMO.

That's the reason I went with DVD-R/RAM.

Also, having an external firewire 120 GB HDD as a second "backup" (and a speedy one, at that) makes it a lot less of a PITA. Until I get the data onto DVD-RAM, it's on my HDD and on the external HDD.
MichaelT said:
Thanks. I appreciate your well wishes.

I think we just differ on our definitions of PITA.

However, we both agree that the message is clear. Archive your files.
Click to expand...
--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise
 
Unfortunately I believe your step-father-in-law is representative of many people who have bought digital cameras over the past several years. I ran into a couple out in the woods last year who noticed my P&S. They had a similar model, but they said it wasn't working any more. At least they knew what they didn't know. The guy suspected that the memory card was full (it was), so I showed him how to remove the card and re-insert it, then they went off to find another card. He said something about figuring out how to download the photos when they got back from vacation.
Doug MacMillan said:
In addition to backing up our work, reach out to friends and family
who may have just recently gotten a digital camera. I have an
extreme case horror story to relate.

My step-father-in-law, who's in his 70's, bought himself a nice
Minolta digicam six months ago. I found out over the holidays that
he's been taking his CF card to Wolf's (horrors), who's been
sending the card to Atlanta and getting 4x6 prints from them. No
alterations, just straight out of the camera. When he gets his
cards and prints back, he's been deleting the images from the card
and starting all over. Since he got his camera, our family has had
a wedding, a birth, several birthdays and all the holidays. All he
has to show for most of these is uncorrected bad prints. He hadn't
even loaded the camera's software on his computer!

I spent all yesterday afternoon installing software and teaching
him how to use the card reader (which I insisted he buy when he
bought his camera) to copy his files to his hard drive. I also
taught him how to use the included software to do minor corrections
to his images. Finally, I taught him how to burn the results to a
CD (he'd never burned a CD before!) so he can take it to Sam's and
have prints made for 20 cents apiece instead nearly a buck apiece.

By now I'm sure you're thinking he must be some sort of rube.
Actually, he's a Georgia Tech grad (I know, that's not exactly
irrefutable evidence ;-)
) and retired from a 40 year career in electronic warfare. In
other words, don't assume those you know who've entered the digital
photography age are knowledgable of or comfortable with the entire
workflow.

During the course of our time together, he asked me if he could
delete images from his hard drive if he wanted to. I asked him why
he might want to do that. He was afraid of running out of room. I
pointed out that he had 38 gig of free space, and perhaps that was
a small concern.

Regards,
Doug
Click to expand...
 
MichaelT said:
A write error along
the way will render the disk useless on a reader and maybe OK on a
writer (which knows how to find some of the underlying TOC data in
some cases). But let's assume that all is OK.
Click to expand...
You stated this about a multi-session CD. So I decided to test this because if this is true, my files are in jeopardy since I write multi-session and can take weeks to fill a CD.

So I wrote a session to a fresh CD and then while writing a second session I told TOAST to abort the session. It warned me if I did the disc would be "unusable". I aborted anyway. I then verified the first session was wonderful and readable.

I then tried it on a second fresh CD by pulling the plug on my CD burner in the middle of writing a third session. The first two sessions were still safe and readable. I even copied them from the CD to the hard drive and verified them from there to make sure some other type of damage hadn't occurred.

Michael, is there another way I can test this to make what you stated true, that is to render the disc useless? If not, then I can breathe a little easier, knowing my data for each complete session is relatively safe from damage by any future aborted session.

Thanks for clarifying this.

Bob
 
Try reading those discs in a PC that doesn't have a burner. Just a CD player. Or, in a system that uses a different burning software.

I think you may find some incompatabilities in those situations.

Otherwise, it sounds like you could still read them with the same system that wrote them.
Robert Burkhalter said:
You stated this about a multi-session CD. So I decided to test
this because if this is true, my files are in jeopardy since I
write multi-session and can take weeks to fill a CD.

So I wrote a session to a fresh CD and then while writing a second
session I told TOAST to abort the session. It warned me if I did
the disc would be "unusable". I aborted anyway. I then verified
the first session was wonderful and readable.

I then tried it on a second fresh CD by pulling the plug on my CD
burner in the middle of writing a third session. The first two
sessions were still safe and readable. I even copied them from the
CD to the hard drive and verified them from there to make sure some
other type of damage hadn't occurred.

Michael, is there another way I can test this to make what you
stated true, that is to render the disc useless? If not, then I
can breathe a little easier, knowing my data for each complete
session is relatively safe from damage by any future aborted
session.
Click to expand...
--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise
 
DavidP said:
I think you may find some incompatabilities in those situations.

Otherwise, it sounds like you could still read them with the same
system that wrote them.
Robert Burkhalter said:
You stated this about a multi-session CD. So I decided to test
this because if this is true, my files are in jeopardy since I
write multi-session and can take weeks to fill a CD.

So I wrote a session to a fresh CD and then while writing a second
session I told TOAST to abort the session. It warned me if I did
the disc would be "unusable". I aborted anyway. I then verified
the first session was wonderful and readable.

I then tried it on a second fresh CD by pulling the plug on my CD
burner in the middle of writing a third session. The first two
sessions were still safe and readable. I even copied them from the
CD to the hard drive and verified them from there to make sure some
other type of damage hadn't occurred.

Michael, is there another way I can test this to make what you
stated true, that is to render the disc useless? If not, then I
can breathe a little easier, knowing my data for each complete
session is relatively safe from damage by any future aborted
session.
Click to expand...
--
The Unofficial Photographer of The Wilkinsons
http://thewilkinsons.crosswinds.net
Photography -- just another word for compromise
Click to expand...
As I believe that I stated in my post, a burner is smarter than a reader and can figure out the TOC from the "special" info on the multi-session disc and in many cases read the disc, because it is a burner. A CD reader should not be able to. I think it is still risky as the disk is in a somewhat "unfinished" state, and it can be written to, which means that some of the special info or other files could be shut out to render the disk not readbale eby anything.

In general, I am sure that you are safe, but the purpose of archive (IMHO) is for those extraordinary situations when all goes wrong.

We all have to chose our paths and se what works for us and how much effort that you want to put into it. There is much more information at the link that I put in my original post on this subject if you want more details and opinions.

I hope that I have helped.

--
Regards,

Michael Tapes
(YarcPlus - Archive Creator)
http://www.PictureFlow.com
http://www.michaeltapes.com
 
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