It's BACKUP time!!!!

[gpb11]

There is nothing fast about burning DVDs. In fact they are actually
slower to burn than CD-Rs. (Correct me if I am wrong, please.) A
small matter though . . . the format has far worse things to be
concerned about.

The "x" speed rating is not the same between CD's and DVD's. A "1x" DVD burner is roughly equivalent to a "9x" CD burner -- making the current crop of 2x and 4x DVD burners roughly as fast at writing data to the disc as 18x and 36x CD burners.

The burners still cost several hundred US dollars . . . this for a
little rinky-dink, internal CD-sized piece of gear that will either
a/ cost a fraction of that within 2 years or, 2/ disappear entirely
to be replaced with yet another promising new format.

They're already starting to break the $200 barrier -- OfficeMax has twice now advertised a Cendyne DVD-R (2x) drive at $170 after rebates. Looks like a rebadged Pioneer.

Even the highly sought after Sony DRU-500A is in the mid-to-low $300's. Trick is finding one.

The media are still expensive too, but getting better.

Yep. But remember also that each DVD is eqivalent to 6-7 CD's, thus a $20 pack of 10 DVD's is cheaper than $10 pack of 25 CDR's. I gather than quality DVD's can be bought for even less than this.

There is still a format battle being waged with no clear winner in
sight . . . DVD-R vs DVD+R. The same for +RW vs -RW. Don't ask me
what the difference is. I don't really care . . . it is the
industry's responsibility to sort these things out and, again, they
are making a mess out of the marketplace.

I agree, but I'm sort of coming around on this as far as it goes for backups and such.

-- Lew

 

[gpb11]

Nice little article at

http://www.verbatim.com/products/images/dvd-rtechnologyupdate.pdf

-- Lew

 

[Thomas Gardner]

The problem with backing up to CD has been the awful PITA that it
is. That is what we set out to cure with Archive Creator.

Copying to a CD-R isn't a PITA. I must differ with you on this point.

Don't know about everybody else but I'm using Windows XP as my GUI.

The user simply brings up "My Photo", which is the photo file manager. User then chooses which multiple files to copy, holding down the control key and clicking any files you want selected, if more than one file is to be copies. The user tells the computer to copy the chosen files to the CD-R. It will ask you about ignoring the thumbnail information because it doesn't want to write the thumbnail info for what ever reason. And voila! two or three hundred megs written in a few minutes. When it's finished writing to the CD-R, it ejects the CD-R that was just created. I hit the finish button and I'm done. Couldn't be simpler, no PITA, well except for having to write the names of the files on the jewel sleeve I have to do that myself; in pencil of course

Couldn't be simpler.

 

[MichaelT]

The problem with backing up to CD has been the awful PITA that it
is. That is what we set out to cure with Archive Creator.

Copying to a CD-R isn't a PITA. I must differ with you on this point.

Don't know about everybody else but I'm using Windows XP as my GUI.

The user simply brings up "My Photo", which is the photo file
manager. User then chooses which multiple files to copy, holding
down the control key and clicking any files you want selected, if
more than one file is to be copies. The user tells the computer to
copy the chosen files to the CD-R. It will ask you about ignoring
the thumbnail information because it doesn't want to write the
thumbnail info for what ever reason. And voila! two or three
hundred megs written in a few minutes. When it's finished writing
to the CD-R, it ejects the CD-R that was just created. I hit the
finish button and I'm done. Couldn't be simpler, no PITA, well
except for having to write the names of the files on the jewel
sleeve I have to do that myself; in pencil of course

Couldn't be simpler.

Yes Thomas,

But have the CDs been verified in the same pass? If not then how do you know that there is not a write error?

And is XP using packet writing (I do not recall). If so this is not as reliable as real burning a disk at once. Is the disk finlaized? If not, this is not reliable.

What if you have 2 gig of files to archive to CD. How do you fgiure out where to make the split? THAT is a PITA. AC does this automatically. And it writes an index onto the CDs (even from most RAW files).

Clearly there are many ways to burn CDs. In my experience, none satisfied me and that is why I developed AC.

If XP works for you then by all means you should use it. I am not trying to convince you or anyone of any specific method being better or not. AC provides an alternate method of burning CDs tailored for photographic images that is easy and reliable, in a way that I feel is better than other methods. That is why it was created.

For those that feel that they have other means as good, then by all means they should not buy AC. We should each use the tools that work well for us. I might just note that for many people, they did not understand the strength and ease of AC until they tried the demo.

Most importantly, people should be archiving their valuable umages. THAT is the crucial item. If AC can help, then great.

--
Regards,

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

 

[Thomas Gardner]

Yes Thomas,

But have the CDs been verified in the same pass? If not then how do
you know that there is not a write error?

I can't say that a verification routine has been run. Something for me to check into.

And is XP using packet writing (I do not recall). If so this is not
as reliable as real burning a disk at once. Is the disk finlaized?
If not, this is not reliable.

Again, if you don't know then it would be reasonable for me to know, a non developer? But until you've verified your questions then neither of us know so the question is only a defensive moot developer question to me.

The disk is finalized. How do I know, because it tells me that it's readying the disk and finalizing it for use.

Have you ever burned a CD with Windows XP. The reason I ask, your questions are those of someone who hasn't done this before with this OS. The questions are too basic.

What if you have 2 gig of files to archive to CD. How do you fgiure
out where to make the split? THAT is a PITA. AC does this
automatically. And it writes an index onto the CDs (even from most
RAW files).

Now I know why you consider it a PITA, you ask too many questions. If it burns and I can load the file up into my post processor, then I'm happy. You're sounding like a salesman, not an end user. If people don't backup their images, then they don't have a backup, period.

You stated that it was a PITA. I pointed out that it wasn't. Now a flurry of tech questions that has nothing to do with the actual process of is the process a PITA. It's not. Now if you want to raise a reliability issue, that's a horse of a different color. But state your concern in the manner of, well it may not be a PITA but the reliability factors are a concern of mine and that's why I'm selling this product.

Clearly there are many ways to burn CDs. In my experience, none
satisfied me and that is why I developed AC.

And I want you to buy my product.

As a trained sales person, the most effective tool in my arsonal of sales techniques are to introduce doubt in the consumer. It's such a powerful sales technique that I feel it's unethical to use this tool. I refuse, in my sales endevors, to introduce doubt in my customers. If I ask a question, I can answer that question. I make no statement that I can't answer and if I can't answer the question, I tell my customer that I don't have the answer. "I don't know." is my direct answer.

If XP works for you then by all means you should use it. I am not
trying to convince you or anyone of any specific method being
better or not. AC provides an alternate method of burning CDs
tailored for photographic images that is easy and reliable, in a
way that I feel is better than other methods. That is why it was
created.

And has there been any commentary about Windows XP being unreliable as to the burning of CD's?

That's why your comment about developing the product. Your comment was that it was a PITA and I countered the comment by showing how easy it was and that it wasn't a PITA.

For those that feel that they have other means as good, then by all
means they should not buy AC. We should each use the tools that
work well for us. I might just note that for many people, they did
not understand the strength and ease of AC until they tried the
demo.

And according to you, you didn't understand the strength and ease of using Windows XP's built in, part of the program, CD burning program. I brought it too your attention and you've shown nothing to show that the program is not a good program.

You say you're not selling but yet here's another sales pitch that they should try the demo. Why try the demo unless the point is to buy the product.

Please don't do this to me. You've been a very nice person but you're crossing the line with this deceptive ploy of I'm not selling but try my demo. You're clearly trying to promote your program. This is fine, but at least say the truth, which is, you're promoting your program to the forum.

Most importantly, people should be archiving their valuable umages.
THAT is the crucial item. If AC can help, then great.

And if they can use the programs built into their OS, for no charge, than terrific.

Do you have any documented reason why people should not use Windows XP's CD burning program to reliably back up their images to a CD-R?

 

[Ted B.47613]

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.

My computer starts up at 1 am and does everything for me. All that is left for me to do is burn my raw images to CD when I have enough for a couple of CDs per batch, or when I want to retire some images to CD only.

How hard is that?

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.

Ted

Again, you must be very busy doing all this backing up. I'm worn
out just thinking of your backup protocol

--
'One click away from fame and fortune?'

http://svphoto.us

 

[Robert Burkhalter]

Of course, I run a
bit for bit verify on every CD I burn.

Ted

Ted,
how do you do the bit for bit verify? I'm running a Mac.
Happy New Year.
Bob

 

[William C]

I am interested in the DVD writers that hold 4.7 gigs of data and
would appreciate anyone's comments on them.

I bought the Pioneer DVR-A03 and been using it almost for almost a year
now. Having to burn one 4.7 GB disk is much better than four of five CD
disks. Yes they are more expensive than CD-R disks, but I did not want to
have a stack of ever increasing CD disks. Also I find the I can get one days
shooting on one DVD disk, many times I would have to burn two or
three CD disks. Not to mention the number of CD disks used when I would
come back from a two week vacation with tons of photos. Last time I did
it on CD there was 28 disks for a two week trip to Italy. I managed to
get all of them on 6 DVD disks. I still have my CD burner, great for burning
software, email sor other thing on my PC but for photos I will only use
DVD disk.

Bill

 

[Stuart Rider]

I'm surprised by Michael's blatent plugging of AC, particularly after the hassle regarding Yarc announcements a while back.

In spite of this I decided to try it. Unfortunately it won't install on my PC (a standard P4 running XP).

It may be a great product, but there's no DVD support, and it's proving hassle to run. So, also a PITA in my book.......

Yes Thomas,

But have the CDs been verified in the same pass? If not then how do
you know that there is not a write error?

I can't say that a verification routine has been run. Something
for me to check into.

And is XP using packet writing (I do not recall). If so this is not
as reliable as real burning a disk at once. Is the disk finlaized?
If not, this is not reliable.

Again, if you don't know then it would be reasonable for me to
know, a non developer? But until you've verified your questions
then neither of us know so the question is only a defensive moot
developer question to me.

The disk is finalized. How do I know, because it tells me that
it's readying the disk and finalizing it for use.

Have you ever burned a CD with Windows XP. The reason I ask, your
questions are those of someone who hasn't done this before with
this OS. The questions are too basic.

What if you have 2 gig of files to archive to CD. How do you fgiure
out where to make the split? THAT is a PITA. AC does this
automatically. And it writes an index onto the CDs (even from most
RAW files).

Now I know why you consider it a PITA, you ask too many questions.
If it burns and I can load the file up into my post processor, then
I'm happy. You're sounding like a salesman, not an end user. If
people don't backup their images, then they don't have a backup,
period.

You stated that it was a PITA. I pointed out that it wasn't. Now
a flurry of tech questions that has nothing to do with the actual
process of is the process a PITA. It's not. Now if you want to
raise a reliability issue, that's a horse of a different color.
But state your concern in the manner of, well it may not be a PITA
but the reliability factors are a concern of mine and that's why
I'm selling this product.

Clearly there are many ways to burn CDs. In my experience, none
satisfied me and that is why I developed AC.

And I want you to buy my product.

As a trained sales person, the most effective tool in my arsonal of
sales techniques are to introduce doubt in the consumer. It's such
a powerful sales technique that I feel it's unethical to use this
tool. I refuse, in my sales endevors, to introduce doubt in my
customers. If I ask a question, I can answer that question. I
make no statement that I can't answer and if I can't answer the
question, I tell my customer that I don't have the answer. "I
don't know." is my direct answer.

If XP works for you then by all means you should use it. I am not
trying to convince you or anyone of any specific method being
better or not. AC provides an alternate method of burning CDs
tailored for photographic images that is easy and reliable, in a
way that I feel is better than other methods. That is why it was
created.

And has there been any commentary about Windows XP being unreliable
as to the burning of CD's?

That's why your comment about developing the product. Your comment
was that it was a PITA and I countered the comment by showing how
easy it was and that it wasn't a PITA.

For those that feel that they have other means as good, then by all
means they should not buy AC. We should each use the tools that
work well for us. I might just note that for many people, they did
not understand the strength and ease of AC until they tried the
demo.

And according to you, you didn't understand the strength and ease
of using Windows XP's built in, part of the program, CD burning
program. I brought it too your attention and you've shown nothing
to show that the program is not a good program.

You say you're not selling but yet here's another sales pitch that
they should try the demo. Why try the demo unless the point is to
buy the product.

Please don't do this to me. You've been a very nice person but
you're crossing the line with this deceptive ploy of I'm not
selling but try my demo. You're clearly trying to promote your
program. This is fine, but at least say the truth, which is,
you're promoting your program to the forum.

Most importantly, people should be archiving their valuable umages.
THAT is the crucial item. If AC can help, then great.

And if they can use the programs built into their OS, for no
charge, than terrific.

Do you have any documented reason why people should not use Windows
XP's CD burning program to reliably back up their images to a CD-R?

--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.

 

[MichaelT]

Yes Thomas,

Thomas,

My apologies if my post was mis-guided.

You are right in that I use W2K as my main OS and only use XP to test (although I think that i will soon switch over to XP). I do not use the XP CD writing and did not experiment with it because from what I had read, I decided to stay away from it. Those issues being packet writing (which I do not believe in as a reliable technology) and no auto verify, and no Cd spanning. Because I had not recently resrearched those issues, I did not want to state them as facts, so I posed tham as questions, and it may have come across as confrontational which I did not mean it to be.

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.

I will stop here with another apology if I improperly stated my "case" so that this does not turn into "one of those threads".

Your point of people archiving is a good one, and I was trying to contrinute to that thought.

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.

Thanks..

--
Regards,

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

 

[Ted B.47613]

one drive goes to work with me on Mondays, and duplicate CDs go elsewhere.

As I stated in another post, the whole process is automated, using Scheduler and MS Backup, and one .bat script to copy the backups to other drives.

I bet I don't spend any more time on backups than most. Except for buring two of every CD.

Ted

PS: At work, I am the Backup Guy (among other things)! As I read once in Sun Manager magazine: "The guy who does your backups is the most important person in your company. If he does not do the job right, your company may cease to exist some day.". We do full backups (to tape) of every bit, every night, and keep 31 cycles of backups, some offsite for a week, some offsite for a month, and some for three years. Most of our data is on RAID 5 arrays, but much is on single disks. When we were using mirroring (active), we would lose about 1 disk a week (out of 500), and sometimes both sides of the mirror would go bad at one time.

I back up, but not to that extent. I don't subscribe to the two
drive in the same machine theory either since I went through a
lightning strike and lost two indentical SCSI drives. Yes, I have a
UPS ( a commercial one, not a consumer one) but this strike was so
severe it did $14,000 damage.

Jim

If you happen to lose BOTH HDs at the same time? I've seen it
happen many times, especially with mirroring.

If the CDs you made had a marginal sector that can't be read the
next time you try to?

If you have a house fire?

At any given time, I have 4 copies of every bit in my computer
case, on 4 different HDs. Each Monday, one of the drives gets
swapped offsite and a replacement brought home that evening (so
both HDs are not at home at the same time.).

Full backups twice weekly and differential all other nights.
Backups copied to two other drives, every night.

I make 2 copies of EVERY CD I burn, and keep one set at my folks
house, in a locked box (to keep grandkids out). Of course, I run a
bit for bit verify on every CD I burn.

Ted

Just a loud thoughtful reminder to take the time to back up all
your irreplaceable images today.

I just finished

If you don't have a CD burner, get one. They're cheap compared to
the feeling of loss you'll experience if you don't take the time to
install and use it to back up both your computer system HDD and a
seperate CD or ten to backup your images onto.

Myself? I have a simple desktop system. Two HDD's of the same
size with Norton's Ghost to mirror the one drive over to the second
back up drive. Should something happen to the first drive, no
biggie. A new drive is installed, fomatted and the information
from the D:/ drive is mirrored back over to the newly installed C:/
drive via the 1.44 meg floppy at the DOS prompt.

For image backup, I place a new disk in the drive. Select the
number of folders that can fit on the CD-R and hit record. When
that's done, I go down the file list until all the image folders
are backed up. Disks are so cheap that they're now throwable, so
you don't have to save the disks. Just throw the old one away
after making a new set and you can use the same jewel cases over
and over again.

Please, for those that don't have a backup plan. GET ONE!!!!!

Hope this friendly reminder saves someone from a terrible loss.

--
'One click away from fame and fortune?'

http://svphoto.us

--
Canon 1D

--
'One click away from fame and fortune?'

http://svphoto.us

 

[Ted B.47613]

I use Michael Tapes Archive Creator, and it has the option of bit level verify. Most CD burning software should have a verify option, which should verify a file on CD by reading and comparing every byte to the file on disk, which in effect is a bit for bit verify. Others may just read the directory and 'assume' if the file is listed, it is ok. That is not a bit for bit verify.

Ted

Of course, I run a
bit for bit verify on every CD I burn.

Ted

Ted,
how do you do the bit for bit verify? I'm running a Mac.
Happy New Year.
Bob

--
'One click away from fame and fortune?'

http://svphoto.us

 

[MichaelT]

it would appear that XP writes the CD as a multi-session disk, not packet writing as I had "questioned" in the previous posts.

I do not believe that multi-session is a good idea for archive, as a non-finlaized disk has its problems, and the potential for deleting the data is always there. But others may feel differently.
--
Regards,

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

 

[MichaelT]

I'm surprised by Michael's blatent plugging of AC, particularly
after the hassle regarding Yarc announcements a while back.

In spite of this I decided to try it. Unfortunately it won't
install on my PC (a standard P4 running XP).

It may be a great product, but there's no DVD support, and it's
proving hassle to run. So, also a PITA in my book.......

Stuart,

My apologies if I got too enthusiastic. I'll slow down.

If you are interested in resolving whatever issues came up in your install I am happy to help..

--
Regards,

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

 

[Robert Burkhalter]

MichaelT wrote:
[snip]

. Is the disk finlaized?
If not, this is not reliable.

I'm using Toast, latest version on OS X and I append raw files a folder at a time, as I create them, to the CD. Each time I write a "session" until the last one when the CD is full. Am I exposed here as I go. At the rate I shoot, it can take me a couple of weeks to fill a CD.

I'm assuming you meant, "finalized", and what does it mean?

Thanks for your time.

Bob

 

[Doug MacMillan]

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

 

[Stuart Rider]

Damn, how are we supposed to have a good rant when you're so reasonable? This place is no fun any more

Yes Thomas,

Thomas,

My apologies if my post was mis-guided.

You are right in that I use W2K as my main OS and only use XP to
test (although I think that i will soon switch over to XP). I do
not use the XP CD writing and did not experiment with it because
from what I had read, I decided to stay away from it. Those issues
being packet writing (which I do not believe in as a reliable
technology) and no auto verify, and no Cd spanning. Because I had
not recently resrearched those issues, I did not want to state them
as facts, so I posed tham as questions, and it may have come across
as confrontational which I did not mean it to be.

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.

I will stop here with another apology if I improperly stated my
"case" so that this does not turn into "one of those threads".

Your point of people archiving is a good one, and I was trying to
contrinute to that thought.

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.

Thanks..

--
Regards,

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

--
Cheers,

Stuart Rider.

 

[MichaelT]

. Is the disk finlaized?
If not, this is not reliable.

I'm using Toast, latest version on OS X and I append raw files a
folder at a time, as I create them, to the CD. Each time I write a
"session" until the last one when the CD is full. Am I exposed
here as I go. At the rate I shoot, it can take me a couple of
weeks to fill a CD.

I'm assuming you meant, "finalized", and what does it mean?

Thanks for your time.

Bob

A summary of Track at Once(Multi-Session) vs. Disc st Once (Single Session)

When you have the ability to add to a CD as you describe, it means that the data was written in Muli-session mode or Track at Once rather than Single Session Mode or Disc at Once.

In the Disc at Once (Single Session) - All the data is known, and the TOC (Table of Contents) is first written to the disc, and then the data is written and then the disc is closed. If a disc fails during thw writing process, since the TOC exists the data written so far can most likely be recovered in a normal CD-Rom reader or writer. Nothing else can be written to the disc, and this can be consdered a true archive because it is read-only. Nothing except physical damaga or deterioration can harm the data.

In the Track at Once (Multi-Session Mode) like you describe, the TOC can not be written because we do not know in the end what data the disc will ultimately hold. So the track is written and the TOC information (as opposed to the TOC itself) is written in a special area of the disc, and the disc remains "open". 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.

So we now have a non-finalized disc. The good news is that we can add data to it. The bad news is that until the disc is finalized it is not an official CD because there is no real TOC written. But again let's assume that all is OK. But is it an archive disc? Not in my mind.

If you wrote fileA on the first track and now you come along a week later and want to update the disc. You again write fileA (which has changed since the first week). The original fileA will be overwritten and the archive of that original fileA will be gone. Now in some cases that is what you may want, but for me...when I "archive" a file I want THAT file, and with multi-session, there is no assurance that I will get THAT version of the file back.

Anyway I think you get the idea. Multi-session is fine as long as you understand the limitations that the disc is somewhat in a technical state of limbo until it is finalized. And you do not have a true archive becasue the disc is not read-only until you finalize it. And if there are any error on the disc, you may not be able to finlalize it.

I am not saying that multi-session is bad...just that in my opinion, it is not useful as an "archive" medium because the data can be changed or lost too easily. Again my opinion.

Back-up and archive are insurance policies. And when I invest in this insurance, I want the best possible return of my data. To me that is what archive is all about.

There is more general CD burning information here that I have summarized, as well as a set of links to many sources of information on the web...

http://www.pictureflow.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=540

I hope that this has been helpful.

--
Regards,

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

 

[Tom Boucher]

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

 

[RichW]

That's quite an investment. I just bought one for work so I know. And if you have a full tape rotation ($50 a tape), that's a lot of money. I am a computer geek too, but that is really over the line. A much more reasonable solution is a raid array and an external firewire drives. And of course a CD writer for long term storage. I have a firewire case that I can pull the drive out of when I need to. Not quite as reliable as your system, but only hundreds instead of thousands. Oh well,

Rich

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