Memory cards or external hard drive?

[baceball6]

I bought 5 4gb cards to start with my new camera

I am wondering what kind of thought this is....I am contemplating using memory cards as my way of keeping photos. I would fill one card then put it away in a safe place and use another, is this stupid?

another option is an external hard drive which I know are cheap these days.

i could also burn cd's with pics am i right?

tell me what you guys think

[Jon]

It's going to be expensive, I can say that. Especially if you start shooting RAW. It doesn't provide any kind of backup, either. A 100 GB external drive is probably about the same price as those 5 cards and has 5x the capacity.

[sania4]

i have 2 4GB cards

and three hard drives

750 GB
500 GB
250 GB

in the 750 GB i store all the raw files
everything i shoot and i have it in a safe place
it is my back up hard drive

in the 500 GB one i store all the final images after , selection and post production
images ready for printing
also kept in a safe place

and the 250 GB one is the work in progress that i have it with me at all times

it is very important to have back ups at least two
and it will be good if you keep them in separate places.

a month ago thieves broke into a friends house and they stole among other things all of his hard drives - computers - cameras , basically all of his stuff.
he lost 5 years worth of work.

you can also use cd's and dvd's but after a while you end up having too many,
they take up too much space.

[baceball6]

good idea on the multiple hard drives, i have a 150 gb one now i use for all my point a shoot pics and random stuff

i thought the multiple cards would be a bad idea

i see the 500gb drives are almost a dime a dozen these days

i will probably go with at least one 500gb drive at this point.

do you guys recommend shooting everything in a raw format?

[nadtz]

Considering you can get a tb of storage for a bit over a hundred dollars in the US, this is a no brainer. Nothing wrong with having multiple CF cards though.

[tvphotog]

That total of 20 GB on all your cards may be used up during a trip or even a couple day shoot. You might just buy a portable Hyperdrive to download stuff during a trip or job, and wipe the cards clean and use them again.

I know you asked about external hard drives for storage and safe-keeping; this is just another thought for on-the-job.

[LostShootingStar]

I think the external hard drive is the smarter choice here. It will be way cheaper from a dollar per megabyte standpoint http://m08o1124znfu179.imageshacknow.info/img/2465/o09a0208gstn/POTNsmile.gif
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