Photo Storage question.

Hi Y'all!
So I've come to a point where I need to carefully consider the next step as my computer's memory is starting to go down. What do you guys do?
I have one external HDD (only 500GB), but even that I still worry about its life - expectancy, like what if it just randomly stops working and I lose all of my datas/pictures.

Your thoughts and recommendations are sincerely appreciated.

I always make sure I have enough disk space inside my computer to meet my needs. Data is then backed up to external drives and online via Crashplan.

Storage is cheap. You're flirting with disaster if you only have your images on one drive.

i'd invest in two more drives to bring it to a total of three. its worth it to invest in back-up.. trust me adn everyone else who's been plagued by backup issues.

It all depends on how paranoid you are. I am pretty paranoid. I have the 4 internal 1g drives. Two are my primary and the other two are backup drives. I use to run a raid array but I now just run the drives as backups.

Then I have two separate external drives, 2g a piece. One is at home and the other i store in my desk at work. Then I have a second PC that is just a backup server. It's an older box with a bunch of disk space.

Lastly, the real important stuff, like family photos, I will burn to DVD. Stuff like wildlife pics, macro shots, goof around stuff and places I don't burn to disk. I came to this stratigy because of my family archiving activities. I have tons of old pics of places and they are just not that interesting. It's the people shots that are interesting.

Heh! JJ, when you say "4 internal 1g drives" and "external drives, 2g a piece", don't you meant "TB, as in TerraByte!

To the OP -- i have three internal drives -- one a medium-size "System" drive and two "RAIDed" into a large "data" drive. My short-term photo shoots go onto that drive and then I move them onto an external drive. Everything gets backed up onto a separate "dedicated" external drive.

But my system is older, like 5 or 6 years old. There is good technology out there for very fast I/O, such as SSD and such. USB 3.0 is also newer than my system so if your system can support USB 3.0, I'd suggest using that with external 3.0 drives. eSata is another option to look into.

I have four internal drives and about a dozen externals for backup. I'm paranoid, but storage space is cheap these days so there isn't much reason not to be.

For external drives, Firewire is the way to go.

Be sure to search online for the best price since you can often save a lot of money comparison shopping. For external drives, it may be cheaper to buy the enclosure and drive separately and then put it together yourself, which is really easy.

tonylong wrote in post #13307302
Heh! JJ, when you say "4 internal 1g drives" and "external drives, 2g a piece", don't you meant "TB, as in TerraByte!...

yes.. dang.. giga.. tarra.. whats a few zeros amongst friends.

I forgot to mention Firewire, thanks for the reminder.

But, to be specific, look at the newer Firewire 800! The older Firewire 400 really won't be an advantage over a USB2 bus, not to mention USB3. So, the question is what will the system support?

gjl711 wrote in post #13307310
yes.. dang.. giga.. tarra.. whats a few zeros amongst friends.

Heh! That's what my boss used to say before forking over my paycheck!

JJ, you made me nostalgic for when a gigabyte was so HUGE we couldn't really think about filling one.

So a theoretical scenario:
One owns all that back up stuff equipments, and SUPPOSE, what if they all fail to work somehow, anyhow?

Autonomous wrote in post #13307698
So a theoretical scenario:
One owns all that back up stuff equipments, and SUPPOSE, what if they all fail to work somehow, anyhow?

Well, that would be a real bummer....but pretty unlikely. Duplicate copies of everything + important stuff stored in a different physical location and/or online is pretty safe in my opinion. Of course having ten copies of the same thing is useless if you keep them all in the same place and that burns down/gets struck by lightning/gets sucked into a tornado.

Do you guys feel that it is absolutely important to keep all the pictures, good and bad, even though they're just merely .. pictures.

I guess I am paranoid when it comes to stuff like protections, so I'm heavily putting my thought into this, is it worth it, what'll happen, pros and cons, worst-case scenario, etc.

arrrrrr!

P.S. : nickzantop, I can probably see why you would need all that memory since your portfolio is HOT! OMG!.
btw, that indian girl, isn't she that girl from america next top model? she looks she lost a lot of weight.

Autonomous wrote in post #13307698
So a theoretical scenario:
One owns all that back up stuff equipments, and SUPPOSE, what if they all fail to work somehow, anyhow?

I leave my backup drive unplugged so that if "everything" fails I will still have my library.

Autonomous wrote in post #13307808
Do you guys feel that it is absolutely important to keep all the pictures, good and bad, even though they're just merely .. pictures.

I delete the ones that are "bad" -- out of focus, motion blur, bad composition -- there's no reason to keep a bad photo.

For ones that are "good" well...I keep 'em, others delete the ones that are not the "Picks".

Having a good backup system is not being "paranoid"!