Digital BW, The Print

Oh dear... it had to happen sooner or later.

The thing is, in addition to saving images on CD, I keep copies on my drive.

What is the normal practice?? Is it feasible to keep images on your PC as well as CD, or do most people just risk it and transfer it all onto CD???

Sorry if it's off topic.

Meanwhile, I'll buy another HDD.

Any strategies for storage would be appreciated.

thanks,
Richard
--
http://smallfield.vze.com
http://photos.smallfield.vze.com

   "640K ought to be enough for anybody. " 
   --Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981

Hi Richard,

One alternative is a portable hard drive that connects via your usb 
port.  Assuming that your computer is fairly new and you have a USB2 
connection (I think that is the designation) the transfer rate is 
fast.  You can get a very large capacity drive for a reasonable 
price.  You could back up your entire hard drive and start over with 
a clean one on your computer!

Steve

Steve


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Richard 
Smallfield <r.smallfield@p...> wrote:
> Oh dear... it had to happen sooner or later.
> 
> The thing is, in addition to saving images on CD, I keep copies on 
my drive.
> 
> What is the normal practice?? Is it feasible to keep images on your 
PC as well as CD, or do most people just risk it and transfer it all 
onto CD???

> 
> Sorry if it's off topic.
> 
> Meanwhile, I'll buy another HDD.
> 
> Any strategies for storage would be appreciated.
> 
> thanks,
> Richard
> --
> http://smallfield.vze.com
> http://photos.smallfield.vze.com
> 
>    "640K ought to be enough for anybody. " 
>    --Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981

Hello Richard,

>Any strategies for storage would be appreciated.

One option is to get an outboard USB HD box and move all your images
to it.  That way you don't have to go through the work of transferring
your system to a new larger drive.  Any number of these can be added
to a system as needs arise (as long as drive letters are available). 
For example, another one can be used for backups.  If you ever get a
new system, all your images don't have to be transferred.  No muss, no
fuss.

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

let me second Clayton's suggestion for an external USB hard drive.
They're cheap, fast, as big as you want and so convenient. I've yet to
find the downside to them. 

Bob Michaels

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones"
<cj@c...> wrote:

> Hello Richard,
> 
> >Any strategies for storage would be appreciated.
> 
> One option is to get an outboard USB HD box and move all your images
> to it.  That way you don't have to go through the work of transferring
> your system to a new larger drive.  Any number of these can be added
> to a system as needs arise (as long as drive letters are available). 
> For example, another one can be used for backups.  If you ever get a
> new system, all your images don't have to be transferred.  No muss, no
> fuss.
> 
> Regards,
> Clayton
> 
> 
> Info on black and white digital printing at    
> http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

> From: Bob Michaels [mailto:bob@...]
>
> let me second Clayton's suggestion for an external USB hard drive.
> They're cheap, fast, as big as you want and so convenient. I've yet to
> find the downside to them.

The greatest danger with any form of storage is that when you go to retrieve
data from it, it fails. This has occurred to me many times with CDs, burned
once, and then found unreadable a year or two later. The trouble is, the
only way to know if the storage medium sitting on a shelf is still good is
to try to read it, which hardly anyone (certainly not I) has the discipline
to do.

What I do is keep two copies of everything on two different internal hard
drives. In my case, I have several networked computers, so I keep them in
separate machines. But the point is that these disks are always spinning,
and the OS "touches" them regularly, so any gross failure of a drive is
discovered as soon as it happens, while there is still another copy of the
data. This sort of failure has happened to me a few times, but not since the
years when my entire collection of data was measured in gigabytes, not
hundreds of gigs. But I'm ready when it does, with 240GB in my main machine,
and 240GB in my backup machine.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...

> data was measured in gigabytes, not hundreds of gigs. But I'm 
> ready when it does, with 240GB in my main machine, and 240GB 
> in my backup machine.

A topic of much concern indeed.  My procedure is to burn all printable
images to CD, unsharpened in case the Next Big Thing in sharpeners comes
along.  Then I can retrieve it, sharpen, soft proof and print.  With scanned
images I'm not too worried since I'll "always" have the negs as a fallback.
With raw files, I dump those into an external firewire HD and then burn them
to CD.  Lots of CDs.  When the 200gb external drive gets full (it needs
about 20% headroom or so), I'll add another one, like a little RAID array,
except it'll be a terrabyte then for $100.  So, I have the raw file "negs"
stored on external HDs, and burned on CD's, and the final images burned on
CD.  I use the Mitsui CDs.  They claim a 75-year life, so I figure with
proper storage they're good for at least five, when the Next Big Thing in
media comes along.  A nice thing about the external HDs is that it is easy
to unplug them from the PC and power when not in use, maybe saving them from
the random spike that gets past the surge protectors...  

I think a big issue for a young photographer using film would be...choice of
film.  I have 40-year old negs on TriX that are fine.  C41 b&w negs, I don't
know.  Just a few thoughts on a topic I've been grappling with also.

Regards,

  --Ken Carney
    www.kencarney.com

I have two 120 Maxtor externals and like Bob, I have yet to find a downside.
On one of them I used with my laptop, I had a small partition made and used
it for a scratch disk for Photoshop. That's not the best arrangement but it
was an improvement. Transferring is a matter of drag an drop.
Joe

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Bob Michaels [mailto:bob@...]
  Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 6:50 PM
  To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
  Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Hard drive full


  let me second Clayton's suggestion for an external USB hard drive.
  They're cheap, fast, as big as you want and so convenient. I've yet to
  find the downside to them.

  Bob Michaels

  --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Clayton Jones"
  <cj@c...> wrote:
  > Hello Richard,
  >
  > >Any strategies for storage would be appreciated.
  >
  > One option is to get an outboard USB HD box and move all your images
  > to it.  That way you don't have to go through the work of transferring
  > your system to a new larger drive.  Any number of these can be added
  > to a system as needs arise (as long as drive letters are available).
  > For example, another one can be used for backups.  If you ever get a
  > new system, all your images don't have to be transferred.  No muss, no
  > fuss.
  >
  > Regards,
  > Clayton
  >
  >



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Joe Dempsey"
<jdempsey@c...> wrote:
> I have two 120 Maxtor externals and like Bob, I have yet to find a
downside.

Be a little patient. ALL magnetic media fail, and sooner rather than
later! The magnetic particles fail, and are degraded with every recall
(residual magnetism in the read head); the coating fails; the binder
fails; and the drive fails (read head plows the media). Beware!
 
Jim