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OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-19 by michael3442

Suggestions needed. I need to take a step up the ladder of managing my 
digital files, having just found myself out of hard drive 
space. Thinking that now would be a good time to lay down a foundation 
for the next few years, I'll be migrating to a new C: drive 
and would like to hear opinions on how to manage it. By this I mean 
partitioning, and how many, where to put Photoshop (Elements), location 
of scratch disks (yes, Elements has these), location of My Photos, 
location of Windows' swap file, use of a 2nd physical drive, and 
supplementary USB drives. And how do you keep all this under control? I 
realize this may be a big subject, but your assistance will be much 
appreciated and when it's all over will likely avoid a lot of screwing 
around at a later date. Thanks.

-Michael K

OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-20 by Christopher L. Johnston

Here's how I do it.

 

I have three machines in my office.

 

1] Bookkeeping, old and slow doesn't need to be new and fast, 1drive with
redundant back-ups to jump drives. Not connected to the net never will be.
No risk to financial data to virus or external hack.

 

2] Office machine, new, screaming fast 3GB ram, single monitor,  3 SATA
drives, 1-C Drive80GB, smallest I could get in Namibia, 160GB D-Drive Data,
160GB E-Drive, music and photos + External IDE 250GB for backing-up
everything. Only machine connected to the net.

 

3] Photo-machine, Blistering fast, 4GB Ram, dual monitor, 80GB C-Drive,
mirrored Raid 1, 320GB SATA drives for photo storage, 160GB SATA drive for
Music files, external 1TB firewire back-up. No risk to data to virus or
external hack.

 

All the Drives on my office machine and photo machine are rack mounted so I
can pull them and put them in the safe when I leave the office for extended
periods.  I do not partition drives, Storage is cheap, files are big.

 

Christopher L. Johnston

Johnston-Namibia c.c.

PO Box 354

Omaruru Namibia

 <mailto:chris@...> chris@...

 

"Sic  parvis magna"

 

 



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

Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-20 by dealy663

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "michael3442"
<michael3442@...> wrote:
>
> Suggestions needed. I need to take a step up the ladder of managing my 
> digital files, having just found myself out of hard drive 
> space. 

Check out The DAM (digital asset management) book by Peter Krogh. It
offers a pretty thorough explanation of his system for managing
photos, backups, archiving and databases. You might not want to go as
far as he did, but there are many ideas he describes that are worthwhile.

I've been working with computers as a software developer for over 20
years now so I have a fair amount of knowledge about how these things
work. Using a database system for managing your photos can be a pain
to manage, but its really nice when you can type in a few keywords and
perform a search over 30,000 images to locate the ones of interest. As
far as archiving is concerned, the main thing to strive for is redundancy.

I use a combination of mirrored hard disks, DVD ROMs, and external
hard drives. Once my images come out of the camera, there are always
two copies of each one.

Derek

Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-20 by Keith Zimmerman

I use a rather simple method of managing my photo files.

To start with, I keep all my photo files in the My Photos folder in 
My Documents.  Then, I have an external harddrive that I copy the 
entire My Photos folder to on a weekly basis.  On a monthly basis, I 
copy the library of my raw files and finished files to DVD-R.  I 
make two copies, which I store in two locations, one is at home, and 
the other is in my desk at work.

I have used this "system" since I switched to digital and it works 
for me.  It is simple and I have four copies of my photos.

keithz


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "michael3442" 
<michael3442@...> wrote:
>
> Suggestions needed. I need to take a step up the ladder of 
managing my 
> digital files, having just found myself out of hard drive 
> space. Thinking that now would be a good time to lay down a 
foundation 
> for the next few years, I'll be migrating to a new C: drive 
> and would like to hear opinions on how to manage it. By this I 
mean 
> partitioning, and how many, where to put Photoshop (Elements), 
location 
> of scratch disks (yes, Elements has these), location of My Photos, 
> location of Windows' swap file, use of a 2nd physical drive, and 
> supplementary USB drives. And how do you keep all this under 
control? I 
> realize this may be a big subject, but your assistance will be 
much 
> appreciated and when it's all over will likely avoid a lot of 
screwing 
Show quoted textHide quoted text
> around at a later date. Thanks.
> 
> -Michael K
>

Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-22 by michael3442

Thanks for the ideas - from straightforward to complex. Now does anyone 
have a good idea on how to handle the scratch files for best 
performance? Adobe allows for four and they can be put on any drive. Is 
there a need for more than one? And what about Windows' swap file? 
Should that be on a drive without scratch files?

-Michael K

RE: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-22 by Alan Kearney

I run PS CS 2 on a PC laptop w/2 internal drives in a RAID 0 configuration.
I can only use the "C" drive for my scratch drive and I've never had any
trouble - system is Win XP Sp 2, 2 gigs of RAM, 2 - 80 gig 7200 rpm drives
in RAID 0.

 

And I run PS CS 2 on a dual 2.7 GHz G5 w/2 internal SATA drives and 2
external SATA drives in a Firmtek enclosure. OS 10.4.9, 6.5 gigs of RAM. On
this machine I have my Apps and OS on one 300 gig drive, my Docs on another
300 gig drive, my 2 backups on an external 250 gig SATA drive and Scratch is
a dedicated 150 gig drive. Again, no problems with this setup either,
although I just acquired the 2nd 300 gig Seagate drive and I'm thinking of
doing a raid on the Mac.

 

Alan

 

  _____  
Show quoted textHide quoted text
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
michael3442
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 12:54 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

 

Thanks for the ideas - from straightforward to complex. Now does anyone 
have a good idea on how to handle the scratch files for best 
performance? Adobe allows for four and they can be put on any drive. Is 
there a need for more than one? And what about Windows' swap file? 
Should that be on a drive without scratch files?

-Michael K

 



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

Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Michael-K

Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide a nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.
   
  -Michael K


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

Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Alan Ansell

Hi Michael,
The benefits of using a RAID setup are that data is distributed across the drives under the RAID controller. So this isn't so much about gaining the extra disk space as it is about providing a failsafe backup. As I understand it, RAID technology has migrated from server systems where it was very important for file or system servers to maintain data integrity in the event of a failure. If you install a minimum of two hard disks, then the RAID controller will ensure that data is written to both disks.
Since a lot of motherboards now come with raid controllers built in, and the drivers for them come with the install disk, it means that with a little simple configuration, your machine will keep two copies of everything. I believe it's the case (since my current machine doesn't have one, my last machine did) that in the event of data loss or disk failure, you can then boot to the second disk where all of your data will still be stored. Of course, you'd then have to replace the faulty disk. So you don't have to keep consciously making backup copies of your files. Depending on your machine (PC?) the hardware shouldn't cost a fortune. I recently bought a very good motherboard that cost me £56 - and it flies. The trick seems to be to avoid the bells and whistles and look at core performance.

It's my personal opinion that the key to large file management is plenty of RAM. I don't know very much about the Adobe scratch disk except that it is a means for the program to use disk space as virtual memory. If you have plenty of RAM installed on the machine (plus the fact that you can configure Photoshop via the preferences menu to allocate system memory use) then the scratch disk shouldn't really be an issue. I've got a single 120Gb hard disk in this machine and recently managed to produde a 2Gb file from a scan! With just 2Gb of system memory, I didn't have a problem opening and editing the file. True it wasn't lightning fast but it was certainly workable.

Regards

Alan

-- 
  Alan Ansell
  aansell@...
Show quoted textHide quoted text
----- Original message -----
From: "Michael-K" <michael3442@...>
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:59:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide a nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.
-Michael K
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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

RE: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Alan Kearney

Michael, I'm another Alan and my PC used a different form of a RAID setup
than Alan Ansell talks about. His description of a "RAID" does indeed
protect your data because you automatically make 2 copies, one on each
drive, of everything! Basically one drive is a mirror of the other drive.
You don't gain any speed from this setup but you do gain a great deal of
security, especially if you don't backup on a regular basis - many people
don't:-)

 

The RAID 0 that I use takes 2 identical drives and spreads the data across
the 2 drives when writing to the drives and reads from the 2 drives when
opening a file. The gain here is speed, the computer can access the files
MUCH FASTER because the system doesn't have to "hunt" as much on one drive
for the pieces of any file. Defragging the drive(s) is as simple as if you
only had one drive, in fact only one drive appears when you open "My
Computer".

 

Is it "really worth the time/trouble to set it all up?" , absolutely! The
only "trouble" involved is having the RAID controller and as Alan A.
mentioned most motherboards come equipped with one. The only other concern
is the 2 drives have to be the same size and speed. I'm not sure if they
need to be from the same manufacturer but getting a matched pair would
eliminate any problems you might encounter.

 

And lastly, if you're building a desktop system you've no problem with room,
I've a pair of 80 gig drives in my laptop!

 

So, bottom line is what are you hoping to gain? Increased reliability or
increased speed? Like Alan A. I have 2 gigs of RAM in my laptop and I'm able
to open very large files. Photoshop CS 2 can (theoretically at least:-)) use
nearly 3.5 gigs of RAM, BUT on a PC running XP (I run Pro) your usually
limited to 2 gigs. On my G5 Mac I've 6.5 gigs of RAM and CS 2 and in the
program preferences the Mac uses a different default RAM setting than my PC
does. One thing to be very careful about when messing with allocating memory
to Photoshop, allocating too much, say 80-90 %, will probably make your PC
crash because there won't be enough left over for the OS and any other apps
you might be running in the "background". My PC, with 2 gigs of RAM total,
is using 55% of the available 1757MB, which = 966MB and would seem to mean
my PC only needs 250MB to run the OS, my Mac, w/6.5 gigs, has 3072MB
available to PS which uses 70% or 2150MB, so it looks like the Mac is a
memory HOG and uses about 3.5 gigs just to run! 

 

Good luck, Alan

 

  _____  
Show quoted textHide quoted text
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael-K
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:59 AM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

 

Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of
this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide a
nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.

-Michael K

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

 



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

Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Dana H. Myers

Alan Kearney wrote:

This is interesting.  Given the choice between RAID 0 (also known as
"striping", because data is "painted" in "stripes" across the disk
drives) and RAID 1 (also known as "mirroring"), I generally choose
RAID 1 for enhanced reliability.

From a reliability perspective, RAID 0 creates a single disk out of
two, and a failure in either disk drive effectively breaks both.
Roughly speaking, this makes the system storage somewhat less
reliable than a single disk.

RAID 1 creates a single disk that can tolerate a failure of either
disk, which makes the system storage more reliable than a single disk.
Depending on how clever the RAID implementation is, a RAID 1 volume
can provide somewhat better read performance than a single disk and
somewhat slower write performance.

> The RAID 0 that I use takes 2 identical drives and spreads the data across
> the 2 drives when writing to the drives and reads from the 2 drives when
> opening a file. The gain here is speed, the computer can access the files
> MUCH FASTER because the system doesn't have to "hunt" as much on one drive
> for the pieces of any file. Defragging the drive(s) is as simple as if you
> only had one drive, in fact only one drive appears when you open "My
> Computer".

You should see about 2x the performance of a single drive.

> Is it "really worth the time/trouble to set it all up?" , absolutely! The
> only "trouble" involved is having the RAID controller and as Alan A.
> mentioned most motherboards come equipped with one. The only other concern
> is the 2 drives have to be the same size and speed. I'm not sure if they
> need to be from the same manufacturer but getting a matched pair would
> eliminate any problems you might encounter.

Generally speaking, you shouldn't need identical drives for RAID 0, since
you're just stitching them together.  Even RAID 1 shouldn't have a problem
with two different drives - it just won't be able to use part of one drive
if it's larger than the other.

> And lastly, if you're building a desktop system you've no problem with room,
> I've a pair of 80 gig drives in my laptop!

500GB SATA drives are now cheap enough that a desktop really should run a
pair of them in RAID1 if possible.  Performance will be comparable to a single
disk and reliability will be substantially better.  It's like maintaining a
back-up all the time.

Dana

Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by David Gumbrell

Hi,

I learned the hard way, it is not safe to rely on RAID to protect your data,
you must have other backups.

If you buy a pair of identical drives to build your array, most likely at
the same time, you have a higher chance of a double failure because of batch
failure probabilities. In addition, after a single drive failure the act of
rebuilding onto the replacement drive can tip the second drive "over the
edge" due to the extra activity involved in rebuilding the array. Also, RAID
cannot protect you against accidental deletion or rogue software corrupting
files. Another potential gotcha with RAID is what happens if your
motherboard dies - can you be sure that the replacement will recognise your
disks from the previous machine as a RAID set ?

As I said, I learned the hard way - one drive in my RAID array failed, and
the other failed 3 hours later, before I had time to get a replacement drive
and rebuild the array.

The only answer is backups. All backup technologies have their limitations,
I back up to external hard disks regularly and archive important stuff to
DVDs slightly less regularly. I also have a ReadyNAS device which is a RAID
device with upto 4 disks that acts as one large network drive - I still use
RAID because it can reduce downtime in the case of a disk failure. There is
also the option of offsite web-based backups. I have only just started
looking at this and can't make any recommendations.

Cheers,

David



On 4/23/07, Alan Kearney <alan_kearney@...> wrote:
>
>   Michael, I'm another Alan and my PC used a different form of a RAID
> setup
> than Alan Ansell talks about. His description of a "RAID" does indeed
> protect your data because you automatically make 2 copies, one on each
> drive, of everything! Basically one drive is a mirror of the other drive.
> You don't gain any speed from this setup but you do gain a great deal of
> security, especially if you don't backup on a regular basis - many people
> don't:-)
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> [mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>]
> On Behalf Of Michael-K
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:59 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management
>
> Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of
> this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide
> a
> nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.
>
> -Michael K
>
>
>


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

Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Dana H. Myers

David Gumbrell wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I learned the hard way, it is not safe to rely on RAID to protect your data,
> you must have other backups.
> 
> If you buy a pair of identical drives to build your array, most likely at
> the same time, you have a higher chance of a double failure because of batch
> failure probabilities. In addition, after a single drive failure the act of
> rebuilding onto the replacement drive can tip the second drive "over the
> edge" due to the extra activity involved in rebuilding the array.

Here's a very interesting Google research paper about disk failures:

http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

One of their findings is a lack of correlation between utilization
and failure rate.  In other words, just because one drive fails in a RAID
array, it's not a given that the increased activity of re-silvering a
mirror would push another drive over the edge.

If I had multiple failures in a single box in a short period of time,
I'd be looking at the power supply quality first, or some other common
environmental factor.  The other major factor that is largely overlooked
is that the disk drive is just one of the items involved; the system controller,
system memory, cables, etc. can all induce errors.  In particular, an
undetected memory error written out to a disk can create corruption that
is blamed on the disk.

> Also, RAID
> cannot protect you against accidental deletion or rogue software corrupting
> files. Another potential gotcha with RAID is what happens if your
> motherboard dies - can you be sure that the replacement will recognise your
> disks from the previous machine as a RAID set ?

Perfectly valid points, of course.

> As I said, I learned the hard way - one drive in my RAID array failed, and
> the other failed 3 hours later, before I had time to get a replacement drive
> and rebuild the array.

That would make me think something else was wrong with the cabinet
those drives are in.  What was the nature of the failures?  I assume this
was a RAID 1 mirror?

> The only answer is backups. All backup technologies have their limitations,
> I back up to external hard disks regularly and archive important stuff to
> DVDs slightly less regularly. I also have a ReadyNAS device which is a RAID
> device with upto 4 disks that acts as one large network drive - I still use
> RAID because it can reduce downtime in the case of a disk failure. There is
> also the option of offsite web-based backups. I have only just started
> looking at this and can't make any recommendations.

Managed off-site backup is really the right solution for most SOHO users,
as long as there's adequate up-stream network connection bandwidth to effectively
use it.

Dana

RE: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-23 by Roger L Sopher

No question raid 0 doesn't add any degree of security to your data; If any
thing security would be somewhat reduced compared to a single drive since
you have two drives at risk. Raid 1 gives security but it can be at the cost
of speed. If you want both an increase in performance AND and increase in
security then one needs a raid 5 set up which will require at least 3 drives
and an interface board that supports it. Raid 5 is great since a drive can
drop out and be replaced by a fresh drive "on the fly" but it is pricey. 
 
For most, having an external drive on to which you can off load your files
is the least expensive solution. That would work well with a raid 0 basic
set up. If one of the raid drives goes south then both can be replaced and
then reconstituted from the back up drive. 
 
On the other hand if one has a a large collection and needs "fail safe"
storage that has very limited downtime potential then it probably would be
reasonable to invest in a raid five file server.
 
Just my 2 cents worth
 
Roger
 
Roger L Sopher 
rlsopher@... 
http://deCorrales.com <http://decorrales.com/>  


  _____  
Show quoted textHide quoted text
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of David
Gumbrell
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 6:00 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management



Hi,

I learned the hard way, it is not safe to rely on RAID to protect your data,
you must have other backups.

If you buy a pair of identical drives to build your array, most likely at
the same time, you have a higher chance of a double failure because of batch
failure probabilities. In addition, after a single drive failure the act of
rebuilding onto the replacement drive can tip the second drive "over the
edge" due to the extra activity involved in rebuilding the array. Also, RAID
cannot protect you against accidental deletion or rogue software corrupting
files. Another potential gotcha with RAID is what happens if your
motherboard dies - can you be sure that the replacement will recognise your
disks from the previous machine as a RAID set ?

As I said, I learned the hard way - one drive in my RAID array failed, and
the other failed 3 hours later, before I had time to get a replacement drive
and rebuild the array.

The only answer is backups. All backup technologies have their limitations,
I back up to external hard disks regularly and archive important stuff to
DVDs slightly less regularly. I also have a ReadyNAS device which is a RAID
device with upto 4 disks that acts as one large network drive - I still use
RAID because it can reduce downtime in the case of a disk failure. There is
also the option of offsite web-based backups. I have only just started
looking at this and can't make any recommendations.

Cheers,

David

On 4/23/07, Alan Kearney <alan_kearney@
<mailto:alan_kearney%40sbcglobal.net> sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Michael, I'm another Alan and my PC used a different form of a RAID
> setup
> than Alan Ansell talks about. His description of a "RAID" does indeed
> protect your data because you automatically make 2 copies, one on each
> drive, of everything! Basically one drive is a mirror of the other drive.
> You don't gain any speed from this setup but you do gain a great deal of
> security, especially if you don't backup on a regular basis - many people
> don't:-)
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> [mailto:DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>]
> On Behalf Of Michael-K
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:59 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management
>
> Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of
> this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide
> a
> nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.
>
> -Michael K
>
>
>

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



 


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

RE: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-24 by Paul Grant

I use Raid ) for my C drive with two fast 10K rpm Seagate drives.   This
give very fast start up, and program loads etc.    I really don't keep
anything on these drives but the operating system and program files.
Program files load instantly?     Additionally I have another pair of 120gb
drives that I use for working files and scratch disk.   All data is store
separately on a 1TB Lacie Firewire 800 drive.

 

Regards,

Paul
Show quoted textHide quoted text
-----Original Message-----
From: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Roger L
Sopher
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 4:18 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

 

No question raid 0 doesn't add any degree of security to your data; If any
thing security would be somewhat reduced compared to a single drive since
you have two drives at risk. Raid 1 gives security but it can be at the cost
of speed. If you want both an increase in performance AND and increase in
security then one needs a raid 5 set up which will require at least 3 drives
and an interface board that supports it. Raid 5 is great since a drive can
drop out and be replaced by a fresh drive "on the fly" but it is pricey. 

For most, having an external drive on to which you can off load your files
is the least expensive solution. That would work well with a raid 0 basic
set up. If one of the raid drives goes south then both can be replaced and
then reconstituted from the back up drive. 

On the other hand if one has a a large collection and needs "fail safe"
storage that has very limited downtime potential then it probably would be
reasonable to invest in a raid five file server.

Just my 2 cents worth

Roger

Roger L Sopher 
rlsopher@mac. <mailto:rlsopher%40mac.com> com 
http://deCorrales. <http://deCorrales.com> com <http://decorrales.
<http://decorrales.com/> com/> 

_____ 

From: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of David
Gumbrell
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 6:00 PM
To: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

Hi,

I learned the hard way, it is not safe to rely on RAID to protect your data,
you must have other backups.

If you buy a pair of identical drives to build your array, most likely at
the same time, you have a higher chance of a double failure because of batch
failure probabilities. In addition, after a single drive failure the act of
rebuilding onto the replacement drive can tip the second drive "over the
edge" due to the extra activity involved in rebuilding the array. Also, RAID
cannot protect you against accidental deletion or rogue software corrupting
files. Another potential gotcha with RAID is what happens if your
motherboard dies - can you be sure that the replacement will recognise your
disks from the previous machine as a RAID set ?

As I said, I learned the hard way - one drive in my RAID array failed, and
the other failed 3 hours later, before I had time to get a replacement drive
and rebuild the array.

The only answer is backups. All backup technologies have their limitations,
I back up to external hard disks regularly and archive important stuff to
DVDs slightly less regularly. I also have a ReadyNAS device which is a RAID
device with upto 4 disks that acts as one large network drive - I still use
RAID because it can reduce downtime in the case of a disk failure. There is
also the option of offsite web-based backups. I have only just started
looking at this and can't make any recommendations.

Cheers,

David

On 4/23/07, Alan Kearney <alan_kearney@
<mailto:alan_kearney%40sbcglobal.net> sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Michael, I'm another Alan and my PC used a different form of a RAID
> setup
> than Alan Ansell talks about. His description of a "RAID" does indeed
> protect your data because you automatically make 2 copies, one on each
> drive, of everything! Basically one drive is a mirror of the other drive.
> You don't gain any speed from this setup but you do gain a great deal of
> security, especially if you don't backup on a regular basis - many people
> don't:-)
>
>
>
> _____
>
> From: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogrou <mailto:eThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
ps.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> [mailto:DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogrou <mailto:eThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
ps.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>]
> On Behalf Of Michael-K
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:59 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhit
<mailto:DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
eThePrint@yahoogrou <mailto:eThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
ps.com<DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management
>
> Thanks, Alan. Regarding the Raid setup, are the "real world" benefits of
> this route really worth the time/trouble to set it all up? Can you provide
> a
> nutshell summary of what these benefits are? Thanks.
>
> -Michael K
>
>
>

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

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

 



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

[Digital BW] Re: OT: Computer Hard Drive & Backup Management

2007-04-24 by William Real

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Grant" 
<gphoto2@...> wrote:
>
> All data is store
> separately on a 1TB Lacie Firewire 800 drive.

We have had two external 500 GB Lacie Firewire drives fail on us. 
Fortunately we had made two offline copies of each file so we did not 
lose anything. I have read elsewhere that the quality of the hard 
drives Lacie uses is not as good as Seagate, Western Digital, etc. The 
bottom line for us is that we have to maintain at least two copies of 
every master file, ideally one online with RAID (in our case RAID 5)
and one offline (and off site). If there is no online copy we make two 
offline copies and take one off site.

After the Lacie failures we switched to Seagate external drives and so 
far have had no failures.

William Real
Carnegie Museum of Art

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.