Hard Drive Solution?

sebpayne

After reading Peter Krogh's book, I've realised that I need a better solution than just the hard drive on my Mac Mini. From various machines, I have a 1x 80gb and 2x 60gb drives which could be used for photo storage. The question is: external boxes or a Linux server? I am tempted with the Linux server because I have all the hardware and there is a good package called 'netatalk' which provides a AppleTalk sharing for Linux.

Any thoughts on which one to do? What does anyone here use?

Seb

3rdPlanetPhotography

I would go with external USB/Firewire hard drives. Much more portable (if needed) and will have you a whole lot of time setting up.

Just my thought. I have Microsoft 2003 server but chose to use the drives instead because I can move them around very easy or even take them with me if I need.

digismile

After reading the same book, I too have been pondering on additional storage. In my case I am running Windows XP. I had originally been thinking about an external firewire/USB type drive, as I could take it away in an emergency. Only thing is though, I have to be here to take it away in the "emergency".

It made me much more aware of having an offsite backup. Today, I simply making another DVD backup to take offsite. However, my goal is to add an external SATA drive box with hotswapable drives.

I will backup my data hard drives to external HD's. With extra tray(s), I can simply take an entire drive offsite and rotate back another. I will continue to archive off to DVD as I add new photos.

It might seem like a bit much, but an acquaintance recently had a fire and lost most everything. It made me realize that disasters do happen.

The one thing that I really took away from Peter Krogh's book was scalability. Home many times do we upgrade our storage space and say "this will last me 5 years!" and not even have it last two. That was me, going from 4 MP jpegs to 8 MP RAW files in less than a year. The average file size increased 4 to 5 fold. I expect this will continue throughout my photographic life time.

So my advice would be to think long term. Unless the budget is such that you really only have one option, I would look to what gives you flexibility and scalability over the next few years.

Just my 2 Canadian cents ...

Brad

ivar

I would go with the loose drives for sure.
Accessible without separate wires, less noise, takes up less space, protocols, faster etc, basically much easier, less hassle.

Personally, i do run a (win server '03) 2*4disk raid 6 backup system. But that is not because of my photo's and personal stuff really. But I have the advantage of having the whole house wired with cat6 cable. And also, the server does much more than just being there for storage, so it was worth going through the extra trouble of getting everything set up. Besides this i still mainly use a separate firewire 800 harddrive. (faster)

So i guess what i am saying is: Is it just the storage you want? then definitely go with the external harddrives. I would see no reason to set up a whole new system. Why would you want to go through the trouble if a separate box does the same thing? Only if you need the system for other functions aswell, i would create a separate server.

Just my 2 euro-cents.

Ivar.

gubbs

Seb, I was in a similar situation, budget decided for me!

I bought 2 x icybox external firewire/usb2 enclosures for about £25.00 each from www.scan.co.uk

I fitted maxtor 300gb drives which were very simple to install, took 5 mins to do both.
The boxes themselves are stackable, well made and look pretty good. I plugged them into the imac and they just worked . Seem to keep cool too....

Only thing I'm not keen on is the blue led's .... look a little "max power" for my taste

CalfeeRider

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I've also just started using external IDE with a USB enclosure to backup my files and it's sooooo much more convenient than burning DVD's. Not only is it faster, but you can do incremental backups after downloading a shoot or after having done some post-processing in minutes and even completely unattended (if you want). I got a 160GB last week that will be ferried back/forth to work for offsite storage, and just got this 250gb for home use.

Jack

Frost

External HD enclosure.. tha'ts the ticket
I have a BYTECC hard drive enclosure I bought from www.newegg.com It works quite well for the ability to store huge sums of data on, and the portability to take with you on trips. Here is a link to the site with some more specifics. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145314

I like it in that you can use an older HD that you used to have in the computer before you upgraded.....or... It's an excuse to buy a new HD and reformat the old one aftet things get moved over. Either way, it's really a versatile piece of equipment.