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Oct 7, 2012 13:21:36   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
jimmya wrote:
deej wrote:
Just wondering what most UHH's are using for external hard drives and sizes? Any specific sizes and brands you prefer? Reasons to stay away from others? How often do you replace yours for prevention of failure? I save Raw and finished jpg's mainly but am moving up to a D600 anticipating data storage. All photo's altered go through cs6, nik, Lightroom, Dxo as necessary. Currently I have 40/50 k of images but my current drives are getting long in the tooth. I would not discard my old drives but will keep them for backup copy redundancy.
Just wondering what most UHH's are using for exter... (show quote)


I happen to like Seagate. I have two of them, my main is 2tb my back up, that I only turn on to backup critical files is 80gb.
quote=deej Just wondering what most UHH's are usi... (show quote)

I recently got a 2TB Seagate desktop model, so I'll see how that holds up.

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Oct 7, 2012 13:33:35   #
tg1911 Loc: SW LA
 
ronsmith wrote:
Just another thought.......wondering if anyone is using USB memory sticks for photo storage. I think you can get them up to 32 Gig now.
Any thoughts on this?

128GB, though a bit expensive compared to an external drive.

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Oct 7, 2012 14:07:20   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
tg1911 wrote:
ronsmith wrote:
Just another thought.......wondering if anyone is using USB memory sticks for photo storage. I think you can get them up to 32 Gig now.
Any thoughts on this?

128GB, though a bit expensive compared to an external drive.

I'm looking forward to SSDs. Capacity is low and price is high, but that should change soon.

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Oct 7, 2012 14:28:14   #
deej
 
PhotoArtsLA wrote:
Hitachi 4TB drives are my current favorite, followed by all other large things Hitachi. These drives are formerly IBM, but the division was sold to Hitachi. Very dependable. Western Digital makes less dependable, and beneath that, the once mighty Seagate, which has, unfortunately, poor standards of manufacture, and zero product testing before the things get shoved out the door. On a lark, I bought three Seagates at a seemingly cheap sale price once. All three were DOA, and they had to be returned.

I prefer the Thermaltake ESATA boxes with fans for my drives. Keeping drives COOL is a good thing. The bad thing about Thermaltake is, apparently, their motherboards are made of compressed bread crumbs. They just die after a year or so. An expensive habit, but ESATA speed is the semi distant cousin to Thunderbolt, and faster than most other protocols.

Unless you can find a way to burn at NO MORE THAN 4x speed, where 1x is by far the best, CD's and DVDs will fail quickly and the various computer associations do NOT recommend these for serious backup.

M-Disk is another story, and for DVD level storage, IS recommended. Just remember, in all things pit based, SLOW burning is ALWAYS preferred. Pit DEPTH is everything. I have 25 year old CD's still readable due to 1) high quality disc, and 2) 1x burning. M-Disk, well made, will last about 1,000 years.

Blu-Ray has a better, more archival chemistry than everything else burnable save M-Disk, where "etched in stone" is the literal truth. Blu-Ray offers decent size, about 25GB, of storage.
Hitachi 4TB drives are my current favorite, follow... (show quote)


I read about the m-disc and it is impressive with a reasonable price. I agree that data should be spread out over several drives and locations to minimize loss and recover-ability. Sounds like you have quite the system and from following many of your posts here on UHH I reason that you clearly know what your talking about and value your opinion. Thanks for the input.

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Oct 7, 2012 14:34:00   #
deej
 
gessman wrote:
I use multiple EZ-Dock I get from Micro Center, www.microcenter.com, hot swappable which allows drives to be turned off or plugged out when not immediately in use, hence saving wear and tear on the drive. I have .5 t-bytes, t-bytes, and 2 t-bytes. I have a t-byte in my main computer and use it to process then move to multiple externals thru the EZ-Docks. Works good.

One of my sons had a data recovery company for over ten years until he sold it and I will assure you there's no safe single way to backup and no drive is safe. They will all fail sooner or later but the less one gets used, the longer the life on average, hence the benefit of a plugin-plugout system like an EZ-Dock. There are several similar systems on the market. Raid systems are not immune and recovery from a raid system starts at about $20,000 and goes up from there. As solid state memory continues to become more and more popular, data recovery companies will diminish in numbers and the more costly recovering a drive will become. The upfront cost on a good system is the best money you can spend.
I use multiple EZ-Dock I get from Micro Center, w... (show quote)


I tried to find your EZ-DOCK and couldn't pull it up on microcenters website. Looking under NAS storage and drive bays. Is this not similar to what Jerry was talking about? Hitachi has a manufacturing facility a mile from my current home. I think that is what they do there anyway. Your input is valued and thanks!

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Oct 7, 2012 15:19:37   #
trc Loc: Logan, OH
 
I like the WD external drives for backups and image storage. I had a 1 TB WD drive that would no longer allow my computer to access it off and on, and then I just couldn't access it at all. It was about 4 years old and had a 5 year warranty. I called WD and they said that I should try to get all I could off the drive and then send it to them and they would replace it free of charge.

I talked to a guy I knew who happens to have shot for ESPN covering various Professional golf tournaments. He said he had similar problems and told me most the time the drive is OK, but, the electronic board that the cables hook into the back of the drive seems to go bad. For $20, I could go out and buy a new "case" for the physical size and type of drive it was, and then see if it works. Well, I did just what he said and it was like having a brand new drive - it worked perfectly once again!

Since I talked to WD and they said to send it in for a free replacement, I carefully took the old case off and then carefully saved all the information from the drive, and wiped the drive clean using a government approved "wipe" program so it was clean as a whistle and anything remaining only had about a 1-2% chance of being recovered. I then put the drive back into the old housing and shipped it to WD.

WD mailed me a new drive as they had promised, but much to my surprise, they sent me a brand new 2 TB drive replacing the 1TB drive I sent to them! They knew what size drive I had with the serial number, purchase date, and receipt I sent to them originally. I was more than pleased.

I have two 2TB WD drives (one purchased from WD and the other from winning the bid on eBay), one 3TB WD drive I bid on and bought new on eBay, and a drive I had in an old PC I used to have, but I bought an external housing for it and I can now use it with the Macbook Pro computer I have been using since 2006 or 2007. I also kept the 160GB internal drive out of my Macbook Pro computer when I upgraded and installed a new 750 GB internal drive, bought a $20 external housing for that 160GB drive and have it now as another external drive as well.

Tom

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Oct 7, 2012 15:26:40   #
Keithmphoto Loc: Seattle area
 
I use a "burly" from Mac Gurus. They have great info on their website for building a photo data base. The Burly's are eSATA, so they are smokin fast for backing up folders of photos. They will listen to what you need then recommend a slew of info on their site.

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Oct 7, 2012 17:19:19   #
Robbie7 Loc: Northampton. England
 
I have a 500gb external hard drive which I have had for several years now which I use mainly for my photographs. I also have a stand alone laptop not connected to the net where I duplicate all my photos" which are in turn duplicated on memory sticks. Paranoid or what...lol

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Oct 7, 2012 19:06:06   #
bcheary Loc: Jacksonville, FL
 
Personally, I use an Iomega 1 Terabyte external hard drive for back up purposes. It is relatively inexpensive and you can pick them up at places like BJ's Wholesale Club or Costco. 1 terabyte can hold a heck of a lot of data.

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Oct 7, 2012 23:58:07   #
JohnM Loc: Springfield, Illinois
 
deej wrote:
Just wondering what most UHH's are using for external hard drives and sizes? Any specific sizes and brands you prefer? Reasons to stay away from others? How often do you replace yours for prevention of failure? I save Raw and finished jpg's mainly but am moving up to a D600 anticipating data storage. All photo's altered go through cs6, nik, Lightroom, Dxo as necessary. Currently I have 40/50 k of images but my current drives are getting long in the tooth. I would not discard my old drives but will keep them for backup copy redundancy.
Just wondering what most UHH's are using for exter... (show quote)


I use My Book 3.0 seems to work just fine and are stackable

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Oct 8, 2012 00:16:06   #
ygelman Loc: new -- North of Poughkeepsie!
 
jerryc41 wrote:
deej wrote:
Just wondering what most UHH's are using for external hard drives and sizes? . . . .
I have small external drives . . . .

I got a dock like the one below, so I can use internal drives for backup. They're often less expensive than externals because they don't need a case, etc.
. . . .

Jerry, Can you tell us how to use these docks? What else needed, etc. Cost?
Thanks.

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Oct 8, 2012 01:20:03   #
uniqueimage Loc: Adelaide South Australia
 
I have discovered that whatever external drive you have that keeping it cool is a priority. I have a program that tests all my disks and my external drive was always running way too hot until I removed the side panels. Now summer is approaching for me I'm thinking to connect a USB fan or something similar.

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Oct 8, 2012 04:19:30   #
djrobins
 
A question about your external USB drives. Can these be used as primary boot drives? Thanks,

djrobins

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Oct 8, 2012 06:03:34   #
Mickey88 Loc: Central Florida
 
I started out using external drives, then I saw a drive dock, with usb connection, and liked the idea, so I bought that and started using internal drives in the dock. I then bought a duel dock with an esata connection, so I installed an esata card in my desktop, I currently have both docks connected.
I have since discovered there is a quad dock, that will be my next purchase

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Oct 8, 2012 06:46:52   #
jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY
 
uniqueimage wrote:
I have discovered that whatever external drive you have that keeping it cool is a priority. I have a program that tests all my disks and my external drive was always running way too hot until I removed the side panels. Now summer is approaching for me I'm thinking to connect a USB fan or something similar.

What program and what computer? I use CrystalDiskInfo - lots of information.

I'd like to find a similar program for a Mac.

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