How Many Hard-drives are Enough?
How Many Hard-drives are Enough? belongs to the following groups:
Former DPF MembersIt’s been a bad week at Bryan’s house. I thought I was being smart, downloading my original raw images to an external drive and then moving the images I wanted to process to my main drive for that task. I would only turn on the external drive to add new files and copy files to the main drive for processing. After all if I were to copy the files to cd it would take over 230 cds to hold my images, storage would be a hassle and access a nightmare.
Then the worst happened “operating ERROR #8” contact Western Digital! What do I do now—I contact Western Digital. Did you back up the drive they say—that was my back-up drive I say (or at least that’s what I was calling it) and my computer’s internal drive isn’t big enough to hold the 300+GB of images that I have stored on my failing drive! Your drive is still under warranty we will send a new one out to you, it should arrive in 5 to 7 days. When it arrives try to copy the files from the old drive to the new and return the old drive with the prepaid mailer. What do I do if I am unable to copy the files over—I ask? You could send the failing drive to one of these recovery companies and for around $600 US they can TRY to recover the information. *&%! I say to myself!
Well the new hard drive arrived but the old one had totally failed, nothing would transfer over. I have lost a lot of original images and hopefully learned a lesson. I still have my camera and can capture new images. My processed images are on my main hard drive and backed up off site and a few (not all) of the lost files are on cds.
The moral of my story—two hard drives are not enough, 230+ cds don’t seem all that bad to me now and I will now be backing up my back-up with a second external drive and buy some stock in Maxell or one of the other cd manufacturing companies.
Jay Ryser
I feel your pain, and I’ve been in the same situation. I’m currently using 5 external drives.
I’m tempted to try online storage – not sure the cost for 500+gb for that, though. BluRay disks may be an option soon.
Bryan Peterson replied
Jay I have my computers main hard drive backed up through one of the online companies (Roxio) but they are not set up to back up the external drives. They only charge $50 a year for that service. There may be others that will back-up external drives along with the C drive though.
debsphotos
Ohhh….Nooooo!!!! Sorry to hear Bryan!!!! I’ve been ‘devastated”by the demon hard drives!!! *-(
Bryan Peterson replied
Thanks Deb—live and learn I guess
barkeypf
I have lost photos due to my Dell crashing. Try backing up to DVD’s they hold much more than a CD.
Bryan Peterson replied
Thanks barkeypf, I’ve never tired that—I’ll give it a go.
Lisa G. Putman
Bryan, the same thing happened to me, X3. I lost a 750 GB, 500 GB drive, and a 250 GB drive, all by different manufactures. The store told me I probably just had a bad drive. The company said the recovery charges START at $700 IF they are able to recover. I had a computer savy friend give it ago, to no avail. Since he opened the drives, No recoup for the cost. Oh, well, live and learn, A hard lesson for sure. I’m finding that DVD’s hold more images than C.D.’s. I think backing up online storage is also a great idea. I wish the external drives were more reliable, they are so handy. I’m so sorry it had to happen to you, your work is so amazing!
Bryan Peterson replied
I guess we live and learn Lisa. I’ve also been looking at a stacked aray external system by Dobro (sp?). It uses up to 4 external drives to store information and constantly monitors the drives for proper working condition moving information to other drives when one starts to fail.
Lisa G. Putman
That sounds interesting! You will have to let all of us know if you try it and it works. I will have to look into this!