[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

["LAURIE SOLOMON" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

>I would not use CDs either for several reasons. They don't seem to be as
>reliable as HDs.

Not in my experience, Of recent given the newer large capacity 7200rpm EIDE
drives, I have experienced a lot of hard drive failures with several taking
place within a month or two of purchase and others within a year or two of
purchase.  And yes I have also experienced a number of CD failures; but they
usually became ovbious when burning them such that they had to be thrown
away because they were not usable (not readable nor writable); however, all
this meant was the cost of the CD and the waste of some time.  Upon being
notified by the software that the burning in was unsucessful, I just had to
start over again with a different CD platter.  There were no surprises as
might be the case with a hard drive that fails some time after the file was
written to it.  All my hard drive failures have resulted in lost data as
well as lost time and effort; most of my failed CDs have resulted mostly in
just lost time and effort not data.

>They have only a low capacity which poses a major hassle if
>you have to back up many GBs of data (switching CDs all the time). Burning
>CDs is fairly slow.

Yes to both; but some of this can be avoided to some extent by switching to
DVD.  The cost of a DVD burner is about that of a 180 - 200 GB hard drive
and the DVDs are about $1 0r $2 each and coming down in price. But I fail to
see how the hassle of switching CDs or DVDs is any greater than the hassel
of pluging in and switching between two or more removable hard drives of any
size (one could use the smaller portable USB and Firewire drives but they
have just as small iof not smaller capacity than do CDs).  As for time, Hard
drives are definitely faster than burning a CD but they are also susceptible
to magnetic fields which CDs and DVDs are not; so I guess we are talking
about trade offs and preferences.

>They use up much more space then HDs.

I assume you are talking about an archival collection and not a single CD or
DVD.  Yes, depending on the size of one's archive; but this has some
disadvantages as well - the more files you have on a medium, the greater the
need for an index and the time to construct it for purposed of not only
identifying what is on the media but for locating it on the media.
Moreover, the greater the loss should something happen to the media when it
is of larger capacity.  If you have several hundred GB of files and you are
using a mirrored hard drive storage system consisting of pairs of 200GB hard
drives, you would need space to store four physical hard drives if you
needed 300GB for your archive collection and another 300 GB for the backup
hard drive.  If those drives are swappable to make their use easy or
external for the same reason, they will take up a sizable amount of desktop
real estate or shelf/storage locker real estate and they would be weighty as
compared to CDs or DVDs.  If they were internal drives, there would be the
time consuming hassles of installing and uninstalling the drives whenever
one wished to use them.

>The are not rewritable unless you use CDRWs which are even a bigger hassle
then CDRs,etc.

If you are using hard drives or CDs or DVDs for archiving purposes, you
should have no need for rewritable properties. And if you did need to
rewrite for any reason, replacement CD and/or DVD blanks are relatively
cheap so as to be considered throw aways.  Moreover, if one's archive is
expanding in size nad numbers of files, it is cheaper and easier to add CDs
and DVDs to the collection than to go out and buy a new hard drive of larger
size to replace an exisiting one or an additional hard drive to supplement
existing ones.

As I said, it all boils down to one degree or another to personal
preferences and trade-offs.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Robert Meier
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 3:57 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans




>-----Original Message-----
>From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
>If you are speaking primarily of a non RAID array where the mirrored
>drives are achieved by copying files from one hard drive to another
>manually, I fail to see how that is less hassle than burning CDs.  But
>in the end it is your decision;

I would not use CDs either for several reasons. They don't seem to be as
reliable as HDs. They have only a low capacity which poses a major hassle if
you have to back up many GBs of data (switching CDs all the time). Burning
CDs is fairly slow. They use up much more space then HDs. The are not
rewritable unless you use CDRWs which are even a bigger hassle then CDRs,
etc.
But I agree with you that a RAID system is not the best solution either if
your main concern is backup. Personally, I have a big external HD that I
only connect to the computer when I do a backup. The backup is done
automatically once a week (I only have to remember to connect the HD). If
you need to bring the files to other places get an extern USB2/Firewire HD.
Otherwise just use a relatively cheap removable HD. Both approaches are
quite reliable and simple. In addition if you get a BAD virus it will only
wipe out the HD in your computer and not the removable one (if it's not in
the computer).

Robert

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