[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

["Robert Meier" <filmscanner@meierlim.com>]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
>
>>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.

Well, you had bad experience with HDs and I had bad experience with
non-cheap CDs but never had a problem with HDs.

> 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);

Not in my case. I could read them after burning but a year or so later none
of the 4 cd readers and writers I tried could read them. And I did not
exceed the specs of the CDs, i.e. write them too fast.

>>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.
>
>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

You take the cable of the HD and plug it into the USB hub. That takes less
time then inserting a CD into the CD writer. More importantly after you have
done that you can leave the computer unattended. This is not the case with
CDs/DVDs where you have to switch CDs/DVDs.

>>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, because my pictures don't fit on a single CD/DVD. Even SMALL 80GB HD
can store the equivalent of more then 100 CDs.

>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.

I don't see why an index of a HD is more important then having an index of
your many dozens or hundreds of CDs.

>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.

I am not sure I follow you hear. In my post I said I wouldn't use mirrored
HDs. Why? Because of viruses, unnecessary wear, incompatible RAID controlers
if it should break, an additional component (RAID controller) that can
break, etc.

>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.

Well, a hundred CDs use up more space and are heavier then a small 80GB HD

Anyways, you seem to prefer CDs/DVDs and I sure prefer external HDs. They
are more expensive but less a hassle (in my opinion) and more reliable from
my experience.

Robert

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