[filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans

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

>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.

First, SOME USB devices including some HDs will not work off of a hub
(powered or unpowered) but need to be pluged directly into the USB
controller or Root Hub.  Second, I am not sure that it takes less time -
maybe the same amount of time but not less.  Thirdly, I do not understand
what you mean by being able to leave the computer unattended in the case of
a hard drive while needing to attend to and switch CDs/DVDs.  Obviously the
degree to which one can  leave the attached hard drive unattended depends on
what one is doing (i.e. moving or copying already existing files in already
existing folders to the USB hard drive from some other system hard drive or
moving and copying image files from an existing hard drive to the USB hard
drive while organizing and rearranging those files into new or different
folders on the USB hard drive or taking files from folders on different
partitions on the system hard drive or maybe several system hard drives and
coedifying them into a single file system on a single partition ont he USB
drive or onto different folders on different partitions ont he USB drive).
Obviously you are correct that you can leave the system unattended if your
USB drive is the same size or larger than your system drive and you are
moving or copying verbatium folders and files from a single partition on a
single hard drive to a single given partition on the USB drive.  But if that
is not the case, you have to attend to the processing of the files with as
much concern and involvement in time and effort as if you were transfering
the files to CDs/DVDs. I know that often I frequently have different working
folders containing differetn images that may be on either different physical
drives or different partitions, which when it comes to archiving them I want
them together in the same folder for archiving purposes.  There is no way
that I can assemble such compilations on a HD or a CD or a DVD without
attending to the process in one fashion or another with each fashion taking
about the same amount of time and effort.

>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.

I did not say it was more important.  I said:
        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.

In other words, the larger the storage space and the more different folders
and files one has in it the more difficult and time consuming the task can
become.  If one has a CD with ten folders containg twenty files each, it is
easier to construct a usable index which can be searched faster and easier
than if one has a HD with 50 folders containing 50 files each.  The later
tends to take more thought and effort to construct and organize in a
meaningful way than the former.  It also tends to be easier to add to or
reconstruct or reorganize at a later date as one adds more files, more
categories, or different elements depending on the users current needs and
interests.

>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.

(Smile)  A miscommunication that was the result of a poor choice of terms or
phrasing.  In the comments you cite, I did not mean mirrored drives in a
RAID array; I was referring to merely duplicate hard drives (a working drive
and a backup drive in which both contained the exact same data). This was
the sense of the concept which was meant by the original poster when he
described his intended setup.  I agree with you concerning the use of
mirrored RAID arrays for this purpose or even stripped RAID arrays.  My
intent was only to suggest that if one was archiving image files, one would
want a working archive copy and a backup archive copy on two separate and
distinct media be they HDs or CDs/DVDs; thus one would be talking about
needing space (desktop real estate and/or sehelf space to store not just one
single HD but pairs of hard drives).

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

Put a spindle of 100 CDs on a scale some time and compare its weight to that
of an external hard drive. At best they are about the same; the same is true
for space.  If you add the slim jewel cases for the CDs there is an
additional increase in weight and space requirements; but it is relatively
minimal comparatively speaking.  You keep talking about a single external
HD; but I would suggest for archiving purposes you need at minimum two such
hard drives where one serves as a backup for the first.  Since the point of
the archiving is to remove the image files from one's system working HD to
free up that space, you would need one external hard drive to store the
image files for the archive on and a second to serve as a backup.  I contend
that two such drives combined are heavier and take up more space under a
number of different circumstances than is the case for CDs/DVDs.  The only
time that this may not hold would be if the hard drives were completely
full; otherwise partially full drives wouldtake the same space and have the
same weight but their contents would require an equivalent of fewer CDs or
DVDs to match the used storage space.

But I did not mean to get into a prolong debate, so I am going to drop the
subject now.  It really boils down to both preferences and the sorts of
trade-off one is willing to make and accept.  I said that in my other posts
and I will say it here.
-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Robert Meier
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 10:56 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] RE: keeping the 16bit scans




>-----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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