Lea:
Most of the comments were right on point.
However, since the cost of hard drives is dropping almost by the
minuter, why not just take hard drive "A", copy to "B" and then send
"A" offsite for safe storage at another location and replace it with
a new drive "C".
Assuming your images average 10MB each on disk, 500GB ( 500,000MB )
holds something like 50,000 images. A replacement 500GB drive must
be under $500 so the cost of this storage is about 1 cent per image -
a trivial cost to insure the integrity of the image.
Perhaps you could find a friend / business associate who would be
willing to swap offsite custodianship with you so you hold their disk
and they hold yours.
Given the fragility of computer media of all sorts, I think that the
following is a reasonable scheme for backups the balances cost,
convenience, and efficacy.
1 copy in the computer - direct access.
1 copy in the computer room - USB / Firewire access.
1 copy in a safe in the building / residence.
1 copy offsite far enough away to be immune to a common disaster like
a flood or a tornado.
That means equipment cost to provide backup storage media would run
something like 5 cents per image - not too large a number.
The one in the safe should be considered protected from water and /
or storm damage but not from fire damage. Most safes available to
ordinary folks are fire rated to protect paper. So if the interior
only gets up to 350 degrees F., the contents are considered safe. I
doubt that any computer storage media would be completely intact
after sitting for an hour or so at 350 deg. certainly no CD or DVD
would survive that. Offsite protects against fire.
That being said, my own condition is backing up to the first 3 on the
list and getting a safe and a fourth hard drive is on my to do list.
When I get that, I'm looking for an offsite custodian who would
supply a safe at their location for my stuff and theirs and share the
safe at my location for their offsite storage.
For my really crucial images for which I can't bear the possibility
of loss, I already have about 10 copies distributed across the
country to trusted places but that amounts to only about 12 CD's full
of data. Which reminds me I have to burn a new set and send them off
- CDs don't last forever and need to be recreated from time to time.
Cheers,
James
At 09:34 AM 12/14/2006 -0600, you wrote:
I'm just throwing this out there to spark a bit of discussion while
I archive some files.
I am dumping 500 gigs of images from hard drive 'a' to hard drive
'b'. Hard drive 'a' will then be erased and used for more files.
Hard drive 'b' will be cataloged and stored. These are client files
and this will be my only archive of these files.
I used to burn them to dvd but I had two discs fail so gave up that
method as a way of archiving.
So my comment is this: I used to think it was absolutely necessary
to keep two and sometimes three copies of client files on various
hard drives but it occured to me that when I was shooting film I
didn't run around making copy negs of those images just to have a backup.
Why do we drive ourselves nuts having multiple copies of digital files?
I know hard drives fail. I also know darkrooms flood and houses burn.
What do you guys think of this? One copy and take our chances...just
like in the old days with film.
Lea
James Schenken
