Oh dear god

[leightonjames]

Just got back from new york and i have found out that the heads on our hard-drive have gone. Had around 100GB of pictures on that thing and god knows what else. It currently lies with a 30£/hour guy in the disaster recovery unit and things arent looking too good. And to think i was going to get an external hard-drive only a couple of weeks ago. Fingers crossed he can get it back but this is a warning, if your as stupid as me;

GET AN EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE NOW!!!

[Jenx]

leightonjames said:

GET AN EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE NOW!!!

After a scare I've now got 3. 1 for backup, and 1 each for general photos and wildlife, so I've got 2 copies of everything

Martin.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

Jenx said:

leightonjames said:

GET AN EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE NOW!!!

After a scare I've now got 3. 1 for backup, and 1 each for general photos and wildlife, so I've got 2 copies of everything

Martin.

Can't have too many copies. I've even got one in a fire safe.

[GetCarter]

I have a set of 10 DVD's in another location

And I STILL get burned every five years or so.

[jagdpanther]

Once I reach a certain level, I backup onto DVD, but I also have an external harddrive for just such occasions!

Need another few though...

[baz7175]

I always have people asking why I have the externals....I've just shy of 10 years of pics on my photo pc (yes I'm a techno geek) - 1 pc for normal stuff, 1 for photography only and 1 for music only (used like a jukebox). I've 2x750Gb externals which hold backups of the 10 years pics from the photo pc and 2x320Gb externals hold recent stuff and one normally goes away with me when on a longer trip so that I have a backup of whatever goes onto the laptop...

With the prices of internal and external drives being so low these days it's not even a big hit in the pocket to get one and have an extra layer of safety should something go wrong some day with one of them

And if you visit the states you can get it even cheaper again - I picked up my 750's when out in California at the stateside HQ of my company for peanuts (ok not peanuts but think they were the equivalent of around 100 squid, they're the Maxtor jobbies and are very robustly made too, as they've been all over the world with me since they were picked up in January '07).

[FunkyNige]

leightonjames said:

GET AN EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE NOW!!!

Uhh, you do realise external HDs are just internal HDs in a fancy box, don't you? They're just as likely to fail as ingternal so either get more than one or backup on DVD regularly...

[slartibartfast]

Jenx said:

leightonjames said:

GET AN EXTERNAL HARD-DRIVE NOW!!!

After a scare I've now got 3. 1 for backup, and 1 each for general photos and wildlife, so I've got 2 copies of everything

Martin.

similar situation here, i repair pc's, laptops and printers for a living (been doing it 21 years now) and i had a laptop hard drive fail on me last year, fortunatly i only lost 2 weeks worth of photos and i already had my data backed up on a 2.5inch disk caddy, since then i backup every 2 weeks and i have 4 hard drives with identical copies or updated copies

BACKUP! thats what we've been telling people for 21 years LOL

Paul

[Deva Link]

GetCarter said:

I have a set of 10 DVD's in another location

And I STILL get burned every five years or so.

How often do you change them? Recordable DVD's (or CD's) are not good for long term storage.

[fluffnik]

Bummer.

I took a couple of DigiMate IIIs with 80GB disks to Brazil with me - great bits of kit.

As well as being USB disks they're standalone data dumps too - switch on, plug in your card and press copy.

I got mine on eBay - £25 + disk is about right.

[GetCarter]

Deva Link said:

GetCarter said:

I have a set of 10 DVD's in another location

And I STILL get burned every five years or so.

How often do you change them? Recordable DVD's (or CD's) are not good for long term storage.

I have two PCs with hard disks mirrored, two external 250Gb hard disks mirrored, a Mac with all the Tiffs, my website (in USA), my photobox site (UK), and every five years I burn everything onto DVD and send to another postal address.

... That's how much I've been burned in the past.

As soon as the bomb goes off, it'll mean nothing mind.... 'cos they'll all fry.

[Deva Link]

GetCarter said:

Deva Link said:

GetCarter said:

I have a set of 10 DVD's in another location

And I STILL get burned every five years or so.

How often do you change them? Recordable DVD's (or CD's) are not good for long term storage.

I have two PCs with hard disks mirrored, two external 250Gb hard disks mirrored, a Mac with all the Tiffs, my website (in USA), my photobox site (UK), and every five years I burn everything onto DVD and send to another postal address.

... That's how much I've been burned in the past.

As soon as the bomb goes off, it'll mean nothing mind.... 'cos they'll all fry.

If you're relying on recordable DVD's being readable after 5yrs then that's quite possibly far too long. Kept in ideal conditions, it's reckoned that 2yrs is more like it.

[_dobbo_]

I think 2 years is a bit pessimistic. I've just pulled out 3 random DVDs burned over 5 years ago and every one worked fine. I don't know what ideal conditions are but mine are treated like frisbees!

Saying that, I wouldn't rely on DVDs or for long term backups because whether they last 2 or 10 years, chances are they wont last.

Edited by _dobbo_ on Wednesday 27th February 22:48

[EmmaP]

I thought everybody backed up? What happens if you get a fire or are robbed? All my work is stored away from my office as well as on the HD and on CD.

Sadly disasters like this are a lesson. Really feel sad for you.

[stigmundfreud]

Good topic, sorry to hear of the loss mind you!

I'm off to the states in a few months and not taking the laptop (OH would kill me if I spent my time processing!). Is there a handy device that I can remove the flash card from the camer and plug it into to copy?

Bit like you can put a flash card into a printer, only this time to a little portable hdd unit of sorts?


eta next time I'll google first then ask -> http://shop.cd-writer.com/catalog/xsdrive-drive-sm...

Edited by stigmundfreud on Thursday 28th February 04:52

[slartibartfast]

yes, a USB card reader, £12 from T'asdas, i use mine all the time to download photos instead of waiting for an hour if downloading from the camera

Paul

[slartibartfast]

slartibartfast said:

yes, a USB card reader, £12 from T'asdas, i use mine all the time to download photos instead of waiting for an hour if downloading from the camera

Paul

Edit:-

sorry, just re-read your post.....ain't heard of anything like that, Although some pocket pc's take compact flash, i've got a HP Ipaq H2200 which has a SD card (2GB) AND a slot for compact flash so if i wanted i could copy the contents of the compact flash to the SD card.......there, sorted.

HP H2200's go for around £100 these days.


Paul

[Rude Girl]

stigmundfreud said:

I'm off to the states in a few months and not taking the laptop (OH would kill me if I spent my time processing!). Is there a handy device that I can remove the flash card from the camer and plug it into to copy?

Yes there is, in fact loads of options if you want to spend a bit of money. We have a couple of Digimate IIIs (fluffnik mentioned them earlier), which is a box aa tiny bit bigger than a PDA phone, with multiple card slots in - you put a laptop hard disk in and away you go (rechargeable). That's the cheapest option I think. We use them in conjunction with 2 or 3 1gb cards; they take 2 or 3 minutes each to download.

Or you can get all sorts of fancy stuff that is effectively the same thing but some have screens so you can view your pics in the box.

[JustinP1]

Deva Link said:

GetCarter said:

Deva Link said:

GetCarter said:

I have a set of 10 DVD's in another location

And I STILL get burned every five years or so.

How often do you change them? Recordable DVD's (or CD's) are not good for long term storage.

I have two PCs with hard disks mirrored, two external 250Gb hard disks mirrored, a Mac with all the Tiffs, my website (in USA), my photobox site (UK), and every five years I burn everything onto DVD and send to another postal address.

... That's how much I've been burned in the past.

As soon as the bomb goes off, it'll mean nothing mind.... 'cos they'll all fry.

If you're relying on recordable DVD's being readable after 5yrs then that's quite possibly far too long. Kept in ideal conditions, it's reckoned that 2yrs is more like it.

I think it depends on the conditions they are kept in.

Although it will be a ballache I have found CDRs to last a decade with no probs. They are best kept in the dark, literally, for maximum life. I have done some tests with sunlight and sunlight killed one in a few weeks left on a windowsill.

Though to be honest external drives are so cheap nowadays, there is no excuse I can see for not using one. Even the internal drives for PCs can be RAIDed together so if there is a catastrophic failure, you can at least do some jiggerypokery and buy a new drive and duplicate the files over again.

If you are using a PC/Mac for business then for the sake of £100 or less it is now silly not to.

[stigmundfreud]

I would recommend Mozy but I fell for it and its a huge fooking con.

Great actually for backups but if you want to delete a file it will then eventually be deleted from Mozy as they term that as archiving. I found that out AFTER paying the £££ for it