Using High Cap SDHC cards or ExpressCard as backup.

[Olf]

We had a thread on here recently about the merits of different backup types. I'm finding external harddrives too slow, over home network storage too slow and files from my HD cam too big (gig a minute).

Incidentally I've just bought a ExpressCard SDHC memory card adaptor for my Mac Book Pro and boy it's fast. A bit of research tells me maybe up to 3 gig per second! That sort the speed issues that I'm getting upset about!

So, how reliable do you think SDHC cards or ExpresCards would be as a long term copy for backup of photos and video?

ExpressCard first report:

http://theappleblog.com/2008/10/29/expresscard-gad...

SDHC.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-32GB-Secure-Digi...

[Olf]

Did some experimentation on this at the weekend using an 8gb SDHC and the expresscard to store and edit movies on. Worked really well. The card supports a very useable data transfer rate. I think a 32gb card will be a superb way of keeping a read only archive of all photos I've ever taken all mounted in an Aperture library.

This si good if you're a laptop only person who doesn't want to continually frig around with external HD's / cables / powerpacks etc.

[nick_bbb]

I'm a laptop only user, my laptop has 400gb (2 X 200gb) drives in it. Problem is my photos from 2008 alone are nearly 200gb. I know you can get 100gb CF cards now but I think it would be expensive to buy a few of those.

I know what you mean about data transfer rates to external HDs though it is a PITA.

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

At £250 ish for that card you can get 3TB of disk storage. And the transfer rate won't be great believe me. If your external drives are slow then they'll be USB or Firewire. If you can get a good eSATA adapter they'll be the same speed as internal drives. eSATA drives give a good 50mb/s write speed. Most flash cards get nowhere near that.

[fergusd]

Flash cards are not a good idea for long term archival storage.

Data written to them does not last anything like as long as a hard drive.

Fd

[Podie]

fergusd said:

Flash cards are not a good idea for long term archival storage.

Data written to them does not last anything like as long as a hard drive.

Fd

Agreed - they have a finite lifespace in terms of read/write cycles too.

Convenient it may well be, but there is a price for that. Although many CDs and DVDs claim x number of years lifespace, I'd still err on the side of caution there too.

A proper backup solution with eSATA drives in RAID formation is the best solution, IMO.

[Olf]

yep it's 10 years and 100,000 write cycles. But I can live with that if I'm using it as a daily substitute for the hassle of slow external HD's where long term duplicates are held.