The most cost-efficient and reliable backup storage at present is a
pair external FireWire/USB 2.0 drives. Buy two, set them up
identically. When you plug in one to save stuff to it, after
disconnecting it plug in the other and do the same thing. That way
you always have two copies of every file. The likelihood that both
drives would go bad simultaneously is infinitesimally small,
particularly if they're never plugged into the computer at the same
time. Once you have your data backed up this way, you can remove all
but the current work files from your primary work drive.
It is, of course, always a good idea to make more copies of important
data ... onto CD-R or DVD-R, as well, is fine. The key to digital
archiving is replication.
The above is essentially my archiving system. I have two 250G archive
drives in FireWire enclosures and a 160G internal drive on my primary
computer. Also a large supply of DVD-R and CD-R disks with much of
the important files replicated.
BTW: The other thing you should have are a couple of utility
applications: a good cataloging application so that you can keep a
thumbnail and file catalog of everything on the backup drives and on
the CD-DVD archive volumes on your work drive. I use iView MediaPro
(image cataloger) and DiskTracker (generalized file cataloger) for
this purpose.
Godfrey
On Jul 30, 2005, at 6:50 PM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
The puny 160gb hard drive that is used for storing and editing
photos and
images is pretty much filled to capacity. My thoughts are running
to a USB
or Firewire external drive for storage. Cost aside, would this be a
better/safer way of storing the data than CDs or DVDs?
Transferring the
files would certainly be faster and easier, would it not? Is there a
downside to using such an archiving/storage system?
Shel
