[Rufus]

Caution. Rufus puts his serious head on again!


So, with heaps of DVD's full of images, the Rufus crew set out to improve storage facilities. This is the result.

A nice case, with serial ATA connection, firewire and USB2, which contains a fan.
A 120g HD
A power supply.

This device is hot-swappable, and will allow the easy removal and replacement of the drive. So, fill it up, (plugged in anywhere, remove the drive and place it in a safe location, pop in another drive, and that's it! No messing. Total cost with 120g drive? Under £140 UK.

What do you thiink?

[StudioJ]

I think your DVD's will outlast the HD storage by a good 20 years, mechanical devices are too risky. It would be handy for travelling with but can't see it being of use otherwise.

[shuttertalk]

Don't they have external hard drives like that already? They either come in two flavours - dedicated HDDs, or a enclosure which allows usage of computer HDDs... with USB2.0 connections...

[StudioJ]

I don't know that many of them are hot swappable though. I thought it was mainly SCSI drives that were but that was years ago when I got my Lian Li aluminium hot swap bays.

[Rufus]

Don't they have external hard drives like that already? They either come in two flavours - dedicated HDDs, or a enclosure which allows usage of computer HDDs... with USB2.0 connections...

Aha!
Not at this price. You can buy ready made units with a smaller HD for twice the price here! :o

[Rufus]

I think your DVD's will outlast the HD storage by a good 20 years, mechanical devices are too risky. It would be handy for travelling with but can't see it being of use otherwise.

Have to disagree James.

The devices fail when they are constantly in use, and subject to heat and potential corruption of files. Filling a drive and removing it is different.
DVD's, like CD's are not a reliable form of storage at all.

What we need really is a new device. Something as yet unknown......

[shuttertalk]

Sure Rufus, some magical device (quoting from the simpsons)

[adam]

I guess everything is susceptible to something!
I've had cd's scratched before, and lost some pictures, but that serves me right for not storing them properly.

[Rufus]

Sure Rufus, some magical device (quoting from the simpsons)

AaaarrrrroooooooooooO!

[Toad]

The benefit of DVDs and CDs over hard drives is that you can have multiple copies of your images stored in different locations at a fraction of the cost - this offers a reliable backup solution that cannot be economically matched by hard drives. And when a new storage media comes out - you just copy your DVDs to that media. Cheap, reliable, multi-tiered backups. One DVD can fail but not likely several - at least not with the frequency of failing hard drives.

[dewy]

I picked up a USB 2.0 Laptop HDD enclosure and a 10gb hdd (which appeared to be socnd hand from windows installatoin and DELL documentation on it, but I prefer CD/DVD to make mulitple copies I am going to give this little devil ago and it it works out alright I might get another (larger of couse) hdd or a new eblosure and hdd =), Might get a firewire one too, since I picked up a tv tuner card too and it has a Firewire controller on it too =)

[StudioJ]

10 gig? Geez I would have half filled that this weekend!

Remarkably I've only had the one loss of files which wasn't an error just a complete bloody loss that I had no idea where they went to.

My backup is two hard drives in two locations and two DVD (used to be cds) in different locations, just in case.

[dewy]

10 gig? Geez I would have half filled that this weekend!

Remarkably I've only had the one loss of files which wasn't an error just a complete bloody loss that I had no idea where they went to.

My backup is two hard drives in two locations and two DVD (used to be cds) in different locations, just in case.

I have had my camera since last november and have only taken 456MB os pictures, but I tihnk my 16MB card has a lot to do with it, and no laptop =(