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How reliable are portable storage devices?
QUESTION:How reliable are portable storage devices?
Been thinking about storage devices myself of late and noticed a related
post or two about Vosonic and iPods for example. How reliable are they?
What sort of life can you expect from these things. If things go wrong,
what measures are there to recover information lost?
What is the best way to archive your images at the end of the day? CD or
DVD - single layer or dual DVD?
We all want our work to last the distance, but what does everyone here do?
Currently, I back up new images after I upload them onto my computer and
then after manipulation once more (call me paranoid....I can take it!!),
onto a DVD re-recordable. But when I go out into the field, it would be nice
to have a device which I can back up to and then clear my cards for further
use.....I take heaps of shots to fish out the best ones for use. Seeing as
I've just got into digital I'm interested in what all you guys do.
ANSWER: Read about storage and lifetimes of CD and DVD media here;
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGui...
I'm in PC tech support and I've been watching reports of failures in
external hard disk backpack devices.
IMO the no-name stuff isn't ready for my data.
NTFS file systems are still closed to Microsoft. The Linux folks have
been trying to develip a full function NTFS driver and say they can't
until MS documents some of it's internals. Until then, Read-write
drivers for NTFS are not complete. Very large disks formatted with
NTFS in backpackes are IMO unusually risky hased on the failure
reports I see. Having a disk on a seperate power line also leaves you
open for power glitches that corrupt data.
If you have a name-brand backpack like Maxtor you're better off but I
would never make a backpack device the sole repository of important
files.
Per the NIST document, CDRs *can* be very reliable. That document is
2 years old and at the time there was still lots of change in the DVD
catagory but the handling instructions are good.
CD/DVD media has the advantage of being cheap and you can make several
copies and keep them at multiple locations.
I've been doing buisness continuity planning and data center
operation management for 30 years. Maybe I'm just an old phart.
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