A Storage Solution for Lots of Digital Photos? 122
Duizendstra asks: "I've been asked to explore the digital storage possibilities for a professional photographer. One of the characteristics is the rapid growth of the amount, and size of pictures. At the moment, one photo session produces about 2 GB of raw data. He has an Apple - Power Mac G5, and he currently uses DVD as his storage medium. However, he has lost quite a few photos because of DVDs that can't be read anymore. I would like to know if any Slashdot readers have any experience in creating a solution for such a problem? Any help/idea(s) would be greatly appreciated!"
Extra Disk (Score:1)
Re:Extra Disk (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
Magneto-optical disks. Usually they should keep your data for around 50 years. They're very reliable, but have two cons:
- They're expensive (around $17 for a 2.3GB disk)
- You'll need 3 disks/day if you generated 6GB of data daily, so after a few weeks you'll need lots of space to store them.
Re:Extra Disk (Score:1)
The MO backups from the Sun workstations where I work have been found, through bitter experience, to have about a 5% failure rate.
They suck shit.
Hard disks and more hard disks are the way to go.
-ccm
Re:Extra Disk (Score:1)
Re:Extra Disk (Score:1)
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
Lots of hard drives is fine as far as price goes, but they aren't an answer for long term storage. If anyone has an idea for storage in the 30 year range, I'd like to hear about it.
No one does, because, frankly, digital photography hasn't been around that long--so there are no solutions that were around in the 70s, that are now still working, to demonstrate that they are reliable over that kind of time period.
I think stacks of hard drives would suck, and could still fail on the shelf. I, like others abo
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
Raid sounds good, but is there a standard for the controlers? Software to split the data across several drives in a similar fasion to raid 5 might work but I'd only be interested in it if it was open source in a language that was likely to be ar
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
Yes, there is a well established standard for the controllers. RAID is an enterprise-level technology that has been around for atleast a decade and is the storage medium preference for corporations that literally can't afford data loss an
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
And that, sadly enough, is your best solution.
A few years ago I was brought in as a technical consultant for a city records office that wanted to modernize their records : a fireproof building full of flat metal storage racks full of deeds, records, and drawings (think civil engineering dating all the way back to the 1600's.) They needed to insure that whatever direction they went in modernizing the office would be viable not 5, 10, or even 50 years
Re:Extra Disk (Score:3, Informative)
Well, (and this is me just talking out of my ass here), you could maybe invest in a film recorder [medgraphix.com] (we called it the slide-shooter). Think of it as a digital projector that projects onto film for later development. We used to use one in my lab to tranfer presentations from PowerPoint to slides (for scientific conference presentations), but I imagine that, as a last resort backup solution, it might work well for photos. The slides ar
You are confused. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm unsure if you think this is a digital photography problem, or if you just believe digital photography is the only possible reason someone would need massive, long-term, reliable storage.
Either way, it's an "ask slashdot" at least twice a year, for all sorts of reasons. It's a
Re:Extra Disk (Score:3, Informative)
SuperDLT. It's what we use for SARBOX data retention compliance.
Unfortunately, that's "enterprise" tech, which means Big Bucks.
Re:Extra Disk (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
1 best, home-made platinum prints, gives the best combination of storage volume and longevity
2. staying digital, tape system as in punched mylar longest data retention, but storage volume has major suckage factor
what I would do is massive RAID 50 array in the back for long term archial storage in the back room, something not as massive and faster up front for recent work that you might actually need to get to; only fire up the back-room arrary if you need something.
I know
Re:Extra Disk (Score:2)
Reiser4 with compression (Score:2)
Re:Reiser4 with compression (Score:5, Insightful)
Your friend could probably get about 6:1 compression I'd guess
I *highly* doubt that. It's unlikely he'd get any significant compression, and very possible that compressing the files would actually increase their size.
We're talking about photos here, which are already compressed. Even RAW photos are compressed heavily (though losslessly). For example, a Canon EOS-1Ds Mk II takes RAW photos at a resolution of 4992 x 3328 with 36 bit per pixel. An uncompressed image would be 4992 x 3328 x 36 / 8 bytes, which is about 71MiB. The image files produced by the camera, however, are 14.6MiB, a compression ratio of nearly 5:1. The file system compression isn't going to get much more. On RAW files from my camera, bzip2 -9 only averages about 0.1% reduction in file size, and bzip2 -9 is very good -- and very slow -- compression.
Disk drives are the best way to safely store large volumes of data, especially when you add some redundancy, but don't expect to get any help from compression of already-compressed data.
Re:Reiser4 with compression (Score:1)
Nikon DLSRs give you the choice of storing RAW files as either co
Best bet... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Best bet... (Score:1)
Plus, I know that the apple shop sells a 1 TB External if needed.
Idealy you keep the pictures you are working with localy and back up to the external. They are very easy to use, even for those who aren't up to par with technology.
Re:Best bet... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would store these photos on a dedicated server that has good RAID. I don't think full tape backups are an option, but remember that RAID will handle a single drive failure -- not you accidentally typing rm -rf * . Maybe there's some service that will mirror your important data off site somewhere. That's probably expensive, but if this
Re:Best bet... (Score:2)
perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I think a good harddrive array is going to be your best bet. Get several harddrives and mirror the data. The cost of gigabytes is dropping on a daily basis. You should find that when you need more room, it will be easly upgradable and cheaper as the years go on.
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:2)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:2)
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:2)
Well, that is unless the temperature inside the safe climbed so high as to make the CDs melt to the paper documents.
Re:perhaps the problem is with the DVDs? (Score:2)
One problem with that is that CDs and DVDs use error-correcting codes. Unless you know how many errors have been corrected by the drive, you can't tell the difference between a perfect disc and one which is just below the threshold of having uncorrectable errors.
Serious OS X user? (Score:4, Informative)
It'll just work, it's well integrated with his G5, and it's cost effective.
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:2)
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:4, Insightful)
Say it with me.
"RAID is not a backup solution."
Again,
"RAID is not a backup solution."
That being said, RAID helps to overcome failure of the drive. Do yearly or bi-yearly DVD backups, or back up to another offline harddrive... etc..
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:4, Insightful)
There should be two levels of file storage, a live copy, and a long term copy. EACH of these needs a backup. Once you need more room on the "live" server, you move it to long term storage. you want to keep as much "live" as possible to go back to.
Live Copy - I would get a RAID system with as much storage as you can afford or need. If price is no option, then you get a few XServes since they are on OSX. This is where you keep your files from today on backwards till the RAID is filled. You keep a backup of this RAID by tape, HD, optical whatever.
Long Term Copy - There are problems with EVERY type of long term storage. The most reliable would probably be hard drives. You use two(or more) NEW and different brand drives, copy the data to be archived to each, verify each. Store each drive in a static bag and some sort of case. Put one at your house, one in the bank or somewhere else. A bank's safe deposit box might be expensive, but it is climate controlled and "safe". Using tapes and optical disc are problematic because the mediums break down with age. The hard drives will last much, much longer. Yah, hard drives fail. But if you use different brands, you increase the chance of a mfg being better than another.
I have HD's that are 15 years old that still work fine after thousands of hours of use. These archive drive will only be used long enough to format, test to make sure they aren't DOA, and to write data to. They should outlast the drive interface technology that they use.
As time goes on, drive get bigger so more data can be live, and archiving becomes easier. You can always go back and re-archive the data to a "better" medium that holds more.
Back in the day, people would back up their 20MB HD's to floppy, then they bought a 100MB drive, used tape to back it up, then CD, now DVD. Times change, so your backup strategy must change too. What you do TODAY, will be easier in a few years.
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:2)
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:3, Interesting)
No.. but it is many many times less likely to fail in comparison to storing a single copy on DVDs which is what it is being compared to here.
In general though, the need to do backups is greatly reduced with RAID and in some cases, a single copy on a RAID array is "good enough" which is to say it eliminates the need to create a separate backup copy. To claim otherwise is to not fully understand data backup.
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:2)
What happens if two of your drives fail simultaneously? This is not as unlikely as it sounds, since those drives were almost certainly manufactured, bought, and installed more or less at the same time, meaning they'll meet their MTBF at the same time. Yes, the M in MTBF means "Mean", but they're still all going to be reaching the end of their expected life at the same time. And wh
For a photographer, RAID is the most important (Score:2)
The reason is that the data a photographer is storing is non-reproducable in a way that very little data is. If I spend a month programming and then loose all that code in a crash - a terrible annoyance, but because the idea of what to do is in my head I can re-create it with some work.
But a photo gone is lost forever. Additionally the work that can go
Re:Serious OS X user? (Score:2)
I'll second that! If he's already on an Apple environment the Xserve RAID is really the best choice. They're ridiculously easy to set up and they're surprisingly fast for still using ATA-133 technology.
Of course I'd recommend a decent-sized tape drive (or possibly firewire hardrives) for off-site archiving as well...
Just answered (Score:3, Informative)
ATA over Ethernet (Score:2)
http://coraid.com/ [coraid.com]
Basically, you add your own disks, and have up to several terabytes of RAID storage. The best part is that teh RAID and all the complicated stuff is ghandled by the drive unit, to the OS it just looks like one huge drive.
You can add a NAS (SAMBA/NFS) server (or roll your own), to make accessing the drive from Windows / Mac even easier.
I don't have one of these myself, but have been drooling for a while...
-Ms2k
Re:ATA over Ethernet (Score:3, Interesting)
If storing all
Re:ATA over Ethernet (Score:3, Insightful)
Two phrases I don't like seeing anywhere near each other.
Aim more for "redundant" and "widely tested" for starters.
Re:ATA over Ethernet (Score:1)
'Redundant' implies there will be failure and that the only solution is to throw extra hardware (and money) after it.
'Homebrew' is a term often used to describe a solution that is hand picked and configured. Not always a bad thing.
Not much to go on (Score:3, Informative)
For large scale reliable storage I dislike both optical and tape. They both quickly become more work to manage than it's worth and have serious reliability issues. Hard drive based is the way to go and since hard drives do fail and that is a bad thing, it's best to use RAID. It's especially a good idea since RAID is getting easier, since hard drives are getting cheaper per unit and since SerialATA is making it easy to hook them up right.
Heres a basic design that I'm actually working on for a home server for myself:
http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/WishList/Wish
It's a 3U rack mountable 2TB storage server. Put a Linux distro on it with some small RAID1 boot partitions and a software RAID5 storage partition, throw samba and some email-home config to notify of drive failures and you've got a decent place to store up to 1000 of those 2GB sessions. Zip up the old ones if needed for more space. If rack-mounting isn't desirable there are cheaper desktop cases that would probably be appropriate.
If this is overkill a 4 drive RAID5 array or even a 2 drive RAID1 array is much much easier to accomplish. Standard case, motherboard, power supply and drives with a Linux distro and you're done. Hardware RAID is also an option but since software RAID's high CPU usage wouldn't be an issue here I'd go that route.
Re:Not much to go on (Score:2)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for Apple, and while I'd prefer that this place purchases an Apple-based solution, I am not wedded to a particular OS or brand of hardware. However, you get what you pay for -- either through hiring a skilled professional building an open-source based storage system or by paying for a commercial solution (such as Apple's XServe RAID [apple.com] unit). Be sure to include the necessary system maintenance in the budget for such a complex setup, including off-site backups, on-call support, and making sure that it stays up and running during successive system updates and upgrades.
Given that the photographer is already using an Apple G5, I suspect an XServe RAID solution will suit the situation quite well. One unit can provide 7TB of storage, which at 2GB/session works out to about 3500 sessions at current resolutions (also allowing plenty of headroom for growth as resolutions increase). Apple offers professional services [mailto], on-call support [apple.com], and training [apple.com] for server administrators. In addition, if you're looking for an Apple consultant with the necessary skills in your area, check the Apple Consultants Network. [apple.com]
--Paul
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:1, Troll)
One unit can provide 7TB of storage.
Hmm.. $13,000 plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to. Hardly a good value. Maybe they'll make up for obviously overpriced hardware with important yet intangible benefits.
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:3, Informative)
Uhhh...where are you getting this from? You don't need an additional server. An XServe RAID can hook directly to a G5 tower, and with fibre channel you can locate it far enough away (such as in a closet) that noise isn't a problem. Check your facts, dude.
--Paul
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:2)
Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing. That's why I separated that cost out. Unless there's something wrong with my $13,000 number my facts seem pretty well checked. Still... not a good deal.
For a more or less direct comparison I'd suggest looking at the promise VTrak M500f.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16811777006 [newegg.com]
Add 14 50
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:2)
Assuming you are willing to make the pre-existing G5 your file server, then yes, the "plus the cost of whatever server you hook it up to" goes to nothing.
If he is the only user, he doesn't need to operate it as a fileserver--in this case the Xserve RAID would serve as just a big external disk. Which could still be mounted anywhere he likes, not even in the same room, as he can connect to it via optical fibre with an adapter to the SFP of the Xraid.
Its not comperable to either of the above products for
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:2)
My point was: Both of those products are overpriced. The Apple one is more overpriced than the Promise one but the Promise one is overpriced as well.
I attempted to illustrate this by showing how a similar device with more powerful, more capable hardware could be built much cheeper. I admit, it's not a superset or a replacement for the other devices but I believe it demonstrates that the $4,300 embeded device that only provides block device RAID functionality is overpriced whe
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:2)
I am unaware of any web interfaces to SMART alghough I'd be surprised if one doesn't exist.
Re:Pay for it -- it's a business expense (Score:3, Informative)
External HDD (Score:1)
I shoot a lot of photos and I ended up buying a couple external harddrives. They're certainly more stable in the long run than DVDs and it's easier to organize and view the photos than if they were on hundreds of DVDs. Almost all external drives have USB 2.0 or Firewire connections, so moving them onto the drive isn't too painful.
If I did photography professionally I'd look at an external RAID solution. It's too expensive for a prosumer like me, but a pro should be willing to pay for something like that.
don't over complicate it (Score:4, Interesting)
If it is really important, use tape backup, make redundant copies, and send one off to a data storage place. As others noted, a backup solution should be part of the cost of the job, and is not really that expensive when divided over the different projects.
Re:don't over complicate it (Score:2)
Re:don't over complicate it (Score:2)
You've obviously never pulled out a spare/backup drive only to see it not spinup. Hard drives can and do fail. It seems to me that a reasonably cheap solution is to extend the current dvd backups that they're doing to 2 or 3 copies of each disc. And burn them at a slow speed to ensure that the integrity is good. And possibly use parity files with them.
follow up question: best way to browse it...? (Score:2)
Re:follow up question: best way to browse it...? (Score:2)
That being said, Gallery 2 [menalto.com] has most of the same capabilities. It's a web photo sharing package, but you don't need to give the whole internet access to it. Gallery 2 is quite a powerful database, and if you're smart about tagging things as you add them, the search functions are impressive.
Re:follow up question: best way to browse it...? (Score:2)
Argh, I typed up a very lengthy response and slashdot ate it (something about a form key or something, I was too upset about loosing my post to care about the error message)...anyway, I use Picasa [google.com] which is now owned by Google and free. I'm not a professional photographer; all I photograph are places we go and things we do and the obligitory friends & family photos as we're out and about...but I do have close to 10,000 of them.
Picasa allows one to enter keywords (IPTC keywords, actually, so I could wri
Use magneto-optical disks (Score:2)
Since your friend has around 2GB of data on each session, he could get a 2.3GB MO drive and use 2.3GB disks. These cost around 2000 yen ($1
Re:Use magneto-optical disks (Score:2)
RAID is wayyyy overcomplicating this (Score:2)
What? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:1)
So much for that idea.. (Score:2)
2 cents (Score:2)
i would definitely consider backing up to hard disk. avoid dvds like plague! i backup to two hard disks for redundancy but i do not do it in a raid set. raid is hardware AND software reliant in all forms and a hardware failure can leave you with a lot of lost data(raid controller failure, model not made anymore!) and software raid can fail via simple glitches and leave the data scrambled and data forensics cant pull usable data off the disk! so i suggest 2 firewire disks and tak
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Granted, not everyone has the cash to blow on all this, but my stepfather, who is also a professional photographer, has finally taken that all important step toward moving to digital. He's been backing up to CD and he usually gets away with a session on one or two CDs, not counting any editing he does in Photoshop (he still prefers to touch up photos by hand). Anyway, he has been watching his bookshelf fill up with CDs, much like all his file cabinets that store all his old hard copy negatives and select prints. Any long time photographer probably deals with the same stuff, which was a problem before digital ever came around.
What I've been working with him on is what will most likely be a big storage server... even at 2GB a session, you could shoot every day of the year and only use 700GB, which will cost you about $300-400 in a non-RAID solution nowadays (based on me just purchasing 4x 300GB drives at $110 each and my friend buying a 400GB for $200). A small server with a few drives will be all the online backup one should need, plus to be extra safe, either that backup server, or just a few external drives.
If you backup to the external drive once a week or so, this should save anyone from the accidental rm -rf (my stepfather once deleted all the pictures on his laptop by accidentally dragging the wrong folder to the Recycle Bin -- naturally all his photos were too big for the trash and were instantly deleted, luckily he had all his CDs to restore from). Plus, as long as you're backing up regularly, it should be obviously that the hard drive is working or not working. If you start hearing clicking, or feel something funny -- get it replaced.
I guess my summary of all this is to have two backups. If one is your "online," primary storage, it should be obvious if it's failing or not failing, and assuming you're backing up to your second backup regularly, there shouldn't be any danger of you not realizing it's failing, because you are using it all the time. with DVDs and CDs and other media of that type, it's because you set it on a shelf and forget about it for years that is where the danger is caused.
Sorry this was long.
Don't do it yourself! (Score:2)
Analogue Film (Score:2)
No, really. It has a really high information density.
We could take the image and write it to film in digital form using optical drive technology...
Re:Analogue Film (Score:2)
Don't use DVD-Rs, (Score:1)
Other than that, as others have already pointed out, you can always buy harddiscs. It's not what they're designed for, but still the easiest solution
Re:Don't use DVD-Rs, (Score:2)
Slyck [slyck.com] seems to have a good explanation of how this works. They're geared towards filesharing, but the concepts are useful for backups too.
You'll need a lot of temp space. If you're filling 4.7-gig DVDs and doing 1 parity disk for each 5 data disks, you're talking about archiving a ~20-gig batch of
Re:Don't use DVD-Rs, (Score:1)
In principle, there's no need for temporary storage for the whole batch of data. Storage for all parity files would suffice and still allow single pass coding. Even better, given online storage for the redund
Keep it simple (Score:2)
Buy and label pairs of drives. HDs are cheap these days. One is the original store and the other is the backup.
Name the first drive as driveA and driveAbkup, second set driveB and driveBbkup.
Keep a notbook for eack to note the customers/jobs in each drive. This way he does not have to attach the drive to know which customers jobs are on it.
When ever something on a drive is modified, use your favorite backup program to copy from driveA to driveAbkup.
I currentl
Don't be innovative: Go with tape. (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that this is his life work, he really should invest a few thousand dollars and put together a strategy that will protect him from media and system failure, localized disasters such as fires, and possibly even regional disasters. With a little thought, while it is not going to be cheap, it will be a bargain.
Supposing he's willing to put four or five thousand dollars into this. He can get a SDLT tape drive with a 160GB native capacity (don't count on compression for photos), and 16Mb/s native transfer rate. That day's photo session takes two minutes to back up. am deacj tape stores possibly up to half a year of work. He'll have enough money to buy a good number of tapes, so with a a little thought he'll have a good system for archiving his old stuff, one that is not vulnerable to single tape failures and has an offsite (important!!!) component too. And he may have enough money left over to buy a fire resistant media safe that could buy his data at least a couple of hours of time. Depending on the economic value of his work, he could also send backups to an offiste media storage facility that provides a very high degree of security against regional disasters as well.
I'll tell you a story I tell all my clients when the cost and inconvenience of a well designed backup program comes up.
Years ago I had a client who drove up with what looked like a huge piece of burnt toast in the back of his nice Mercedes sedan. He was was a CPA, and this was three weeks before tax day; the burnt toast was a minicomputer that had all his client's tax work on it. He'd been doing backups daily to tape, but contrary to our advice he had stopped bothering to take them off site. Under the circumstances, if he'd had an offsite backup, we'd have lent him everything he needed, even the office space if necessary. He'd have been back on track with maybe two days down time on the outside. When tax season was over he could have moved to a new office, bought new equipment from the insurance settlement, and his biggest worry would be decorating. But all this depended on the offsite backup he didn't have.
There's a small chance that some of his data mightbe retrieved nowadays, by firms specializing in this sort of thing. But they didn't exist in the early 80s, an in any case I wouldn't want to bet on it. The computer had obviously taken major heat; the interior wiring and connectors weren't just smoke damaged, they were brittle from cooking. We did the best we could, removing the drives, stripping and swapping the electronics on them, cleaning all the connectors on the drive with tetracholoride and so forth. After a few hours of work it was clearly futile, but we spent another day on it trying pointless and hopeless things, just to make him feel like we'd done everything possible. None of this would have been necessary, but for want of a simple step he was fully equipped to take, but seemed like a bit too much bother at the time.
The lesson is that while people comprehend small disasters like misplacing a file, large disasters are sometimes so horrible to contemplate that they discount them altogether. If your client is lucky, he'll be irritated with being saddled with having to swap tapes every morning and perhaps rotate them offsite every few days. Maybe labelling the tapes will be a chore. If he's unlucky, you'll be a hero.
multiple DVD-R discs with PAR2 (Score:1)
As a general backup solution, I still have files from 1984 that are readable. These go back to my junior high school files from an Apple ][e. Obviously this method has been refined over time, but it works. It takes some work, but I'm paranoid about losing old data.
Re:multiple DVD-R discs with PAR2 (Score:2)
The key steps are 2) verify that your writes are correct and 3) make multiple copies and store them in multiple places. These steps are important no matter what media you use, though verification is less important on hard disks (since they're far more reliable than optical media.)
Personally, I don't really bother with high qualify DVD-R media -- I go for the cheap ones. Though to be fair, I do throw away a fair number of them
Re:multiple DVD-R discs with PAR2 (Score:2)
I do it with the *nix command line utility, so what I do probably won't help you much.
But basically I have a script (or group of scripts, actually) that calculates how much space the DVD has, and fills it with par2 files (if you're going to write a DVD, it might as well be almost 100% full.) Once it determines the space available for par2 files, it gets a list of files and feeds that to par2create, which creates the f
Re:multiple DVD-R discs with PAR2 (Score:2)
Sorry, but I'm afraid the two are mutually exclusive. "High quality" media doesn't come at a bulk price of $0.35/unit. Generic consumer-grade media does. This is a person who's backing up thousands of hours of unreproducible work, not his MP3 collection.
TerraStation (Score:1)
Try this if you want to have enough space (Score:1)
http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CEServlet?process
The solution... (Score:3, Informative)
It works. Reliably. In my previous job, we pretty much depended on it. A single faulty tape could cost us from $50k and up. And we didn't do backups of data on it... The tape drives were used continuosly 24/7.
If you can afford it, is an entirely different question. I think it's about $30k...
Re:The solution... Magstar 3590's ?? (Score:2)
If anyone has a 3590 kicking around please send me an email with details. I like the 256 track units. They are fast and realiable.
As for $50K per tape - that is cheap.
In the 128 track models the Fujitsu drives were more relaible than the IBM drives.
BTW - if anyone needs some 10 tape autoloaders for the Fujitsu's I have several available plus main boards in both differential and single ended SCSI as well as some model H.
Tape RULES!!!
I'll never
Calling back... (Score:2)
Someone else already posted about having offline hard drives...
Type of DVD? (Score:2)
On a side note, for those
I take exception to the term MRI (Score:2)
Re:I take exception to the term MRI (Score:2)
ImageMagik will display Medical Images (Score:2)
File server (Score:2)
Tape? (Score:2)
Actually, if the data is important id do both. 2 DVDs and keep the copies onsite, then a tape that is moved offsite to be stored *properly*.
Sure, its a slow process to get your data back, but if you really, really, dont want to lose it..
RAID 5 (Score:2)
5 disk RAID-5 would be good, lots of storage capacity with only 20% overhead for redundancy. should be doable for under $1000 and store a great deal of images
DVDs that can't be read any more? (Score:2)
I am sick unto death of cheerful articles that assert that [optical storage medium o' the month] has been proven in accelerated-life testing to last for umpteen aeons, and then discovering that my three-year-old disks can't be read...
I have similar needs, here's what I do (Score:2)
What I have done is bought an external SATA enclosure for two drives, and a four-port SATA card. I have two 400GB drives set up using the software RAID in Disk Manager, configured to be Raid 0 (mirroring).
The idea here is that I want enough space to hold all the photos I have ever taken and the work I have done on them. I only use two of the four ports for t
Desktop SATA RAID (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Desktop SATA RAID (Score:2)
Spec/price: RT5x2 with ten 500GB 7200 RPM drives, 9399.95--$.53/GB. FW800 instead of SFP Fibre; frankly I don't how that compares in terms of speed reliabiity.
vs Apples Xserve RAID: 14 500GB drives, $12999--also $.53/GB. I didn't delve into the specs to see if one has advantages over the other; for instance, there is on-site warranty support available for the Xserve RAID, but it admittedly costs more.
I suppose if you didn't have a rack and didn't want one, you'd prefer the wiebetch to the Xraid.
Re:Big ass SATA RAID (Score:5, Insightful)
Big ass SATA RAID
SATA? Do you also act like you're on the same level as F1 race mechanics, because you checked the oil in your Ford Pinto?
using a mix of software and hardware RAIDs
Yes, that's a strategy! In something very nuanced, complicated, and with potentially disasterous consequences, let's mix the two together for even more complexity. Maybe this is worth considering in some cases, but without an expert there to come to that conclusion, and certainly without any stated reasons for this, THIS IS A BAD IDEA. If this is what you eventually decide to use, do not hire parent poster to do the job. Oh, and since you'll want someone who knows what they're talking about to do it, it's going to cost more than his estimate.
A cheap, sane alternative would be to compress your photos. JPEG really is good enough
Just when I thought you couldn't be any dumber. "Yes, for long term storage of your incredibly hi-res pics meant for professional photography and graphics, where every single lost bit seems to count, why not print them out on acid-saturated paper with my crusty inkjet printer that's out of yellow?" I mean, my god. It's an ask slashdot, people are supposed to be stupid. It can't be helped, but damn. There are sea urchins with more advanced cognition.