Costs for photography

"Alan Browne" wrote in message
...
That's the real unit cost of photography. And frankly, if you're
obsessed with photo unit cost maybe photography is not for you.

Frankly, for some of us, it's a hobby. Get over it.

jjs wrote:

In article , Stacey
wrote:

Personally I'd use something like 80GB to 120GB drives and after I filled
it up, swap in another drive. Then if something happens you don't lose
250GB of images. [...]

You would never hack it as a manager of critical systems, but for amateur,
noncritical things you will do okay. I mean, who cares if Stacey pulls her
good old image drive from storage, plugs it in and toasts it on spin-up?

I would? :-)

IMHO there isn't a perfect fail safe system for end users right now unless
you know something you want to share with us?
--

Stacey

jjs wrote:

In article , Stacey
wrote:

Any computer used for this type of stuff should -never- be connected to
the internet. I'm a firm believer in a "sacrificial" computer for net use
and
keep the good one off-line. Anyone who uses their editing system for
internet use is asking for trouble.

Nonsense. I've got three online at all times; two on-line 24 hours a day,
and one has been connnected since 1992.

Why risk it when there is no good reason to? Given the amount of viruses and
worms/hacks done to MS based systems, for most people it's not worth the
risk.

Sure, I've got 2 systems connected 24/7 but neither run MS products and
neither have any data on them that's important.
--

Stacey

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 13:46:12 +0000, Stacey wrote:

So you're trusting the harddrive with your images? That's the least reliable
component in a computer!

Anyone know how hard drive reliability compares with CD-ROM? I
suspect that the CD is even less reliable than the hard drive, but I'd
be very grateful if someone could confirm/invalidate this assumption,
as I was thinking of buying an external HD, purely for backups.

In article ,
Stacey wrote:

I have to wonder why anyone would do a cost analysis on a hobby to start
with.

And have the ballz to crosspost it.

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 22:27:49 +0000, Stacey wrote:

Anyone know how hard drive reliability compares with CD-ROM?

The disks or the drive itself?

The discs.

I suspect that the CD is even less reliable than the hard drive, but I'd
be very grateful if someone could confirm/invalidate this assumption,
as I was thinking of buying an external HD, purely for backups.

I'd be doing both

That's also what I'd thought of doing - many thanks for the advice.
It's one thing to think you're on the right track - but when it's
confirmed by someone else, it's reassuring.

In article ,
Stacey wrote:

I'd be doing both but I'd just slave an internal drive as they are much
cheaper.

And less expandable, probably non compatiable with your next
system, for a few hundred bucks I can get a 250 gb Firewire drive
that's in a practically indestructable housing.

On 6-Mar-2004, Andrew Price wrote:

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 13:46:12 +0000, Stacey wrote:

So you're trusting the harddrive with your images? That's the least
reliable
component in a computer!

Anyone know how hard drive reliability compares with CD-ROM? I
suspect that the CD is even less reliable than the hard drive, but I'd
be very grateful if someone could confirm/invalidate this assumption,
as I was thinking of buying an external HD, purely for backups.

The short answer is that for backup purposes, CD-ROMs are probably more
reliable than hard disks.

It's hard to compare them because a hard drive has a service life, that is
if you run it for some period of time (usually about 5 years) it will
probably fail. It also has an MTBF, say 50,000 hours, which says that if you
run a 50 drives for 1000 hours the odds are one will fail. The only way to
use a hard disk as a reliable backup is to use more than one, preferably in
a RAID array. If you use your external hard disk as a true backup, that is
you don't delete the originals when you back them up, it should work pretty
well. The danger is that your main disk will become corrupt and you won't
discover it until you've tried to make a backup on your external HD and the
process has corrupted or erased the backup disk.

CD ROMs have a shelf life which is dependent on the quality of the CD itself
and how carefully it is stored. The NML tests indicate the a high quality
CD-ROM will last 50 years. This assumes good storage conditions and does not
take into account damage due to accidents, fire, theft, war, etc. The other
issue is will anyone be able to read a CD-ROM in 50 years. The general
recommendation it to copy the data to new media every 10 years and make at
least 2 copies. The downside is CDs are relatively small in capacity.

Here's a reference:
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Industry...er-190298.html



--
Tom Thackrey
www.creative-light.com
tom (at) creative (dash) light (dot) com
do NOT send email to (it's reserved for spammers)

In article , Stacey
wrote:

Any computer used for this type of stuff should -never- be connected to the
internet. I'm a firm believer in a "sacrificial" computer for net use and
keep the good one off-line. Anyone who uses their editing system for
internet use is asking for trouble.

Nonsense. I've got three online at all times; two on-line 24 hours a day,
and one has been connnected since 1992. Physical and system security is
just fine. I am not concerned.

In article ,
wrote:

On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 22:27:49 +0000, Stacey wrote:

Anyone know how hard drive reliability compares with CD-ROM?

The disks or the drive itself?

The discs.

Okay, the CDROM disc itself - nobody knows, but a conservative estimate is
12 years in storage, max. Not all CDROMs are equal. Never mind the
bull**** comment that ZDnet posted about 'any old CDROM is fine." It
ain't.