Re: The Nikon D3 makes everyone's life better, even mine!!!

bobF@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:01:06 -0400, Alan Browne
> <alan.browne@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Did you ever open a HD to see what makes it tick? Those little parts
look real
> fragile!

Yep.  Yet, even under Windows which tortures disk drives I have one 
drive that is still ticking along after over 8 years of use (actually I 
just retired it after using in it in a Linux box for a year).

But I did have my first partial failure of a younger disk (about 4 years 
old) a couple months ago.  Suddenly some areas of the disk were 
unreadable and WinXP would sulk while trying to access.  I did manage to 
offload most of it onto an external drive (and most of the data was 
backed up in any case...).   That disk is for recycling.

> Now I'm relying on massive DVD redundancy... every file on 3 or more
discs...

Well, just remember that DVD's are also (in the main) organic based 
dyes, so all three sets will be degrading together.  Further, they are 
more allowing of errors as video (for which they were made) does not 
need anywhere 100% data recovery.  There could be a 20% error rate and 
you would not see it on the television.  I'm not specifically sure how 
it is implemented on computer DVD recorders.

I have CD's from ca.1999 that are still readable.  But the data has been 
cycled forward onto DVD's.

Again: For long life buy the so-called "gold" Verbatim disks (CD and 
DVD).  In benign conditions the data will last well over 100 years.

I just ordered an IOmega 1 TB drive (actually 2 500 GB drives in one 
unit) that can be configured RAID 0 or 1, (I'll use 0) and a couple 
other modes.  It has Firewire 800 which is very fast.

I'm beginning to believe that hot backing up is really the only way to 
go.  Managing backup volumes is tedious.  It will be interesting to see 
how well Apple Time Machine works.

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