My dark room set up?

[glm]

Hi All,

I have decided to really invest some time and thought into my whole set up and would appreciate the thoughts of the DG experts.

As it it stands I have a wireless network with 2 notebooks and and an old ancient desktop, with one portable 150g back up drive and i guess you would call it an intenal back up drive of 320g on a notebook docking station.

We have over 7,000 photo's scattered between the PC's, all backed up to DVD's & the back-up drives. However i would like to start "fresh" and will be backing them all up to archival DVD's (two copies) and cleaning the pc's.

Should I invest in a large external drive, say 1tb and if so how is it best to set this up. I'm at the extreme end of my technical ability here so advice is needed.

All of my pics are family related, kids, sport etc and i have Nikon D5000, Panasonic FZ18 and an Olympus tough 8000 for days at the beach/pool/hiking etc.

Thanks in advance

[Sam]

OK first the disclaimer.................I ain't no tech expert.

I would pick up two external backup drives, and simply back up all your images to these. That will give you three copies of each image.

With todays larger files, a CD or DVD doesn't hold a lot of images and the long term data integrity hasn't been clearly established. Plus the external drives are cheaper per GB of storage than DVD's. Data storage on HD is pretty stable and HDs should last a long time sitting in a draw.

Sam

[bandgeekndb]

http://www.buy.com/prod/buffalo-drivestation-flexnet-1tb-usb-2-0-7200rpm-nas-hard-drive/q/loc/101/209871917.html

http://www.buy.com/prod/iomega-1tb-home-media-network-hard-drive/q/loc/101/210573494.html

I would grab (2) of either one of these drives, specifically because they are available over the network. This means that you can use the laptops wirelessly (like when sitting on the couch, or hooked up to the tv, etc) without needing to be directly plugged in via usb or firewire.

If you only want to use the external drives as backup, and you'll just connect them just for backups (or you have a stationary computer), then just get USB2, Firewire, or eSata external drives.

~Nick

[Art Scott]

I pretty much do as Sam suggested......I have a 4 drive "system" so to speak but I also file according to Scott Kelby in the LR2 for photogs book he wrote.......My "C" Drive is only for software that is currently being used and some documentation in "my documents"....of course......I have an internal drive that I call ....lets say..... SNEZKA (drive "D"....that holds all of my files starting January 1, 2009 (until it is filled, and I always leave about 100mb free)......and then there are 3 more externals that are exact copies (clones) of my "D drive - SNEZKA".....These are identified as SNEZKA 1, 2 and 3 and are dated as to when purchased......all my drives are Seagate and Hitachi and have 5 yr warranties......at yr. 4, I will replace these drives with newer versions and may even combine a couple of years together to reduce the storage space.......I keep the internal work drive and 1 other at my place and the other 2 off site and I have most of my jpgs stored on SmugMug now also and I may even be going to a service like Mozy or Carbonite in the near future as the prices are very affordable............

Each drive bears a label made of yellow gaffers tape that shows purchased date, and begin and end date of stored photos......................

edit: I no longer use EXTERNAL drives ......I am currently using Internals in a thermaltake Black Widow drive Dock......and will be investing in a dual dock in the near future so I can "back-up" to all three at the same time.