Hard Drive Question

Wirral Bagpuss · Jun 9, 2005

Am having lots of fun with my new Nikon D70 !!! :thumbup: One problem though, my computer space!!!!! I am thinking of installing a new/2nd hard drive in my PC. How big a hard drive should i go for? I do like games on my PC but obvioulsy i want to store my photos too!! :mrgreen:

Artemis · Jun 9, 2005

Ive got 120gig and that does me great...maybe www.thesupportforum.com could help you?

cbay · Jun 9, 2005

I have got a laptop and i store my pictures on an external hard drive USB which i bought the case for and fitted a 160Gb HDD into it and paid just under £80 for the 2, and i can now store all my originals instead of having to shrink them, its great.. i reccomend you get the biggest HDD you can afford if you plan on keeping all originals and you are taking your pictures at a high pixel rate. Good Luck..

SLOShooter · Jun 9, 2005

The absolute biggest HD might not be a good idea. If you lose a 500 gig drive it would be way worse that loseing one of your 250gig drives. Plus the larger the disk the more likely the chance of bad sectors and what not.

You should be ok up to the 200 range. I'd say 120 is a good choice.

cbay · Jun 9, 2005

i didnt mean a 500Gb i was thinking of a 160 - 250Gb in my head but forgot to write that, sorry. Yes SLOShooter is right a 500Gb would be too bigger risk plus burn a big whole in your pocket if bought from retail.

darin3200 · Jun 9, 2005

I don't know how big of a price difference there is, but here in the US you can get a 160gig harddrive for about $65 (35£). Depending on what your budget is I would recommend buying two and using the second one as a backup drive. Also, if you have a CD burner grab 2 cheap stacks of 100 700MB CD+R which would hold about 140gig. Or if you have a DVD burner, grab a stack of 50 DVD+R which would hold about 250gig. It would probably be a lot easier to burn 50 DVDs compared to 200 CDs. It might seem like overkill but very few people worry about harddrive failure until they've had one.

clarinetJWD · Jun 9, 2005

No hard drive is too big, I'm up to 560 GB now, and still have room for a few more

Lensmeister · Jun 10, 2005

I have a 120GB External HDD I back things up to. But I have also got a DVD Rewrtiter that I can save to as well.

Currently I am about to start creating a database of my digital photos and of my negs as thumbnails. I am using a great little program called exifer to put © on the photos.

EXIFER HERE

Also you can create a text file (as a csv actually) with the file list and the picture name in it. This can be used in Excel or most database programs.

oppss off at a tangent......

But a 120Gb is best or back up to DVD.

Meysha · Jun 10, 2005

I forget how many hard drives we have at home but we've just got so much crap on the computers!
We use a 40Gb hard drive (I think) for all our software and don't have any files on there. (Coz we do a bit of movie editing and the hard drive can't cope if the files and program are on the same disk), Then I think we've got a couple of 250Gb drives and I think we've just bought another external one. Plus there's all our laptops that are connected to the same network. My god we've got a lot of **** on our computers.

I'd be careful of backing up to CDs and DVDs, they're sooo slow and a pain in the ass to search through if you forget where a file is. I only save my most very important stuff to CDs and just put the rest somewhere else on the network.

SLOShooter · Jun 10, 2005

Right now I have 2 80 gig HD's that are RAIDed so that if one goes down it's no problem to just switch it out without interupting work flow. I also burn my "best" RAW shots onto a DVD so that if some thing catestrophic happens to the comp it's not a problem. Online storage of negatives is also a good option that way in case of fire your still safe.

etaf · Jun 10, 2005

You dont say what OS or hardware info - so you may need a bios update if over 136GB {i think it is} drive
i would also back up to two copies of DVD as well.
I have two 120GB harddrives used for data and one 40GB for the system - i have replaced two drives in the past 5 years.
so always always have a backup of those photos - also I would suggest you have a backup on print of anything important.
so in addition to the harddrive why not also get a DVD writer if you dont have one - they are only about £50 in UK

Christie Photo · Jun 11, 2005

I added a 200 gb drive recently for $105. Got it from NewEgg.com

Don't forget.... hard drives are terminal. Maybe.... 4 - 6 years? I don't really remember, but I've had many dirves of the years.

Rob · Jun 11, 2005

I don't think size affects reliability in any way which can be proven easily. I'd strongly recommend two or three physical disks if you can afford it. Try and structure it with one drive for the operating system and one or two data disks for maximum reliability. This should be a simple case of adding another disk(s) and formatting when you power back up. Make sure you buy the right kind of HDD as there are many different types these days and you may not have all the right kind of connectors spare.

Have a look into your computer's capacity for adding drives and think about getting two small ones instead of one big one. Splitting the system and the data onto different drives is definitely to be recommended as this will reduce the amount of work the data drive has to do, thus extending it's life dramatically. Having two data drives is just insurance, but it obviously doubles the cost in terms of capacity.

Another idea is to use an old computer for backups - I use my old computer on my mini network for backing up to and I keep a couple of laptops as well, but I'm an IT person so I find a lot of things around work to use!

CDs and DVDs are a good idea as well for obvious reasons, but CD-Rs can be a bit crap, especially if they aren't kept properly.

Good luck and all that.

Rob

Medo · Jun 12, 2005

Wirral Bagpuss said:
Am having lots of fun with my new Nikon D70 !!! :thumbup: One problem though, my computer space!!!!! I am thinking of installing a new/2nd hard drive in my PC. How big a hard drive should i go for? I do like games on my PC but obvioulsy i want to store my photos too!! :mrgreen:

I recently bought a 120GB External hard drive for £80, at PC World (There was a sale I think). It's nice and fast and very easy to install.

Raymond J Barlow · Jun 12, 2005

I have a 40 G on my laptop.. a 60 and a 120 on my PC, and an external 160.. USB

The 160 saved my but this week, and my 120 crashed, and my 60 went dead.. almost everthing was backed up.. whew! When I upload all my work to the pc, or laptop, I also upload it to the external Drive.. It is so easy to lose a folder full of work .. I lost a shoot of a rock band on my laptop. ALso, My laptop fan went dead, cooked the heatsink, and now they are finding trouble on the motherboard! What next!

I was able to format the 120, had to ditch the 60, the laptop is still in for service(warranty) and the external still is cool.. I recomend 2 sytems for backup.. and external, and a internal.. and never do anything until you have 2 copies of your recent files somewhere.

And .. the external is awesome.. just open it off your My Computer.. and Drag and drop.. create folders, and you are set!