RAW vs JPG, should I start shooting in raw?

[Overread]

well with storage space I think 10 years ago (was RAW around then?) this would have been a very topical point, but storage space is cheap at the moment - so its not too much of a problem for storing and DVD writers are now a standard in even the cheapest computers - add that to cheap DVDs and back-up is sorted as well.

Time is a big factor - but I think lightroom has gone a long way to helping the amature who has not the funds to invest in CS3 for batch processing.

 

[Bifurcator]

Storage for me is a pretty huge factor. DVD's die allot so you need multiple backups. Three if the images are important to you - at least. Or maybe duplicated twice on the same DVD and then just 2 DVDs. One DVD holds one 4gig card. I (can) fill up a 4 gig card with RAW in about 1 hour of shooting or less. Or 4 to 6 hrs if it's set to JPEG only. RAW here are 12MB and after importing them into PS and saving them they're 50MB ea. and that's only if you didn't add any layers or anything. I have many images on DVD that are over 100MB. It all adds up. And then there's the issue of actually spending the time to do the backups. OMG!

Here's my last BU session. That's about 200 DVDs (slightly over) and represents only about three months of camera use along with whatever else was in the BU que. Probably somewhere around 1/2 are images I guess. Each DVD takes 5 minutes to burn by the time you load and unload them so that's 1000 minutes or about 16.7 hours IF you go non-stop with no breaks. More like 30 hours doing it like normal people - listening to music, reading the forums and etc. while you BU.

JPEGs average about 3MB a piece at the highest quality. That's 1/4 the size of the RAW files and there probably won't be many or any of those 50MB 16 bit PSD files either so my stack there would be about 1/3 to 1/2 that size, save me 10 or 15 hours of work, and at $1.00ea. I'd save $75.00 to $100.00. So this is 3 months worth just multiply everything times 4 for anual totals of time and money spent. Storage is still very topical today. About the same as it was 10 years ago. And it'll be the same in another 10 years I guess.

 

[Overread]

ever thought about an external hard drive for backing up?
a terrabyt is now semi affordable and makes backing up quick

 

[Bifurcator]

They're OK for short term backup. Hard Drive's are engineered to fail after about 1 year of use. Some can last 3 or 4 years, some break in 6 months. Also, drop one and there's about a 75% chance it'll be unusable - as in busted. I want to keep many of my images until my grandchildren are old.

 

[Joves]

Shooting RAW+Jpeg is easy. I could go out and screw up some shots specifically for editing. Maybe one overexposed a little and, the other under exposed. I too would like to see the manufacturers go with one unified format. But I dont believe it will happen they have to, have their little software cash cows.

 

[Garbz]

They're OK for short term backup. Hard Drive's are engineered to fail after about 1 year of use. Some can last 3 or 4 years, some break in 6 months. Also, drop one and there's about a 75% chance it'll be unusable - as in busted. I want to keep many of my images until my grandchildren are old.

Were you perhaps the owner of an IBM Deskstar 60GXP series of drives? They are the only drives I've seen fail in under a year. My neighbour owned only 4, but returned 12 times within 2 years for replacement. Every drive I have seen would seem the mean time to failure is around 5 years or so, and with our 40 degree summers and 100% humidity it's not the nicest of environments. The drive I used to take to a friends place on a weekly / biweekly basis survived 4 years until I dropped it when getting out of the car

Google released a paper on this and they are perhaps in the best position to do so: http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf Key notes were that typically drives depended on vintage but overall failure rate remained low, only a few percent of the population failed in their first year. One thing that was noted is infant mortality as they called it. A drive which is thrashed in the first few months of operation (such as sitting in a google server) had an insanely high failure rate, but if it survived the first 3 months the failure rate dropped sharply. Good read for the statistically minded.

 

[Bifurcator]

That's good information. But do you want to trust your "family photos" to a unit that has any failure rate at all? Or say the one you dropped. What if that had all the pics of your children on it? This is why I say they're good for short-term storage. I'll take that google read later - sounds good. Right now I'm suffering from low blood sugar and am waiting on dinner to solve it.

But yeah, I've always until just recently, had a minimum of 30 HDs going 24/7 in my home (for the past 10 or 12 years) plus the labs where I taught were 3 rooms of 40+ work stations over about 10 years that I taught there. I've had every make of HD fail on me over those times. Micropolis were the worst. After them though I guess all about the same with a few model specific or batch specific exceptions like the DeskStar you mentioned - there were a few Maxtor models that were duds too. Server Grade parts seem to fair a little better. Usual death is slow degradation like you're talking about but on 3 different occasions I've had drives give up the ghost with a sudden and very loud BANG. I dunno if was thermal recalibration gone insane, a sudden spindle freeze, or what. Nothing was shaking around inside after - that I could tell. The sound is similar to a novel sized book landing perfectly flat from a 6 foot drop. Anyway, HD's die and it's not predictable in many cases. If you happened to be storing images that are precious to you on one that goes it sucks big-time. Services (or doing the same things yourself) can sometimes recover most or all of the data but that's also not guaranteed.

It sure is less work than DVDs tho!!!

 

[manaheim]

They're OK for short term backup. Hard Drive's are engineered to fail after about 1 year of use. Some can last 3 or 4 years, some break in 6 months. Also, drop one and there's about a 75% chance it'll be unusable - as in busted. I want to keep many of my images until my grandchildren are old.

Errr... where are you getting this info? I've been doing IT for eons now, and certainly you get an occasional bad batch. There was a Hitachi run that was famous for this back in the early 90's... I'm not necessarily trying to say you're wrong, man... I'm genuinely curious. If you know something I don't about these devices, I'd love to hear it.

Other than that, my personal experience is that nowadays drives tend to either fail VERY early on, or essentially live for a very very long time. Most modern hard drives under typical use will last for several years. I run IDE and SATA hard drives in servers that last typically for three to five years (running 24/7).

SCSI hard drives have a SIGNIFICANTLY better MTBF (mean time between failure), but most people cannot justify the expense over IDE or (preferably) SATA.

Stick to any decent HD manufacturer and you should be relatively safe... Seagate is my personal safest best-bet. I also highly recommend getting motherboards that support IDE RAID (redundant disk setups) so if you lose one drive you'll still be ok. Obviously backup your data often.

Aside from all I've said... NO hard drive should ever be trusted to live. Ever.

 

[Bifurcator]

Errr... where are you getting this info? I've been doing IT for eons now, and certainly you get an occasional bad batch. There was a Hitachi run that was famous for this back in the early 90's... I'm not necessarily trying to say you're wrong, man... I'm genuinely curious. If you know something I don't about these devices, I'd love to hear it.

PO (planned obsolescence) and EFF (Engineered For Failure) profiles are just a part of the design and manufacture process. I've read your favored manufacturer (Seagate) openly admit it in writing at a CES conference. This is nothing new and shouldn't be shocking or upsetting to anyone.

I did misspeak when I said 1 year though as it's usually 3 years but I was trying to make a point so fudged a little. Hey, I said "about..." so I'm safe.

 

[manaheim]

PO (planned obsolescence) and EFF (Engineered For Failure) profiles are just a part of the design and manufacture process. I've read your favored manufacturer (Seagate) openly admit it in writing at a CES conference. This is nothing new and shouldn't be shocking or upsetting to anyone.

I did misspeak when I said 1 year though as it's usually 3 years but I was trying to make a point so fudged a little. Hey, I said "about..." so I'm safe.

Ah, OK. 3 years I would believe. 1 year was scary and deeply upsetting.

 

[Bifurcator]

Sorry about that man.

 

[manaheim]

Sorry about that man.

It's ok... <shudder> I'll just go back to wimpering under my bed while sucking my thumb. I'm sure the emotional scars will fade after a few years.

:lmao:

 

[Bifurcator]

Nope, sorry, you'll never get over it. Once bifurcated you can never be whole again. :hug::

 

[Garbz]

3 years sounds plausible too as does engineering for failure One thing is certain that in our climate our HDDs have outlasted all my CDs and DVDs except for commercial pressings. So pick whichever works best I say. RAID1 is my tool of choice. If one fails I get an email and that's about it, replace the drive and rebuild the array.

I'm just waiting for holographic storage units to cost less than $15000 and be smaller than my desk, and I'm set

 

[Bifurcator]

But with RAID 1 if the faults produce file errors then it copies those over to the other drive(s).

PS: I hear ya on the holographic storage! When working prototypes were reviewed in 1982 I was sure it would have gone consumer by '87 or so. 20 years later I'm still waiting. Hmm.. Maybe never I guess. (??)

It's a conspiracy I tell ya!