Do I partition the external hard drive?

[skunkworks]

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if i need another partition i get another drive.

[ski542002]

Hello:

 

Just my opinion, but maybe we should discuss the philosophy of why we're using an external drive in the first place.

 

To me, a drive, even the Mac's internal, is just an "interim" backup repository, not a permanent home for my digital files. The cost of storage has dropped so dramatically in the past few years, I just started using multiple firewire drives.

 

My two older, and low capacity LaCie pocket drives are used for specifc image-category interim backups, and my new and incredibly fast firewire 800 LaCie 110 gb pocket drive backs up my entire MacBook Pro system, every evening. (I use BounceBack, a great backup tool.)

 

I then backup all specific jobs/projects to DVD or CD-rom and then delete the images from the drive on my Mac, then the 800 drive, and then the two smaller drives. In the future, when something comes along to best DVD technology, we'll all have a lot of remastering to do!

 

CD

[wparsonsgisnet]

... I then backup all specific jobs/projects to DVD or CD-rom and then delete the images from the drive on my Mac, then the 800 drive, and then the two smaller drives. In the future, when something comes along to best DVD technology, we'll all have a lot of remastering to do.CD

 

Chris, I agree with your scheme until you get to DVD and CD media. These are not archival. Many swear by the Mitsui gold CD's, but there is no satisfactory test of these media -- and if you scratch them, GoodBye data.

 

These media make a great device for transfering files: sending them to others, for example.

 

This is also a higher cost solution than keeping the data on your firewire drives.

 

Also, ultimately, you may not have enough copies of the image file.

 

If you were to keep your files online, on multiple firewire or usb drives:

1. You would have backup, as you described above, initially,

2. You would have an easier time cataloguing your data,

3. You would be able to convert to new media devices in a much more easy fashion than copying hundreds of disks,

4. Access would be much faster,

5. You would save money, and

6. You would be using media that is much less risky and also more archival.

[Guest rubidium]

I've been setting up hard drives and RAID arrays for high performance applications for years. My advice is to go with a single partition for your application, and, most importantly, defragment it often as you fill it. For the latter, I prefer O&O Defrag out of Germany, for it gives you many options to custom tailor the defragmentation to your application and it's fast.

 

The arguments about multiple partitions reducing seek time are nonsense. Seek time is a function of several things, primarily drive RPM. Fragmented files imply numerous seeks during reading or writing of large files, which dramatically reduces transfer rate. The ideal transfer involves a single seek and a sustained sequential transfer which is a situation promoted by files that occupy a continuous track, and are stacked head-to-tail with no gaps (unfortunately operating systems are guilty of fragmenting files upon write if there are lots of gaps between existing files on the drive). Really the only arguments for partitioning a single drive is to support a multiple boot situation on system drives (e.g. Windows and Linux), or to have multiple formatting on a single drive for whatever reason.

 

One other thing. When formatting a drive, be mindful of choosing a proper cluster size for your application. Windows, for example, defaults to 4KB clusters, unless you choose otherwise (e.g. 8KB, 16KB, ...). The choice of larger clusters improves the transfer rate for large files, but reduces the storage efficiency for smaller files. For example, writing lots of 7KB files to a drive formatted with a 64KB cluster size would consume 64KB each and thus be very wasteful of this your primary content. Alternatively, if you are primarily storing lots of 19MB files, then there would not be any serious impact on storage efficiency, but transfer rates would improve.

 

Good luck ...

Jim

[ski542002]

I agree with Bill Parsons that cd and dvd media are not truely long-term archival.

 

Many wedding shooters I know purchase a 500gb or 1TB drive, fill it up and throw the drive into a safe deposit box, then buy another drive to fill. Their feeling is that if the drive were to fail, they can always pull the guts and have a service retrieve the data.

 

I had thoughts about on-line storage, but am unfamiliar with the options and pricing. Can anyone point me to a few on-line options for storage?

 

This thread is morphing into a very non-Leica thread, but given that Leica is now digital, it's still very important.

 

CD

[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris, by "online" I meant drives connected to my computer. In my case, they are firewire and usb, external drives.

 

With regard to your comment about putting drives in the drawer above, there was a post to this point exactly. One of the lurkers said he buys a new pair of 500GB drives each year on which to store his pix.

 

He uses one as primary, the other as "mirror," and puts them in a drawer at the end of the year.

[ski542002]

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Bill, thanks for the clarification.

 

I do seem to remember reading about true on-line storage, whereby you do upload your image files to the vendor's backup server via the web. I do seem to remember it being very expensive, although I see where it could be used as a temporary storage portal while shooting on-location, or on vacation and not wanting to lug along extra storage.

 

Cd

[wparsonsgisnet]

Chris, I know several people who do this. And, I wonder how they sleep at night. But then I'm a charter member of the Always Have Two club.

 

At a shoot, I always copy the cards somewhere else. And I never reformat the cards until my requisite 3 copies (1 off-site) are where they should be.

 

It's a great gimmick, tho. With files this size, I would imagine FTP would be helpful.