[Leica] Re: Backup

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

> Good logic but bad math. Assuming you shoot 6 Gb a day on the average, 90 
> days of photography would produce 540 Gb of image data. If you stored the 
> data on DVD discs you would require 115 DVDs at a cost of $57.50.

I don't like to put more than one batch of pictures on a given DVD, because 
it makes filing and labeling them more difficult. So to store 90 days of 
pictures I would use 180 DVDs.

 Of course you would exceed the capacity of your 500 Gb hard drive so you 
would have to buy another.

Only when it's full. A 500GB hard drive that costs US$100 can store 5GB per 
dollar, which is the number that matters to me.

Incidentally Staples sells 100 packs of DVD discs for $29. Sometimes even 
cheaper on sales.

Seven-11 sells cheeseburgers, too. I use Taiyo Yuden DVD+R blanks, which run 
about $40 per hundred postpaid at supermediastore.com. All of the experts on 
archival storage seem to agree that the best way to maximize the life of a 
DVD is to store it in a jewel case. Slimline jewel cases are about $20 per 
hundred postpaid. So in aggregate, these DVDs properly kept can store about 
8GB per dollar.

Yes, DVDs are a bit cheaper, but not all that much cheaper, and I don't 
consider them to be as reliable. A couple of times a year I do record my 
most important information on DVDs and put them in a fireproof place.


>
> Incidentally, 6Gb of 10 Mb pictures is 600 pictures a day, every day. How 
> do you find time for anything else?

My Canon digital camera can shoot 600 pictures in about 10 minutes. I think 
my M8 would require 20 minutes to take 600 pictures. The hard part is not 
taking pictures, it's looking at them, choosing which ones to keep, etc.  I 
admit to being trigger-happy and always taking way more shots than I need. 
Maybe it's because in all of the CSI shows on television, the CSIs take 
bunches of exposures all at once, on motor drive, and I want to be cool like 
them.