[Leica] raid drives

[dbirkey at hcjb.org (Duane Birkey)]

I've been using mirrored raid 1 drives with a PCI controllor since I got the 
D30 a number of years ago.  I would not think of using regular drives no 
matter how often you back things up.  I have been replacing the drives about 
once a year...  as soon as one of them starts making any noise...   All of 
the data is safe on the second drive.  
 
A reasonable alternative now is something like an external firewire 800 
Western Digital My book 1TB unit last fall that is working great so far.  
Some units have a 3 year warranty....
 
Supposedly I can replace the drives at some point when one of them fails.  I 
have two sata drives in my computer, one for Software, a second as a scratch 
disk.
 
That said, I am still backing things up onto Gold Archive CD's and DVD's... 
I'm always worried my external hard drive is going to disappear off of my 
desk someday. It's already full anyway of things that I need to back up and 
I'm pushing files onto a network drive... I miss the days of putting slides 
in a page and putting it in a binder.
.
I'd just as soon have digital files far enough part that a fire or a really 
nasty lightning strike wouldn't destroy everything...  call me paranoid.  
 
Duane