External Storage

Storage is cheap. My first hard disk was 10 MB for maybe $2,500 (I actually didn't pay for it), so walking through the storage department of J&R is like a stroll though a wonderland. The terabyte is a $200 these days and prices are dropping. Of course file sizes went up - there was a time when a 100 KB file induced awe, while today a single RAW picture alone accounts for 10MB and I take easily a hundred or more on a day. But again storage is cheap.

Backup is not, however. Digital assets are precious and a single hard disk failure can wipe them out forever, so you need at least two copies of each file. DVDs cannot handle the amount of data, so the only practical way is to use multiple hard disks and copy files on each of them.

Here's what we do: for current data - means the media library, which does constantly change and pictures of the current year we have a hard disk attached to a Mac mini and backed up via Time Machine to a second hard disk. Works very well and we have a history to go back to in case some files get corrupted.

For all pictures taken before 2008 we have a hard disk in the network with read only access that is replicated to a second hard disk. Finding that network disk was not easy, though.

First try: For approximately $200 I bought a 500 GB LaCie Ethernet Disk mini Home Edition. "Home Edition" means that everything is pre-configured and you can't change anything - from the stupid network name "Hipserv" to the cheesy pre-defined shares like "FamilyPhotos" or "FamiliyDocuments". Worst of all, after copying 100 GB of pictures to "FamilyPhotos" it wouldn't stop working. For day and night its huge activity light was flickering, turning our apartment into a discotheque. Of course this was accompanied by the noise of a fan and the rattling of the hard disk itself. LaCie support (which is pretty good for a low-cost product) confirmed that this is not normal, but couldn't provide a solution. So the disk had to go.

Second Try: I would have exchanged it against a standard edition version of the same model, but it was sold out. Western Digital somehow manages it to tie platform-independent technology to a Windows-only platform, so the alternative was a network-attached Iomega 500 GB disk, slightly more expensive that the LaCie, but with an included print server. This one can be configured as you like and it even has an option to turn the disk off after some time of inactivity. The disk, but not the fan and Iomega built in a heavy duty, server-grade fan that relentlessly blows mostly cold air out of the enclosure. It's louder than any desktop computer. Simply unacceptable.

Third Try: Now, our USB disks are pretty noiseless, so I decided to buy a simple USB disk and attach it to the AirPort Extreme. This setup is less flexible, but sufficient for what we need. USB disks are cheaper than Ethernet disks, so I could upgrade to 1 TB for the same price. Big mistake. Because the 1TB LaCie Desktop Hard Disk is again equipped with a fan. A smart one that only turns on if needed, but after a some time apparently it's needed every 30 seconds or so. This draws attention to the noise the same way a fire truck siren does. Again unacceptable.

Of course I didn't want to go to J&R and return a disk for the third one, so we're using the Lacie for the offline backup disk.

Bottom line: if you care about noise, make sure the disk has no fan, which limits the capacity to 500 GB at this time.