External hard disks

[David Kilpatrick]

This month, both the Western Digital Media Centre HD with combined card reader units owned by myself and Richard (dating to a similar purchase time - I think 2004/5) have started failing to wake up reliably from their power economy sleep mode when conneted to the iMac 24 inch (we both use the same). This may be due to a system update on the iMac changing the wake-up behaviour, or to consistent ageing of units used continuously for maybe 5 years.

Last night, my Firewire 800 connected Iomega Ultramax (RAID 1) main drive also behaved oddly, shutting down suddenly during a file save of a small WP document with the result that I'm now rebuilding Disk 1 of the two-HD RAID pair (seems to take ages). All data is safe because Disk 2 contains it, and I seem to be able to continue working, but I have been saving all files today on the machine's system disk not externals.

I have ordered two Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition 1TB drives which have eSATA, USB 2, FW400 and FW800 including Firewire pass-through so they can be daisychained with the Ultramax. They are £96+VAT and delivery each from MISCO, which is not bad for a quad interface fast drive (I have no eSATA yet but may in future):

http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/Sea ... ku=Q120526

I have almost filled the 250B of the old Media Centre HD and find my 'Raw File Archive' 250GB is full with previous material, so one the 1TB drives will take over for raw file archive storage. MISCO's ordering system failed to print correct receipts, indicating I had ordered nothing and paid zero, so I repeated the process - I now find they have actually charged me twice and four 1TB drives will be arriving tomorrow.

So two go back for a refund, I don't think I need four, but I am considering it. Another £200 or so would have bought a Drobo with four 1TB drives and a RAID 5 capacity of 3TB. The separate 1TB units have the advantage that they can be moved between desktop and laptop, easily carried (a Drobo can't be) and will hopefully prove reliable.

David

[stevecim]

for me I've found 3-5 years to be about the life of SATA disks under continuous use. Older PATA disks seems too last longer than new SATA, in 5 years I replaced over 30 SATA disks all less the 3 years old. 5-8 PATA and no SCSI, I'm using 9 year old SCSI disks on my main server , never missed a beat. Even in 2 x $300,000+ EMC storgae arrays I've looked after the last 2 years, I've only had SATA disk go faulty.

I've found external USB/firewire attached disks to be more pron to go faulty then fixed disks in well made PC's, I guessing this is due to external disks receiving more knocks, bumps, vibrations and they tend to have lower spec power supplies.

hopefully SSD will change all this.

[bakubo]

Reading your post and Don's post I see that you guys use your external disks differently than I do. It sounds like you leave them on all the time, is that right? I only turn mine on when I want to run backup software or when I want to get something off of it. Usually it is on for just a few minutes unless I am working on a bunch of photos and then it might be on for 2-3 hours.

The 1tb drive I bought last year will go to sleep if I don't use it for awhile but even so I just turn it off when I am not using it. I have had several of these disks since 2003 and had always assumed they weren't meant to be left on all the time. Am I wrong about that?

[stevecim]

I have had several of these disks since 2003 and had always assumed they weren't meant to be left on all the time. Am I wrong about that?

I would tend to agree with you, many of them do not have the right sort of cooling to be left on 24x7 and I've 10+ power supplies die over the last 5 years, many of them including big name brands over heat when running 24x7

[David Kilpatrick]

It would not be an option for me to turn off HDs. For one thing, Photoshop is using allocated scratchdisk space on my main unit - on all four partitions. Bridge will be set to view whatever the last folder was, and if you turn off a disk or eject it, that screws up Bridge. One problem today was that I was placing a file in InDesign, then had to do a search for the file I wanted (not using InDesign's search during place function, it's less comprehensive), and during the search an email came in requesting a PDF by sent from another disk - at some point the directory which InDesign's place tool had last been pointed out disappeared due to my HD problem (old Western Digital drive) which caused a system wide hang. I finally got back to InDesign and discovered that Adobe reckoned there was a fatal, and was warning me ID would quit and I must recover document on relaunch.

Basically, if you are dealing with anything up to 15 different programs open at a time and documents from maybe six different partitions or HDs plus the system, you can't just shut down HDs at random. I do have two HDs which are only plugged in when needed and turned off the rest of the time. These are treated like I would treat a memory card.

We are told that turning HDs off and on constantly is what wears them out, and that they are best left running all the time. When I am away, I generally power them all down and restart the Mac with none attached - I am sure a week's rest does no HD any harm.

David

[bakubo]

Yes, I certainly recognize the advantages of keeping your external disks turned on all the time. Much more convenient. I tend to turn mine on 2-4 times a week and usually just for a few minutes at a time to do a backup. I haven't used a desktop computer for a few years since I am not anchored to one spot so I need something more portable. For the last 2-3 years I have been using 17" notebooks -- I got a new one last year and gave the previous one to my wife. Of course, not as good as a big desktop, but the screen is big enough and they are powerful enough that I am reasonably satisfied. Definitely better than the 15" notebook I had a few years ago. The external disk keeps all my stuff and the more recent stuff is also on the notebook's hard disk. I also have the older stuff on 2 other old external hard disks, but I don't have those with me in Hawaii. This 17" notebook and the external disk both easily fit in a carry-on rolling bag along with my camera gear so easily transported on planes. When I do backpack travel I, of course, never take this bag, just a backpack, so I don't take the computer with me.

[bakubo]

I downloaded Picasa 3 a few months ago, but it doesn't work if you have an external disk that isn't turned on all the time. Just as Don said. That is why I don't use it. In January I submitted this request to Picasa:

I downloaded Picasa 3 for Vista a couple of days ago and have been playing with it. I have a question that I have not found the answer to in the documentation. I have also searched on this forum and did not find an answer.

I use a notebook pc and have 2 external hard disks that I connect occasionally to do back ups. I have many gigabytes of photos (raw, tiff, jpeg, psd, etc.) on the external hard disks (the 2 hds have the same stuff) and I only keep the most recent few months of photos on my notebook pc. The Picasa documentation says this:

"To use Picasa to manage photos stored on an external drive, that drive needs to first be connected to your computer. Once the drive is connected, Picasa displays photos stored on the external drive including all edits made to the photos."

Okay, so if I connect my external hd and then let Picasa scan it what happens when the drive is turned off/disconnected? Will Picasa remember the photos on the external hd and still display the thumbnails even when the external hard disk is not connected?

As an experiment, I connected one of the external hard disks, started Picasa, added one photo folder on the drive, saw that the folder now appeared in the folder list on the left side of Picasa and I could see the photo thumbnails. Then I disconnected the drive and the folder disappeared from the folder list in Picasa. I want to be able to see the folders, thumbnails, and info when the external hard disks are not connected/turned on. There are multiple reasons why I can't have the drives always connected so that isn't an option. Of course, I fully realize that if the drive is not connected I won't be able to click on a thumbnail and see the full size photo, but the thumbnails and other info is in the local Picasa database in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2. It seems to me there is no reason why Picasa cannot display folders and thumbnails and allow searching, etc. for stuff on an external hard disk even when it is not connected. If one tries to display a full-size photo then Picasa would give an error message saying that the photo is not available and display the full file name (path and drive letter) where it is located.

I am hoping that I have just somehow missed the proper configuration or something that will make Picasa work in this case. Can someone please show me how? Thank you!

Here is the thread I started along with responses:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/P ... 8a7b&hl=en

[bakubo]

Don, thanks. I will give ACD a look.

I have sort of been toying with putting Linux on a computer and checking out what state it is currently in for photography. Besides Gimp (not 16-bit yet) there is Showfoto and Krita which are both 16-bit. I read some about the newest digiKam and it looks pretty interesting. If I had an extra pc laying around I would put Linux on it to play around.