It looks like a wonderful resource.  I will have to spend more time with it.

Joe

Thanks Dan.  I didn't realize Truecrypt can encrypt a whole disk or partition.  It's very useful!

Joe

Western Digital sell these external enclosures that come with two drives inside. It's my understanding that they can be sent up as a RAID 1 configuration.  If one fails, the other is still good to go.  Isn't that the idea?

Joe

Thanks Bill and Arlen.  I guess there is a difference between "does not run on" and "does not support".

Joe

Thaks Bill.  I will download Imageinvester and try it soon.  Other people seem to be using Syncback freeware on Windows 7 64bit.

Joe

For example, say you have portraits in your portfolio, that include portraits of three people (X, Y and Z).  You would probably have keywords for each of the three people.  Would you also have a general keyword "portrait" for all 3?

Joe

Is this different that using the built in backup function of LR 2?

If you could only have one of these applications, which would you choose?

Joe

For what it's worth, it seems that the free vesion of Syncback does not "support" the 64bit versions of Vista and Windows 7.

Joe

I have finally completed the process of upgrading my external backup drive from a 500G USB to a 1.5TB USB unit.  About 1/3 of the new unit is used up and it houses a second copy of all my archives.

I am running out of room on my internal drive, which houses the primary copy of everything.  It is a 750GB SATA drive that's been partitioned into a 200GB volume for the operating system and programs, and a 500GB partition for data.

For my second internal drive, anything more than 1TB would be a luxury as I think it would take me 3 years to shoot 1TB worth of pictures and video (my "derived" archives are very small as I choose a very select group of pictures to edit).  However 1.5TB drives seem to be a bit cheaper per Gigabyte right now. But given what I'm hearing about the lifespan of hard drives being only 3 years (or put differently, failure rates going up after 3 years), it doesn't seem to make sense to have excess capacity.

Any thoughts about that?  Any specific recommendations for brands/models/sizes/spinning speed/cache size?  Is it worth paying extra for Caviar Black drives (with their 5-year warranty) over Caviar Green (3-year warranty)?  The computer is in the living room and it's always on, so I do care about keeping the noise down.

Joe

Peter,

Would having a RAID 1 or RAID set-up have prevented this failure?

I realize you only have a small sample of drives, but did you notice any higher or lower failure rates from bare drives v. retail packaged?

Joe

Just wanted to make sure I'm understanding something correctly.

Syncback can verify that it copied files properly, but if the files were already copied, it could not compare them to make sure they are identical, correct?

Many thanks.

Joe

John,

That makes me feel much better.  I thought I was being delinquent because I had never created sidecar files.  This basically means the only thing I have to back up on a regular basis is my Lightroom catalogue and derived files.  All my original files are duplicated at the outset (it's a "condensed" version of the workflow Peter presents in the first book ). 

Joe

It is USB.  Does that mean there is no way to keep tabs on whether USB and Firewire drives are malfunctioning?

Joe

Did you find any answers to your questions?  I find the SMART utilities to be very confusing.

Joe