Computers & Backup for photographers & others

[oscaroo]

Gday.

For point 2:
- i have four backup disks. two for jpegs only (one of which is an sdd), and two for raw+jpeg. One of the raw+jpeg sits at work, which is 25km away from home.

for point 1: the jpegs i use are 2500xsomething. So basically, 1:1 to my laptop display.

my laptop screen is high-90's IGZA or something like that. With 2.5kx1.4k pixels. No amazing argb coverage, but good srgb. yeah, printers. i need better ones. But i dont print much, so .. i'm really just a happy snapper photo man that has expensive photo gear and knows how to use it. I don't print much, maybe 2 photos a year .

 

[Ratbag]

^ Good to hear from someone who understands the need for backup, Oscar :biggrin:.

I consider everything that's on re-writeable media to be ephemeral ... In my relatively long life so far, I have seen quite a number of tragedies where people have lost all there digital info: photos, documents, email, etc, etc. And they didn't have any backup/s. Computer GP is one of the things I have done for a living for most of my working life. I'm now fully retired.

So while I have lots of backups, including a 500 GB & 1 TB portable USB drives that travel with me almost always, I also burn the contents of each memory card to DVDR before I wipe them ... Having too many backups is like having too much good health, or too many friends ... :biggrin:.

BTW, nothing whatsoever wrong with being a happy snapper who likes them to be as good as possible. Why not??

 

[oscaroo]

As for backups, it gets better

When I travel I carry only the external SSD, a USB stick (64gb) and my laptop, (also with SSD). So, when I take photos they're in the SD card of the camera, I then copy them to laptop and external SSD and then keep them in the SD card. The next set of photos I take are put in a separate folder of the SD card, and repeating each time I download.

With this, I have three backups of photos taken in a trip. If one SD card (there are two) runs out of space, I use the other one. Once both run out of space, only then do I delete the oldest folder of the first one.

Although SSDs are more reliable, one need only a disk controller failure and you're doomed!

Indeedy,every two years or three I get a call from the same friend with, "OMFGZZZ MY COMPTER DIED I NEED MY PHOTOS" ... they never learn.

As for more backups, I keep all the software i need to reinstall everything that I need on a USB stick and the external SSD. So, if my computer dies while travelling, i buy another, reinstall and keep going ! [then deal with repairing the broken one once i get back home, or chucking it if its out of warranty/not repairable].

I keep my 'core' files in OneDrive, which is also accessible via my phone, and also synced with the TV server at home. (in case the OneDrive system dies). Once a month, I do copy the contents of my "core files" to my usb stick and the external ssd.

Boom! I'm ready for anything! .. except a EM-attack that kills all non-optical storage. . Ah, also core important files on the computer are encrypted.

 

[Ratbag]

^ All to the good, but don't trust SSDs. They have a very limited read/write MTBF compared with conventional HDDs. OTOH, they are completely shockproof. Ask Taza, the one in his laptop went toes up a year or two ago .

A good quality portable HDD can survive an impact force of around 1,000g. This is about what they get when dropped from normal hand height onto concrete. Carrying them in a padded case makes it extremely unlikely that they will ever be subjected to this amount of impact force. Mine live in a padded case inside my camera bag/s.

Never trust a computer .... :iconwink:.

 

[oscaroo]

I think with ssds you can get very bad luck. A friend had one whose controller died in three months. Otoh ive had one for six years and zero issues.

ive had bad experiences with hdds when in use while in motion. Like on a car, plane, etc. Plus I drop stuff /all/ the time ��.

yes. I have dropped my dslr a few times, still works ��. Theyre strong things

 

[Ratbag]

^ Same can happen with HDDs, but only very rarely.

The problem with SSDs is that the number of times they can be written to and read from is very limited. After that number of r/w cycles is passed, the memory locations on the device start to fail, and this can be catastrophic. HDDs fail far more gracefully, and usually last for a very long time (ten years or more is not at all uncommon).

I see a use for SSDs as cache/virtual memory devices, where their speed is fantastic - e.g. Windows page file, Photoshop VM file, Bridge cache files.

They are not so good for use as system drives or data drives, as they can fail very quickly.

 

[oscaroo]

I personally have not found the life-limit to be an issue. They seem to outlive my laptops and other system hdd drives my friends and family have.

I'll let you know when my tv-server (or any of them) SSD dies. It will probably outlive the computer it lives in too.

 

[Ratbag]

^ Hahahaha, Oscar :biggrin:.

My main workstation is nearly 7 y.o. and my laptop has celebrated its tenth birthday. Both still do what they are required to do. Generally, they do this faster than the latest and greatest because I know how to keep them in top shape, both logically and physically. So do all our other computers, some of which are (much) older than my laptop ... :ebiggrin: .

The best keyboard in the house is a 1988 IBM amphitheatre ergonomic keyboard that uses magnetic reed switches in the keys. Beautiful to use. My wife won't let me use it on my main w/s because the keys are too noisy when I'm typing fast at night. Our bedroom is right next to my study.

Perhaps you don't keep your various computers long enough for them to fail! :lol:.

Since being given the laptop by a client (an IBM R50, made in 2004), I have replaced the HDD because it was far too small (36 -> 320 GB) and chucked a whole lot of decent RAM into it (256 MB -> 2 GB).

I expected the RAM to speed it up significantly - it did indeed!
What I didn't expect was that replacing the OEM (Hitachi) HDD with a WD one (IIRC) would double the speed of the computer running things like Photoshop CS5 and Bridge - half the loading time for both of them. Both are 5,400 rpm drives, but the larger one has a dirty great cache in its IDE controller, the OEM one didn't have one at all. Just amazing the difference that made.
The laptop also has shock and movement detection that automatically does an emergency retract of the r/w heads in the HDD. This works ... .

Just recently, I bought a new battery (Sanyo, same as the OEM one, and same capacity), as the original OEM battery had dropped to about ~22% of its design capacity (~71 W/h). After getting the new one, I savagely reconditioned the original one, and managed to get it back to around 38% of its design capacity. It will run the lappy for about 1.5-2 hours now. The new one will run it at full speed for about 5.5-6.5 hours of continuous use. Not bad for an old clunker!

BTW, if I hit a burglar with the lappy, I would probably be charged with GBH or murder, and I have no doubt that the laptop would still work! I can pick it up by the top/centre of the screen and nothing even complains. The screen hinges are solid steel, or some similar ferro-magnetic material ... Built like the proverbial brick outhouse ... :biggrin: :rotfl:.
Mind you, it cost around $4,500 new ... Top shelf stuff; not cheap nasty plastic crap. I expect it to serve me well for quite some years to come.

 

[oscaroo]

I am most impressed that you're happy with the performance of a 7 or 10 year computer for photoshop!

Caches and RAM and (and SSDs) really do help speed up an old computer, or even a new one.

With new laptops, their size shrinks and so does the battery capacity. My previous laptop lasted 10hrs with its extra fat OEM battery. The new one lasts 6hrs with a tiny one. The difference of 1.2kg versus 2kg.

We really should get back to "general photography" talk. [sorry audience]

 

[Ratbag]

Gidday Oscar

I moved this discussion to a new thread ...

I am most impressed that you're happy with the performance of a 7 or 10 year computer for photoshop!

My main workstation loads PS6 from scratch in about 26 seconds (i.e. PS6 hasn't been used for over 24 hours, so definitely not in the cache anymore). PS6 is considerably slower to load than PS5 on the same PC IME. Apart from some notable improvements, PS6 is inferior to PS5 IMNSHO. Once PS6 has been used in a session, it only takes about 5-7 seconds to load.

My wife's PC loads PS5 in 19.5s and my laptop loads it in 18.5s (both from "cold")!! The laptop has a single core 1.5 Ghz Intel Pentium Mobile CPU.

All three computers have been on continuously and in use for between 13 and 26 days.

Caches and RAM and (and SSDs) really do help speed up an old computer, or even a new one.

Yes. And what surprises me is that Microsoft have never worked out the correct defaults for Windows setup, not even after nearly 25 years ... I was fixing this up on a friend's mother's PC the other day, and it's running Windows 8.1 ...

With new laptops, their size shrinks and so does the battery capacity. My previous laptop lasted 10hrs with its extra fat OEM battery. The new one lasts 6hrs with a tiny one. The difference of 1.2kg versus 2kg.

My IBM weighs 3.2 Kgs. Told you it was built like a brick outhouse! Made to take some rough treatment! My wife's Samsung Galaxy 4 has a quad core CPU, and the battery weighs about half its total weight ... It is surprisingly economical WRT battery use. Specially seeing as how it's driving that big display.

We really should get back to "general photography" talk. [sorry audience]

That's OK. I've moved all the posts to a new thread ... :iconwink: :lol:.

 

[oscaroo]

Well, I don't have PS5 or 6, I only have Photoshop elements.
But my almost-one year old Toshiba Kira (i7, SSD, 8gb ram) loads LR4 in 26.5 seconds from cold (until the splash screen goes away). Darn you Adobe! make faster load-time programs.

I will agree that for most computing tasks, CPU's have not really progressed to make ones life faster. Pretty much all computers, new and old, are good for most tasks that everyday people perform.

3.2kg, ouchies! that would defo hurt if it falls on your foot.

Nonetheless, well done on your almost-decade old laptop. I would still be happy with my second-last laptop, if it hadn't died. In fact, the second-last laptop was faster than the last laptop! And the current laptop is slower than the last laptop if the cooling settings are set to "battery optimised", otherwise it's faster. But not by much appreciably. The main benefit is that this one doesn't get as hot as the previous one for the same task.

 

[Ratbag]

^ Maintaining the speed is a matter of proper setup and regular maintenance, including proper de-fragging and optimisation.

An i7 with 8 GB of RAM and using an SSD should smoke my laptop by a factor of 4x (at least). The fact that it doesn't indicates that you may well have poxware on it; the system drive is badly fragmented; or the swap file etc are not set up correctly.

After re-booting the lappy, it loaded PS5 in under 17.5s. LR and PSE should load faster than this. BTW, that's not until the splash screen goes, it is until the FILE menu will respond to a mouse click, which is 2-3 seconds longer.

The laptop will run for a lot longer than 5-6 hours, as it switches off the screen and HDD after 5 mins of no use. It does run the CPU flat out though, even when on battery. The 5-6 hours is continuous use with screen and HDD both running continuously. Mind you, it has a 72 Wh battery (6.6 Ah) - about the capacity of a motorcycle battery ... :iconwink:.

 

[oscaroo]

I know how to keep my computer in tiptop shape
There's no poxware (or friends), and the system drive is an SSD so defrag is irrelevant. That said, the 'swap drive' part of the OS has been reduced to the minimum of 100mb so that my C: partition actually has some space left.

I was counting until the splash screen vanished. I'll rerun the experiment until the FILE menu responds.

that is a juicy battery, mine has a 47wh battery.

 

[Ratbag]

Gidday Oscar

I know how to keep my computer in tiptop shape
There's no poxware (or friends), and the system drive is an SSD so defrag is irrelevant. That said, the 'swap drive' part of the OS has been reduced to the minimum of 100mb so that my C: partition actually has some space left.

I was counting until the splash screen vanished. I'll rerun the experiment until the FILE menu responds.

that is a juicy battery, mine has a 47wh battery.

Of course. I forgot that ^. DOH!

How big is the SSD in your laptop?

Is it possible to fit a second SSD, or preferably a normal HDD that you can mirror the system drive onto? With its weird boot system, Win7 is a disaster waiting to happen, IMNSHO.

I far preferred the original boot system used by WinNT 3.10 to WinNT 4.0 that allowed one to have the OS on a non-bootable HDD, and then boot from either a CDR or floppy. This could be removed and locked in a safe as required, making the computer all but non-bootable unless one knew the arc name of the system path. That was a far more secure system. Specially if one were to encrypt the volume with strong encryption such as that provided by pre-1997 (?) versions of PGP ...

As far as the OS is concerned, a CF card is an IDE HDD, and they are tiny. This does not apply to any other kind of memory card, AFAIK. When connected using USB 2/3, they are slow as a dog (of course). When connected using an IDE cable they should be as fast as they are able to run. The problem is getting hold of a CF card reader that's connected using an IDE or SATA/PATA cable. I don't understand why M/B makers haven't worked this out, and provided such an option as a standard attachment.

 

[subyroo]

What program/s do you guys use to image your HDD/SSD?

I am close to re-installing my Win 7 OS and programs (SATA HDD) as it has been up & running since 18 July 2010.

In the past I have used Acronis True Image to create my image backups but have read good things about Macrium Reflect and StorageCraft ShadowProtect 5 for Desktop.

 

[oscaroo]

To Ratbag:
* On this laptop, it's mSATA, and it's 256Gb. No second slot avail for SATA/mSATA.
* Though win7+8 have a weird boot system, they have never stuffed up for me. Don't fear change .
* MB makers build for the masses. If you're the outlier, you don't get soup. Plus, idk of CF cards have wear leveling nor TRIM-like support.
* didn't have time to try experiment.

To subyroo:
I've used DriveImageXML [https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm] in the past to do this. It's also been handy as a disk image backup thingo. In my experience, imaging-to-clone-and-replace-OS-disk is only worth while if you're increasing the disk capacity or replacing a dead/dying disk. It may play havoc if you have a multi-boot system too. I personally haven't tried it on win8 but I think on win7 I have.

if you're imaging to replace the machine, and you're imaging the OS drive then it's worthless as you will need a reinstall so that the OS starts up with the correct drivers. I ended up in a scenario that my cloned OS to a new machine wouldn't install the graphic drivers specific to the display because the old ones were still installd; and i couldn't uninstall the old ones becaues the hardware was not detected.

if you're imaging to clone your personal data, then i would much suggest that in the future you store your personal data in a different partition/drive/folder - such that *all* your personal data is in under one hat. Then you can copy paste it over, or cloudify it easily. With personal data I class it as 'working-set' and 'long term'. I cloudify+copypastebackup the personal data, and the long term copypastebackup.

if you're imaging your data just so you have a fallback in case your reinstall failed, then dont. Buy a new drive, install in the new one.

nonetheless, if you're imaging a system drive to another new disk, you may find that your external hdd caddy you use (if you use one to do so) may not propagate some boot flag stuff and the newly imaged OS may not boot. YMMV.

 

[Ratbag]

Gidday Peter

What program/s do you guys use to image your HDD/SSD?

I am close to re-installing my Win 7 OS and programs (SATA HDD) as it has been up & running since 18 July 2010.

Why? I have a number of client computers running Win7 ever since it came out. They have never had to have the OS re-installed, with one exception where the HDD failed after about 6 months use. These are predominantly in office situations where they are in use 24/7. I have always recommended that the client/s reboot their computers every week, generally first thing on Monday morning, as it's easy to remember.

If you are only using the defragger that comes with Windows, download and install UltraDefrag. It's free, and provides a far better front end to the defragger (it is non-existent in Win7 ... ), and provides some control over how the defragment process is done. It works with XP, Vista and Win7. I haven't used it with Win8, but it should work. Just ensure that you download and install the correct version for your OS and hardware.

In the past I have used Acronis True Image to create my image backups but have read good things about Macrium Reflect and StorageCraft ShadowProtect 5 for Desktop.

Win7 has a 'native' system volume imaging application. IMO this is as good as any. It takes a complete snapshot of the system volume, and warns you if the target location is on another partition of the same physical drive. Sensible.

BTW, this image should be freshened up regularly.

One also needs a secondary method of booting the defunct computer, so make certain that you create the Win7 boot DVDRs, as per the Win7 installation instructions!! I would suggest that it is not overkill to make two copies of these important DVDRs ...