[s-cars] NAC- need advice on photo workstation, RAID and some other ???s

[Kent McLean]

Taka Mizutani wrote:
> I'm building a dedicated photo workstation for maximum reliability 
> and redundancy so as to avert any potential data loss. However, 
> I have to do this in a reasonable budget, so I can't afford to drop 
> multi thousands on this setup. 

I may be wrong, but...  I haved heard horror stories about RAID
setups where data got corrupted on the first drive, and it was 
copied that way to the redundent drives, destroying what had
been good data.

If it were me,  I'd rely on frequent manual backups.  I'd just copy 
the work data to a second drive in the PC after every session.
I'd also get a removable (USB/Firewire) drive and copy to that,
too, then store that drive off-site.  And to make sure that a stray
magnet or flood doesn't screw up the drives, I'd burn the data 
to DVD(s) on a regular (weekly, monthly) basis, and store those 
off-site.

That's my two cents, and worth every penny.

Some questions that didn' arise:  what OS are you using?
Do you have a wireless network to back-up to a 2nd PC?
How much data are you talking about?  Some ISPs provide
lots of storage for little money (easy access and off-site).

-- 
Kent McLean
'94 100 S Avant, "Moody"
'89 200 TQ, "Bad Puppy" up in smoke