Christmas ideas needed for my camera guy

[allie5]

One thing to remember is that a portable back up device is the least reliable way to store your photos as it's just a laptop hard drive in a box.

Really? I was told that memory cards fail very frequently (and I have had it happen to me, although several years ago so it was a small card with only 30 or so pix on it). Also (again, this is going by advice given by a photography forum) I was told if a memory card corrupts, the chances of recovering the data is almost zero, whereas, with a hard drive corruption, there is a much higher chance of being able to recover something. No guarantees obviously, but again, this rings true as DH has managed to remove files from an old PC of ours when the hard drive went belly up and we could no longer read or write from it.

I guess the only TRUE way of a proper back up, is to do a double back up as you say, but in truth, how many of us have the time and resources LOL! I know I dont with 3 kids in tow - it was hard enough taking pictures .

From my own personal point of view, I kinda felt happier with the pictures on the hard drive than on my memory cards - which could frequently be found on the floor, being chewed by the baby or forced into a gameslot of a Nintendo DS...the joys of parenting .

 

[Groucho]

Well, I'd say that the usual life span of a digital photo is that it's born on a memory card, moves to a hard drive, and retires to an optical disc (CD or DVD). Of those three, the hard drive is by far the least reliable. Your average memory card has a lifetime warranty and no moving parts. Your average hard drive has a one-year warranty and spins at a high rate of speed and has plenty of movement inside, and often will give no warning before failing, especially one that is only used to store backups.

In terms of recovering data off failed media, memory cards will usually fail with just minor corruption to start, perhaps making a few pictures somewhat garbled. Hard drives can fail in stages, with a few bad sectors which often quickly grow to more and more. This is the preferable way, as you will usually be able to recover much of the data. On the other hand, they can just as easily have a catastrophic failure where the PC won't be able to read the drive at all. It's very likely that a data recovery firm will be able to recover 100% of your data - but expect to pay $1,500, at the very least.

It's also not usual for a hard drive to have bad sectors but the owner not to notice - if no data is written to those sectors, or is nothing is read from them (or looked at closely), you might never know until the bad sectors expand to the point where you do notice problems, or the drive does fail entirely. Another telltale indication is the drive seeming to run slowly, especially if it momentarily hangs up the whole system. Put your ear to the drive and listen for a "chunking" sound - you'll know it if you hear it! If you do, the drive is in trouble, get your data off it ASAP and see it you have can it replaced under warranty - all the manufacturers have diagnostic tools you can download from their site to verify if there is a hardware problem or not.