Where do you store all this stuff????(long)

[Gary David Bouton]

We always talk about software on this forum, but almost never--with the exception of the Wacom Graphire pad--do we talk about hardware.

So that's what I'm writing about.

After ten years of modeling, I have gone through almost every type of storage media. I had lost about 6 months of models earlier this year, so I dug between the moths in my wallet, and popped for stuff that will ensure that I can keep what I create.

An original problem is that I'm currently trying to re-render interesting work whose size had to be like 2MB, because in 1994, a 240MB hard drive seemed luxurious, but inadequate for large Photoshop-finished files. So my first shopping trip was:

•A Maxtor 80GB external drive. My wife Barbara and I have separate offices in our home, and we went for USB connections where possible, and firewire. We'd been using BNC and the throughput now is 10x a BNC connection. I heartily recommend buying an external hard drive, because it's easier than opening the stupid case and trying to instal an internal with adult-sized fingers. And you're screwed if you don't have enough bays for extra drives anyhow.

•If you're buying a new computer, I recommend ordering it with 2 or more hard drives of the biggest/most reasonably-priced size. And obviously internals cost less than externals.

Now hard drives are only part of the Second Millenium coping with file storage and management. I would love to hear what you guys are doing about organizing your storage space. I have one machine for writing books, and a different one next to it for doing betas, handling video editing, blah, blah. I found a piece of Windows shareware called Wilbur, that does very nicely at text searching. I get about a dozen emails a day, I answer all my readers, and then I have to go back and find a name or something. Windows search engine cannot compare to Wilbur. I wish I could find and provide the URL for it.

•External floppy drives. If you're running a Macintosh G series, you basically have to get an external floppy 3 and a half. But I run both Windows and Macintosh equipment, and it's a PITA to go stooping under my desk to put in a floppy. I bought an Imation for less than $75 dollars (it's a sister company of 3D, I believe) and it goes on a stack very nicely. And it has little inlays of the Mac colors so you can coordinate your floppy with your 'puter.

•My feeling on Zip drives are that they are passé. They are simply inadequate for holding a lot of stuff except mp3 files and fonts. But you gotta get one because service bureaus have them, your friends have these drives, and if you want to shlep or mail a large file or application, the Zip cassettes are only about $10 US in bulk, and it's faster to do this than burn a CD.

•The CD. I bought two QueFire CD-Rs and they are magnificent, affordable drives. The models I got go up to 32x for reading and 16x for writing. BTW, Riva bought Adaptec's wonderful CD Creator software, and their version sucks for a number of reasons. First, we got this imitation Kai Krause interface (I do NOT need to hunt for stuff when I'm burning a CD), plus commands are ambiguous. If anyone has recommendations for burning software, I'm all ears.

Finally, and I think this is a good idea: you get about a gig or two of modeling files well organized on CD...you make two copies. I keep one copy, and I got a safety deposit box at the bank. I figure I've lost enough work in my days with a computer. Safety deposit boxes cost a little, but it's nothing compared to the heartache of losing a good model, or two, or fifty [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Oh, yeah, like we did with tape backups, archiving on CDs is useless unless you discipline yourself to do it like monthly (Stu, you should do backups HOURLY [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


Waiting for DVD writers to drop down to 3 figures,
Kindest Regards,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Gary David Bouton]

We always talk about software on this forum, but almost never--with the exception of the Wacom Graphire pad--do we talk about hardware.

So that's what I'm writing about.

After ten years of modeling, I have gone through almost every type of storage media. I had lost about 6 months of models earlier this year, so I dug between the moths in my wallet, and popped for stuff that will ensure that I can keep what I create.

An original problem is that I'm currently trying to re-render interesting work whose size had to be like 2MB, because in 1994, a 240MB hard drive seemed luxurious, but inadequate for large Photoshop-finished files. So my first shopping trip was:

•A Maxtor 80GB external drive. My wife Barbara and I have separate offices in our home, and we went for USB connections where possible, and firewire. We'd been using BNC and the throughput now is 10x a BNC connection. I heartily recommend buying an external hard drive, because it's easier than opening the stupid case and trying to instal an internal with adult-sized fingers. And you're screwed if you don't have enough bays for extra drives anyhow.

•If you're buying a new computer, I recommend ordering it with 2 or more hard drives of the biggest/most reasonably-priced size. And obviously internals cost less than externals.

Now hard drives are only part of the Second Millenium coping with file storage and management. I would love to hear what you guys are doing about organizing your storage space. I have one machine for writing books, and a different one next to it for doing betas, handling video editing, blah, blah. I found a piece of Windows shareware called Wilbur, that does very nicely at text searching. I get about a dozen emails a day, I answer all my readers, and then I have to go back and find a name or something. Windows search engine cannot compare to Wilbur. I wish I could find and provide the URL for it.

•External floppy drives. If you're running a Macintosh G series, you basically have to get an external floppy 3 and a half. But I run both Windows and Macintosh equipment, and it's a PITA to go stooping under my desk to put in a floppy. I bought an Imation for less than $75 dollars (it's a sister company of 3D, I believe) and it goes on a stack very nicely. And it has little inlays of the Mac colors so you can coordinate your floppy with your 'puter.

•My feeling on Zip drives are that they are passé. They are simply inadequate for holding a lot of stuff except mp3 files and fonts. But you gotta get one because service bureaus have them, your friends have these drives, and if you want to shlep or mail a large file or application, the Zip cassettes are only about $10 US in bulk, and it's faster to do this than burn a CD.

•The CD. I bought two QueFire CD-Rs and they are magnificent, affordable drives. The models I got go up to 32x for reading and 16x for writing. BTW, Riva bought Adaptec's wonderful CD Creator software, and their version sucks for a number of reasons. First, we got this imitation Kai Krause interface (I do NOT need to hunt for stuff when I'm burning a CD), plus commands are ambiguous. If anyone has recommendations for burning software, I'm all ears.

Finally, and I think this is a good idea: you get about a gig or two of modeling files well organized on CD...you make two copies. I keep one copy, and I got a safety deposit box at the bank. I figure I've lost enough work in my days with a computer. Safety deposit boxes cost a little, but it's nothing compared to the heartache of losing a good model, or two, or fifty [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Oh, yeah, like we did with tape backups, archiving on CDs is useless unless you discipline yourself to do it like monthly (Stu, you should do backups HOURLY [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]


Waiting for DVD writers to drop down to 3 figures,
Kindest Regards,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Earl]

First of all, I'd like to agree on how important organization is when it comes to massive amounts of data. I've always been into hard drive organization (even when I had my puny 200 MB hard drive with my 25 MHz 486). I can't say that I'm a fan of external hard drives, Gary, but I certainly understand why someone would use them. For me, I'd like them to be kept safely inside my tower. That's also because their SCSI drives, and thus more expensive (making an accidental Dr. Pepper spill many times more lethal!). Of course, with SCSI drives, it's much harder to get the really large sizes (unless your budget is bigger than Ronald McDonald's shoes).

But regardless of your hard drive situation - the biggest and single most important part of keeping your files organized is a CD burner. Plain and simple. Hard drives are magnetically sensitive, and thus unreliable. Same with Zip disks, and of course the dreaded floppy disks. CDs are the only thing that you can store safely. And Gary, I'm glad you mentioned the multiple duplication part, because I couldn't agree more. Always make two (or more) copies of a disk that you intend to use for archive purposes. Although CDs are reliable and durable, they can be damaged, and it's just best to have a backup. They're cheap! Easy to mail to someone (easier than a zip disk I'd say), and they take up so little space. You can pick up a very good, brand name 16x cd burner for $100 (plus or minus depending on location). CDs themselves are dirt cheap...

As far as computers go...I think your setup is a good idea Gary. Since I don't really like having multiple machines (one alone generates too much heat for my tastes), I keep all my projects - whether written or graphical, under one hard drive. The other hard drive is for OS and applications. It works out well, since often my stories/(potential)novels will be accompanied by illustrations and graphics.

But it really doesn't matter *how* you organize your work, as long as it's organized in a way that works for you. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Gary David Bouton]

Hey Earl..

I finally organized a Windows desktop after I posted my bon mots! The Desktop is far too easy a place to lose stuff. So I make shortcuts to critical or often-used stuff.

By the way, if you're a Windows user, you can put a drive letter on your desktop (or better yet, buy Alladine Software's Dragstrip...it has a box with chicklet icons you can customize, very reminiscent of Norton Desktop), you add this line to a shortcut:

c:\winnt\explorer.exe "d:"

to make a button for your D drive in this example.

Earl, you would not believe it, but I've got a Macintosh in my office, too, for a total of three machines. Living in upstate New York is no insurance against heat problems, in fact, I lost a lotta good data last summer during a heat spell. This is a unique position (or quasi-unique) but I was able to write off central air in the house. No more overheated machines.

I do this kah-kah for a living, and I guess that affects how I handle computer organization/problems. I only mentioned the Maxtor external (IDE), 'cause at over 500Mhz, using FireWire, the drive feels like an internal drive (access time, I mean). Windows users have never really had the luxury of stacks of data daisy chained together, except for SCSI. With Firewire, I've got my keyboard, tablet, and a toaster I think, all hooked and wires bundled to a hub all neat and stuff underneath my desk.


Hey, you know, i think I'd like to hear of other user's machines on this thread, Earl. I'd like to learn from ingenuity and share hardware issues.

Wot say?


My Best,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[Earl]

Agreed! I'm always interested in new ways to look at setting up hardware. Mine is by no means perfect. While I love these SCSI drives (and their speed), there's always something better. I've been thinking about trying SCSI RAID, and seeing what sort of performance increase there is associated with that. My biggest problem is heat. My full size tower sits under my desk, which unfortunately has a closed back. So the tower is covered on top by the keyboard drawer, to the left by the built in desk filing cabinate, and covered in the back by the back of the desk. Not a good setup for air circulation. As such, I have had one minor fire due to a powersupply fan failure. That was back in May of 2000, when I never turned my machine off (had it on straight for a year or so). The fan failed, and the dust inside began to smoke. This was at 2:30am...fortunately, I was just doozing off, so I was still awake enough to realize what was going on.

So, I've come up with this little 'system' to take care of the heat problem. I leave the sides of the tower off, to give full air circulation access to the motherboard and cpu. I have a 9" 'tornado' fan (the small floor ones that pump an amazing amount of air for their size). It sits right in front of the computer blowing air directly onto the motherboard and cpu (and past the hard drives). This alone drops the internal temperature down by 10 degrees celsius. Then I have a small quiet fan sitting in the corner beneath my desk, just to help circulate the air down there and keep it moving.

Inside my tower, I leave a nice space between my two SCSI drives. I often see other computers with the hard drives stacked right on top of each other. If I did that with these 10,000 rpm SCSI's, they'd melt within a day. They literally get too hot to touch (minor burns result from curiousity).

I *highly* recommend using some sort of internal temperature device. Most new CPUs and motherboard come with them. I'm always monitoring my cpu temperature. It hovers around 50 degrees celsius. Supposedly it's safe as long as it stays below 60 degrees. Such devices will also monitor your cpu fan, and your case fan (if hooked to the motherboard). If your system starts to over heat, they'll actually increase the speed of the fan to help compensate. You can also set it to shut the system down if it goes above a critical level (and stays there). That way if you're away from the PC, you don't have to worry about it frying. Very handy.

[Gary David Bouton]

You hit the nail on the head, Earl. There is really no reason aside from "cosmetics" why the case needs to be on the tower at all! You can add cards more easily, clean the fans more easily, and like you said, you can get one of those mini-fan numbers like they sell at Wal-Mart in the summer months (mine's called a "Euro Style Desk Fan").

Heat is definitely a problem. CPUs were not meant to be surrounded by insular material.


Regards,

Gary David Bouton
Gary@GaryDavidBouton.com
Free education! The Writings Web site
and the updated GaryWorld Gallery is pretty okay, too.

[randyrives]

I purchased a new Dell Dimension 4100 1ghz last Nov. I purchased a 40gig drive. I also got a CDRW which I used to store my files on. 2 copies as Gary says, it is a must. Too easy to screw up a cd and not have a backup.

I also use a USB zip drive, that I use to transfer files from home/work. I usually download most of my files from work then copy them to zip to bring home. (work is T1 home is 56k).

I have a digital camera and that is where most of my files come from. So once I burn two CD's I usally remove from my hard drive.

Looking forward to the days that recorded DVD's become affordable and mainstream, will make backing up the system alot easier.

--Randy

[Erik Heyninck]

I have one PC with two HDD's and do regular backups on CDR. I never use CDRW because I don't trust it.
I use NERO BURNING ROM, with the silly wizard turned off. One of NERO's great advantages is that you can let it check whether there are no faults in the copy. As I bought some progs online, I had to make my own cD's, and I do feel more safe with this option turned on. NERO also gives you loads of options, and I love software that doesn't display a little Albert Einstein, or a Doggie to tell me what to . So: no Wizzies for me.

My problem is not backing up (or back upping???), but organising. I use Irfanview, and just discovered XNView, but how do you guys organise your stuff?? Do you make trees of folders, partitions?

I use partitions as a safeguard: if I have to reinstall WIN, I still have my data on another partition.
I also use two Wins: 98SE and 2KPro, the latter one on the second HDD and NTFS formatted, and for work. The first one for browsing etc. Advantage: if ever I should have a virus, it can't read the NTFS I'm told...

Zips are, indeed, out. One zip costs as much as some 20 or more CDR's of a good brand, and in jewel cases.

I have no safe at the bank:1/ my bank hasn't got them, and 2/ all my paintings etc are here, so if something burns down, I'll go with it.

I also have some extra fans for cooling installed, a Thermaltake Volcano for my PIII (not really necessary) and a general case fan, and a mainboard (ASUS CUSL2) that warns when there are temperature issues. I always leave the case open to get a better current of air.
I also chose a 300W power supply as it gets less hot.

[s.winders]

Hi Guys.


I have a 45 g IBM drive partitoned in three.I also have just purcahsed my first cd writer its a Lacie CD RW 8xw/4x RW 32xR,previously I used an Iomega zip 250 which was just too small so hence I bought the CD writer,is it a good one I am not that savvy on CD writers it has a firewire connection and a USB one also?...oh ya it came with toast and Silverline something or rather.


There is a new product on the market I have recently seen on the net and I think it is Iomega and its called Peerless,peerless has zip carts like zip drives use but they hold 10 and 20 gigs of space on one zip cart and they are not hugely expensive either.When I saw this product I was amazed but I also was not surprised to see it was sold out at the time.I probably would have ordered a Peerless but I want compatibility with other OS and systems.


If they could come up with one dvd format instead of half a dozen different companies trying to make each others formats redundant I think we would all be winners with dvd writers.


What screen res do you guys work at?...I use 800 x 600 because anything else messes me up,apparently some people use 1380 now as well.


Also is it better to burn a CD in firewire or USB,I know firewire is quicker but is quicker always better?

Excellent thread [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]


Cheers

Stu.

[s.winders]

Here are those Iomega Peerless links.


http://www.iomega.com/prreleases/200..._firewire.html


http://www.iomega.com/peerless/index.html