Damn this is tedious...

[JohnF]

Hi -

Would you believe that I have now had a second external firewire drive more or less die on me???

I do a lot of video work, largely my own stuff. Family films, that sort of stuff, all digital, last vacation was something like 20 hours of raw video footage, and most of it pretty much irreplaceable. I do some stuff for friends as well, converting from DV to DVD, which is not exactly trivial stuff, editing stuff down, doing menus and chapters, sound processing, dissolves and cutaways, etc.

This takes a huge amount of disk space: those 20 hours, for instance, takes up around 320 GB for the raw footage, add to that intermediate steps and processing, and I need around 100 GB free contigious space for 1 hour of video.

The computer I use is a Dell, a few years old, but perfectly ok: the problem isn't so much rendering time as it is disk space. I've got a 160GB drive partitioned 25GB NTFS as my WinXP Home (came with the machine), the rest as data; a 200 GB NTFS internal and another 160GB NTFS internal. These internal drives are where most of the work goes on, but I also use the machine sometimes to work at home (I'm an economist), and I've got 20 GB of databases alone, let alone my production systems for the reports I do (another 10GB...).

So I've added external drives. The Dell I've got has only two USB2 ports, one of which is connected to a whole bunch of peripherals via a Belkin 7-port USB device, and the other has a TrekStor 160GB external drive I use for generic backups (Norton Ghost runs three times a week and I keep 1 month's worth of backups for that 25 GB WinXP partition).

So I added 2 external FireWire drives. Both are MS-Tech IDE Box 3.5" external cases, one with a 160GB drive and the other was first a 120 GB drive (IBM) and is now a 250GB drive (Samsung). The 120GB drive died on me a couple of weeks ago - more exactly, the NTFS file structure became corrupted and I had to go through a very lengthy and tedious recovery for everything on the drive using Handy Recovery from SoftLogica, which did a decent job of recovery, but you just get the files back, not the directory structure.

And the damn 250 GB went futzy on me about 2 hours ago, JUST as I had finished erasing a DVD+RW to copy the first version of a DVD I've made for some friends. 22 hours of rendering time to get that damn thing done and the NTFS file structure is f*cked up again...

This is getting really, really tedious. I HATE having to tie up the computer and leave it running for day on end to save this stuff, I've got no less than 160GB of rendered stuff on that damn drive!!!

Anyone out there have ANY idea what the hell could be making these external drives lose their NTFS integrity? This shouldn't really be a problem! It's not a MBFR problem, but rather a an NTFS integrity problem (this much the IT guys from work were able to determine...).

Yaaaargh. And don't nobody tell me it wouldn't happen with a Mac: I use too many programs (signal processing software, econometrics packages, even some games) that simply don't work under a Mac or under Wine (believe me, I've tried!) worth a damn.

Frustrating! I once had a tape backup for this sort of stuff, but do you have any idea what a terabyte tape backup costs (I have, let's see, 160+160+200+160+160+250+40 = 1130 GB, that 40 GB is my 2.5" 40 GB drive that I use to make backups of my work stuff on...)? It costs more than the entire system costs.

Damn this is tedious...

JohnF

[Ray MacDonald]

AIYEE! And I was getting worried because all I have is 60GB...40GB on my main drive and 20GB backup.
I'd like to upgrade my digicam to maybe a Sony DSC-R1 but the 3Mb file size for Fine Full Size JPEGS is giving me pause. Right now my Coolpix 5000 only makes JPEGS 1/2 that size.
I think I'll need to upgrade my old Dell 4100 box before I buy another digicam, let alone get into video.

[JohnF]

Hi Ray -

Hey, I've got a Coolpix 5000 as well... :-) And would like that Sony too! The lens is worth the price alone...

And I've narrowed it down to a buggy controller on the external drive. It's a hardware problem. :-(

But the initial recovery ran over night and I've got almost all my files at least available: now I have to actually recover them. Won't take more than two or three days... :-(

JohnF

[JohnF]

Hi -

Found what is apparently the problem: Prolific PL3507 chipsets suck big, big, big time.

I mean, they bite. If they had an inkling of who their parents were, they'd sue for malfeasance.

Damn this is tedious. Apparently this chip set will tell you everything is fine and dandy, then will at some mysterious point in time simply get everything arse backwards.

The problem? The problem is that they only accept up to 64KB data block transfers because Windows is not supposed to send any larger than that, but when it does happen, that’s when you get a delayed write failure.

So, if you are in the market for an external drive, DO NOT GET one with this chipset!

Bastards. There's a bios fix for the chip set, but first you gotta recover your data...


JohnF

[SnapIT]

Hi -

Found what is apparently the problem: Prolific PL3507 chipsets suck big, big, big time.

I mean, they bite. If they had an inkling of who their parents were, they'd sue for malfeasance.

Damn this is tedious. Apparently this chip set will tell you everything is fine and dandy, then will at some mysterious point in time simply get everything arse backwards.

The problem? The problem is that they only accept up to 64KB data block transfers because Windows is not supposed to send any larger than that, but when it does happen, that’s when you get a delayed write failure.

So, if you are in the market for an external drive, DO NOT GET one with this chipset!

Bastards. There's a bios fix for the chip set, but first you gotta recover your data...


JohnF

Hello John,
Commiserations. I won't bother with IT sympathy and tea. I paddle the same canoe and know many of the frustrations.

I think this link is worthy of your consideration. Let me know what you think.

All you need is a small 5port 1Ghz switch , a 1Ghz nic installed in your PC and you should have a reliable solution.

Snap Server (http://www.snapappliance.com/page.cfm?name=1100Main&nav=1100)

PS..The names are a coincidence.. I don't even own a share in Snapappliance !!

[Ray MacDonald]

Hi Ray -

Hey, I've got a Coolpix 5000 as well... :-) And would like that Sony too! The lens is worth the price alone...

And I've narrowed it down to a buggy controller on the external drive. It's a hardware problem. :-(

But the initial recovery ran over night and I've got almost all my files at least available: now I have to actually recover them. Won't take more than two or three days... :-(

JohnF
Hi John,
I've used Nikon stuff for 25 years and have lots of lenses from 24 up to 300mm.
I suppose the normal thing to do would be get a D50 or D70s.
However I would need another wide angle lens and the only thing that's really feasible is a 12-24 zoom. That is another $600-1000 US depending on whether you go Nikon or 3rd party. I'd also need to replace my current Nikon SB-50DX flash with an SB-600.
I also don't like the idea of trying to clean off the sensor because of dust particles getting stuck on it.
Since 99% of my shooting is between 24 and 120, and the Sony has a DSLR style sensor and a great lens, I'm thinking of getting out of SLRs entirely and going digital with an all-in-one.
Still haven't decided yet...the Coolpix 5000 is already a pretty nice little camera.
I do like my F80 film setup for holidays since you can just get more 35mm if needed (at least you still can in most places). Also you take a spare set of CR-123s and you never have to worry about charging up batteries. Plus a 24mm lens is just that...not a 36mm one.

[BruceS]

Damn what a pain!! I'm backing up photos daily to a couple of different firewire drives, but I really need to start burning DVDs too. BTW, I'm a Canon guy and very invested in lenses :-)

Good luck mate,
Bruce

[bleddrewsoe]

Hi -

Would you believe that I have now had a second external firewire drive more or less die on me???

I do a lot of video work, largely my own stuff. Family films, that sort of stuff, all digital, last vacation was something like 20 hours of raw video footage, and most of it pretty much irreplaceable. I do some stuff for friends as well, converting from DV to DVD, which is not exactly trivial stuff, editing stuff down, doing menus and chapters, sound processing, dissolves and cutaways, etc.

This takes a huge amount of disk space: those 20 hours, for instance, takes up around 320 GB for the raw footage, add to that intermediate steps and processing, and I need around 100 GB free contigious space for 1 hour of video.

The computer I use is a Dell, a few years old, but perfectly ok: the problem isn't so much rendering time as it is disk space. I've got a 160GB drive partitioned 25GB NTFS as my WinXP Home (came with the machine), the rest as data; a 200 GB NTFS internal and another 160GB NTFS internal. These internal drives are where most of the work goes on, but I also use the machine sometimes to work at home (I'm an economist), and I've got 20 GB of databases alone, let alone my production systems for the reports I do (another 10GB...).

So I've added external drives. The Dell I've got has only two USB2 ports, one of which is connected to a whole bunch of peripherals via a Belkin 7-port USB device, and the other has a TrekStor 160GB external drive I use for generic backups (Norton Ghost runs three times a week and I keep 1 month's worth of backups for that 25 GB WinXP partition).

So I added 2 external FireWire drives. Both are MS-Tech IDE Box 3.5" external cases, one with a 160GB drive and the other was first a 120 GB drive (IBM) and is now a 250GB drive (Samsung). The 120GB drive died on me a couple of weeks ago - more exactly, the NTFS file structure became corrupted and I had to go through a very lengthy and tedious recovery for everything on the drive using Handy Recovery from SoftLogica, which did a decent job of recovery, but you just get the files back, not the directory structure.

And the damn 250 GB went futzy on me about 2 hours ago, JUST as I had finished erasing a DVD+RW to copy the first version of a DVD I've made for some friends. 22 hours of rendering time to get that damn thing done and the NTFS file structure is f*cked up again...

This is getting really, really tedious. I HATE having to tie up the computer and leave it running for day on end to save this stuff, I've got no less than 160GB of rendered stuff on that damn drive!!!

Anyone out there have ANY idea what the hell could be making these external drives lose their NTFS integrity? This shouldn't really be a problem! It's not a MBFR problem, but rather a an NTFS integrity problem (this much the IT guys from work were able to determine...).

Yaaaargh. And don't nobody tell me it wouldn't happen with a Mac: I use too many programs (signal processing software, econometrics packages, even some games) that simply don't work under a Mac or under Wine (believe me, I've tried!) worth a damn.

Frustrating! I once had a tape backup for this sort of stuff, but do you have any idea what a terabyte tape backup costs (I have, let's see, 160+160+200+160+160+250+40 = 1130 GB, that 40 GB is my 2.5" 40 GB drive that I use to make backups of my work stuff on...)? It costs more than the entire system costs.

Damn this is tedious...

JohnF

Sorry, I lost you about halfway through that:-D

[JohnF]

Hi -

Glad I didn't get into any jargon, then! :-)

JohnF

[JohnF]

Thanks, BruceS. The recovery software I use is slowly pulling one file after another out of the drive, and since the crash Saturday PM I've already recovered around 40GB. Problem now is that I've got another 100 or so to go, but I've only got around 60GB free. So it'll be a lot of DVD-burning over the next several days...

JohnF

PS: My kid brother has been a Canon person for the last 30 years or so, but he can't stand all the new-fangled automatic stuff, and has been collecting the older manual lenses and camera bodies for the last 5 years or so. But then he had two kids and all of a sudden his wife is giving him heck for not having digital: all those lenses and she can't use them on their new digital body?

Me, I was an Olympus man in 35mm, with 2x OM-1, 1x OM-2, 1x OM-3, winders (2), 18mm, 28mm, 50mm 1.4, 50mm 3.5 macro, 100mm, 200mm, 300mm, 400mm and 800mm. Sold it all to go medium format: Pentax 67 w/45mm, 105mm and 300mm, never looked back. Of course, I haven't used the Pentax in almost 2 years now, largely because to take it on the road means lugging something like 30 pounds of equipment (camera and lenses, film supply, filters (76mm and 82mm, I've got around 10 filters!), and the tripod (almost half the weight right there...)... what I really want is a 300 MP back for my P67, I'd even accept having to hook it up to a notebook, but no one's making one! :-(

[JohnF]

Hi -

I was an Olympus guy, even had an OM-1 with a low 6-digit serial number from 1973 or so...

When I got away from 35mm equipment, I went first to a Fuji 6x4.5 cm rangefinder, found that the difference wasn't all that great, gave it to my father and went and got a 6x9 Fuji rangefinder with that glorious 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" film format. Fantastic camera, but felt limited by the single 65mm lens (28mm equivalent on 35mm), so I sold that one and bought a Pentax 6x7 camera with 45mm, 105mm and 300mm lenses, plus a telextender for the 300 to make it a 600. Bought it weighs so damn much and I haven't been able to find a decent lab in Frankfurt that won't take me to the cleaners: not enough people doing medium format anymore for most of the film processors to still have people working with the format.

Double Plus Ungood. :-(

The Olympus 3/4 line doesn't have the problem with dust on the sensors, but I don't like the ergonomics of the camera. I recently had the Sony in my hand to play with, and have some similiar problems: either my hands are too small or Sony thinks differently than I do. But I've seen pictures taken with that lens and it is a real perfomer...

johnF

[Ray MacDonald]

I am trying hard, but I just have not been able to do the convergence thing between 35mm film and digital...yet.
I've found that I still really like film in some cases especially where I know that prints are the desired final form. I shot some photos of my new nephew recently and just handed the film over to my brother-in-law for developing. Quick and easy. My 85mm 1.8 portrait lens worked as it should, not as some strange 128mm telephoto where I would have had to back into the next room to frame my shot. :oops:
Film seems to be best for holiday photo albums too. Infinite storage capacity, a wide angle is a wide angle, no dust on the sensor, no need to take along a battery charger and AC adapter.
On the other hand digital is great for sharing pics on the Web or email or looking at images on the computer screen or TV. I wouldn't be without a digicam nowadays for that. There are times I will never make paper prints and digital is perfect for those times.
The Venn diagrams of film and digital use don't overlap for me. I just can't see me ever switching totally to digital unless 35mm film becomes unavailable or just too inconvenient to use. It sounds like medium format is getting that way in Germany.
The Sony would be a paradigm shift for me. One camera does it all and I'm forced to go digital for prints and e-pics. But I'd still be tempted every time I am off on holiday and my F80 and fast primes are sitting in the closet. Hmmmm.....:-S