What do you mean you don’t recognize the acronym in the title of this blog post?!
Well, perhaps you’re in the “other half” then. The “other half” being those who will experience a hard drive failure someday. And, of course, the first half (or the other other half) are those who already have experienced a hard drive failure. I’m in that group.
In my case (and thus the mysterious acronym), it is “yet another hard drive failure”. I seem to be having a lot of these. Maybe it just seems to happen frequently because it really isn’t fun when it happens.
Ever notice that hard drive failures always happen at an inopportune time? Well, OK, there’s never a good time for a hard drive failure. But they seem to know when the worst possible time is. For me that’s in the middle of working on a new book project with the amazing Deke McClelland.
Fortunately I’m good about backing up. But it is still a hassle to deal with a hard drive failure, and there are often files you’ve updated but not yet backed up. Doing all the grunt work associated with getting things back up to speed (and making sure everything was intact) provided some time for me to think about the many issues related to reliable storage and backup. So I’ve added that topic to my list for a future article (probably in Digital Darkroom Quarterly).
In the meantime, backup your photos!
The Western Digital Passport external hard drives are great for backing up while on the road. They get power from the usb port – no extra power cord. The 250 gig model is now under $100.
Bob