Buying a photo editing PC for a friend

[peterb]

RAID only protects against single drive failure - depending on how the array is implemented, it doesn't protyect against controller failure, or a power spike taking out both drives, or memory failure causing file corruption (or accidental deletion of a large file) - which is why I suggest it isn't a backup solution. However it all depends upon the amount of risk he is prepared to accept. You are right about DVD/CD which are not regarded as a long term archival media.

If he is storing files in a raw (uncompressed) format then each file will be of the order of 20Mb each - or 50/Gbyte. You don't say if he is doing this commercially or not - if he is, he will be storing various copies in different formats, so he will soon use up that 500Gb, so he will need some form of archive. (Wedding photographers - for example - often store photographs for some time in case the client wants more prints, or perhaps different prints at a later date. Some portrait photographers undertake to keep digital copies of prints clients have ordered for many years.)

If he is a hobby photographer then his storage requirement may be less initially - but still something he wiill need to think about sooner or later.

[MSIC]

Just to chip in here, i got myself a 500GB external hard drive (USB 2) from PC World, cost me £70 ish, about 3 - 4 months ago. It's a little noisy and not overly quick (possibly the interface?) but it was never designed to be a system drive and so i turn it on when i want it on and it does it's job perfectly.
I now haven't bothered doing DVD backups since.

PS I know it's too late now, but another vote for a minimum 1920 x 1200 screen - have you considered the 27" Dells? Not too much more money?
And check out Silent PC Review for general info on quiet PC's, always a good idea for image editing

[b0ned0me]

If he is storing files in a raw (uncompressed) format then each file will be of the order of 20Mb each - or 50/Gbyte. You don't say if he is doing this commercially or not - if he is, he will be storing various copies in different formats, so he will soon use up that 500Gb, so he will need some form of archive.

No kidding! Even with a lowly 30D it is trivially easy to take thousands of photos in the space of a few days and eat another dozen gig or so. 500 gig is 25,000 shots, and if he ends up with e.g. one edited picture for each original, then 500gb could start getting cramped pretty fast.

the biggest problem for him is if one hard drive fails and he loses 500gb worth of photos

There are plenty of photographers who will actually carry out hard drives into the field so they can back up CF cards as soon as they take them out of the camera in case they go bad later, and will then load them onto a PC/Mac, archive them, edit them, back them up, archive them again, and so on and so forth. Spend thousands on gear, then thousands on a photo trip or do your friends wedding, then spend hundreds of hours editing the photos - then lose the images because your PSU blew and took your disk controller with it. It's the sort of thing that leads people to wish they'd spent a few hundred quid on an external drive and a fireproof safe to put it in. Currently a 1TB Firewire drive is less than £200.
Of course, this is up to your friend - his money and his pictures, and everyone has different appetites for risk vs price vs safety.

[explicitlyrics]

Indeed it is too late now, everything arrived this morning and I have just finished assembling the computer. I went for the BenQ FP241W 24in Widescreen Monitor - TrustedReviews monitor in the end, which is 1920x1200 so I don't think he will complain about that. He can live with the monitor as is for now, the reviews of it have been spectacular so Im sure he will be perfectly happy for the time being. When he starts making some money out of it then maybe he can upgrade then (he is doing it as a hobby for now though).

I have currently left the drives in RAID1 set-up. When he needs more space I will switch around the storage for him - I will use an external as the backup and convert the 1000gb internal to 2000gb. I can now see your point about a PSU failure, however, I have never seen one of these actually destroy a disk. It has been built using very quiet components so I am pretty sure he wont complain about that.

He has a portable 160gb hard drive for backing up his CF cards and the next drives I buy will be external drives with total capacity of another 2000gb.

Thanks again, it is so much harder to pick a photo editing PC than a gaming one!

[peterb]

I have currently left the drives in RAID1 set-up. When he needs more space I will switch around the storage for him - I will use an external as the backup and convert the 1000gb internal to 2000gb. I can now see your point about a PSU failure, however, I have never seen one of these actually destroy a disk.

Hope you friend's PSU isn't the first you see then External for backup is fine though uintil he gets going and perhaps refines his requirements in the light of experience.

Thanks again, it is so much harder to pick a photo editing PC than a gaming one!

LOL - I wouldn't know where to start specing a computer dedicated to gaming! - Just looking at the plethora of (expensive!) graphics cards gets me confused!

[this_is_gav]

I have currently left the drives in RAID1 set-up. When he needs more space I will switch around the storage for him - I will use an external as the backup and convert the 1000gb internal to 2000gb.

For the record, you won't be able to simply convert it to a different type or RAID without losing everything. For instance if you went from RAID1 to RAID0 you'd have to back up the entire contents of the drive (well 1 of them for RAID1) to a separate hard drive, set up the new RAID array, install the OS again, and then restore the data you backed up.

Thought I'd point that out before you get too far in, in case you decide to redo your plans.

Pleased to see you went for a decent monitor though - of course the image won't all fit on the screen, but it makes a massive difference when editing, giving you so much more room to play with. I really struggle on my 19" 4:3 at work.

[explicitlyrics]

I had indeed discovered that myself yesterday, I have also discovered that the Intel ICH9 RAID controller is awful and regularly messes up the volume, requiring a repair. Hence I have actually completely disabled RAID, this is quite a hassle for him to copy stuff to two drives, but I feel it gives him a good choice of what needs backing up and what doesn't.

[peterb]

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I have also discovered that the Intel ICH9 RAID controller is awful and regularly messes up the volume, requiring a repair.

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However I phrase this, it is going to sound like "told you so - nah nah de nah nah" which it isn't meant to - but that is a classic demonstration of why RAID is not a substitute for backup! (As I discovered when memory failure corrupted my file system on a RAID 1 array )