[OzzyJim]

Gday,

I have just been looking up some info before I checked this thread and although I knew SCSI would be expensive, I did not think it would be Soooo expensive. A SCSI Raid setup with 2x 300GB 15k rpm hard drives and controller was going to cost a little over $1,500 Aus while 2x 1TB Hard drives to use in a raid array with my pc would cost a bit over $350 Aus with a removable HDD caddy. The difference in speed is not much either:-

Ultra-320 SCSI: 320 MB/s or 2560 Mbit/s
SATAII: 300MB/s or 2400 Mbit/s
Versus the USB2 method: 60 MB/s or 480 Mbit/s!!!!!

I figure the removable HDD caddy was a good idea so I can pull the disk when not in use and store it elsewhere or in a fire-proof safe.

I do not really like software for backups as I'd probably foret to run it and don't know that I'd always trust it - What happens if it crashed - could it destroy any of the files??. At the moment I do not backup all my files to DVD due to the time it takes to burn , verify then label and store. I appreciate your input so far and am also looking into a UPS with voltage protection, although I have had a pc power supply fail and kill every component inside a pc before I'm sure that is very rare.

I store my images on a USB2 HDD at the moment, a slow portable drive powered by the laptop as I figured this was safer from voltage nasties (spikes etc) than a normal external drive. This also had a advantage that no data would be lost in the event of a power failure as I use a laptop at the moment but when I can get the UPS I will use a desktop pc.

James.