solid: im not that stupid, ive been building computers since i was 11, thats quite a while ago =).
half of the drives are backups, which are only turned on when backup is needed.
I don't use mirroring, because it has been deemed unsafe - do a search on the net.
Each drive is on its own, with each of their 1TB space for themselves - so no LVM.
that also helps me organize my photos.
Each drive has a couterpart backup, like i said that backup is only turned on when needed, should the main drive fail, it will be removed, the backup which is exactly the same will take its place, and a new one will be purchased which the photos will be backed up to.
Further more, my most important photos are backed up on several external myBook drives.
I didn't get a Drobo yet, not sure if im going to, my pictures are important to me, but i feel rather safe as it is atm, and we don't get any natural disasters here in DK like hurricanes etc. so i feel safe enough to keep it all in the same house.

If you have any suggestions tho you're welcome to add them.

shivaswrath: Oh, I just realized, it's actually also possible that your old P4 is using RDRAM, which isn't used at all in any form anymore. It was boycotted because, well, long story short, price fixing at very high prices.

Demisthene: You have 22 drives, and you're not using RAID? Did you use LVM to make the space on all of them appear to be one big partition? If so, that's not very safe...

shivaswrath: If you get a new motherboard, you'll also obviously need a new processor. Possibly not so obvious: you'll also need new ram. That old P4 will be using DDR, but a new processor will need DDR3. You may also need a new PSU (Power Supply Unit). Your graphics card should work so long as it's PCI-E. If it's AGP, then you'll need a new graphics card too. Your hard drives are probably IDE. A modern motherboard most likely won't have many IDE channels on it, as they're designed for SATA drives instead (faster). Seagate is definitely the best choice for drives. I've been working with computers for almost 25 years, and Seagate drives have proven to be the most reliable in my experience. We saw lots of WD and Samsung hdd failures at a company where I wrote software for digital video systems (we had stacks of big hdd's for the video storage). I would definitely avoid those brands. The only trustworthy brands for motherboards are MSI and Asus. Personally, I always use MSI: they're very reliable. When you add up all these factors, you may be better off getting/building a new computer altogether, and keeping your current computer as a backup machine/fileserver.

As far as processors are concerned, if any of you don't need a new computer right away, I'd hold of and get a core i9 processor instead in the first half of next year. The core i9 will have 6 cores with Hyperthreading. I'm holding off on upgrading from my dualcore for that machine myself.

If you run Mac OS X 10.6, then the GPU you have will make a difference in performance. 10.6 makes full use of OpenCL, an open standard created by Apple for distributing workload across all processing power in a system, meaning both the host CPU and the GPU on your graphics card. It's also designed to work with DSP and FPGA cards, but I don't know if the implementation is capable of supporting that yet, and I don't really want to open that can of worms anyway. OpenCL, as I said, is an open standard. Windows 7 and other OS's (such as Linux) are gaining support for it. You may not currently gain a benefit from it on an OS other than OS X 10.6, but in the future you will. If you plan to build/buy a nice system in the not too distant future which you plan to keep for more than a couple of years, it may be well worth considering getting a graphics card with a more powerful GPU (in other words, a faster video card). You may also want to opt for a motherboard which supports two video cards, so that in the future you'll be able to add a second video card if you want a performance upgrade (when utilizing OpenCL) so that you can just make that one addition rather than having to upgrade to a new system or a new motherboard/processor.

And seriously, the more ram, the better. If you're on Windows 7, Mac OS X (any version), or even Linux (also, any version), the RAM that's not being used actively by the programs you're running will be used to cache files and programs in memory so that you don't have to read them from the harddisk when you access them again. This greatly improves performance. If you're using a version of Windows older than Win7, though, you won't gain this additional benefit. This is an old feature for 99% of operating systems, but just now finally has been added to Windows in its latest incarnation.

Hope this helps.

Demisthene Akatsuki said:
Ed, i never use my lappy for anything but that,and some light editing, i didn't intend to say it couldn't do it, certainly a nice one you've ordered, i for one tho don't need the portability so i would never dream of spending big sums on a lappy.

Ever heard of women? They seem to disagree with you being out all the time taking pics and when you are finally home they don't want you to sit behind a desk somewhere in the study... so a laptop seems to be the only way to go forward when your girl wants a fairly empty living. I actually decided to go for the white laptop because most of the furniture is white, so I won't be too intrusive :)

Ed, i never use my lappy for anything but that,and some light editing, i didn't intend to say it couldn't do it, certainly a nice one you've ordered, i for one tho don't need the portability so i would never dream of spending big sums on a lappy.

Jonny, The servers MB is a Gigabyte, with 8 SATA ports, and besides that i have 1 controller in it, right off the bat i think its called Adaptec RAID 52445 but i can't remember precisely.
At the Moment all the drives in it are 1TB each making it 22 drives,all are seagate, its in a Lian-Li case, with space for 12 drives, the rest are outside the case in a drive rack
besides it.

Doesn't really matter what brand drive you choose, they all WILL fail at some point,and as a photographer you should expect them to, which is why we backup so much, right?, that said im pretty pleased with my old 7xgb WD Raptor, its really old and still works in now my mums pc.

My biggest gripe about laptops is monitors. Even on my mac book pro, there is color variation when I look at it from different angles. It's subtle enough that the difference at most reasonable viewing angles falls within the standard deviation from monitor to monitor, but it still drives me crazy. I'm always trying to figure out which is the "correct" angle to view.

That said, the lap-top has been extremely helpful for the photography business. My girlfriend is in the middle of the Christmas card season. Now that she is able to go on location with her clients and work through the design aspects of the card, she's getting much better results. Laptops are for portability. If you don't need portability, go desktop.

For my money though, if you have to have only one or the other you need to have a laptop.

jonnyapple said:
You're right, Ed. We should have been more clear. It seemed like shivaswrath was looking in the $700 range (actually I wouldn't pay much more for a laptop myself). At that price, I think a desktop would be a better option. Re: your new laptop—Lucky! (as napoleon dynamite would say)

Once I have the new laptop I'll let you guys know if it's true dynamite :) Still have some 34,000 pics to sort out from 100 concerts in 2009... guess I'm lazy :)

EdEnd said:
So I guess laptops are worth a consideration when it comes to editting, however they are more expensive, a lot more expensive. So if you don't use the pc anywhere else than at your desk... get a desktop!

You're right, Ed. We should have been more clear. It seemed like shivaswrath was looking in the $700 range (actually I wouldn't pay much more for a laptop myself). At that price, I think a desktop would be a better option. Re: your new laptop—Lucky! (as napoleon dynamite would say)

Demisthene Akatsuki said:
Yeah laptops work just for what they're suposed to do, work as my image viewer and light editing/time passing on the planes, and as a 3rd backup besides my cards/epson p7000.

How exactly did you see a laptop being merely a photoviewer? My ordered Dell XPS 16 will most certainly be able to do much more than just that. With an i7 under the hood and an RGBled 1920x1080 screen with about 117% AdobeRGB gamut I guess there's a lot op pc's out there that can't beat it. Not to mention the Mac Book Pros that so many photographers have and work with almost all the time. It'll cost you dearly but you have a very good desktop replacement.

For viewing and occasional editting I'll just keep using my MSI Wind netbook. It'll get you some decent editting in PS3, it's just not fast enough to keep working with it all day if you are in some form of hurry. On the other side you'll get some good battery performance and a very small and light machine that you can just put in your camera bag (depending on your camera bag size of course).

So I guess laptops are worth a consideration when it comes to editting, however they are more expensive, a lot more expensive. So if you don't use the pc anywhere else than at your desk... get a desktop!

Get a Drobo, right Willis! lol

****!

NOW what am I going to do?

Hitachi yes

Any Hitachi/GTech failures?

My last hard drive failure (about 4 months ago) was a Seagate! So don't believe that a particular brand won't fail more than another! They all fail!!!

Go Drobo!

:)

Demisthene Akatsuki said:
Good luck, and if you have any more questions ill gladly answer them, and im sure jonny will aswell.

Sounds like you're more qualified to answer than I am, Demisthene. A 22TB server? That's incredible. How many drive controllers do you have in it and what's the configuration? I've always planned on setting up a RAID but have never gotten around to it.

Seagate's good—so is Hitachi.

one of the best hdd You can get for Your mini is seagate 7200rpm

jonnyapple said:
What about adding an external drive, alpha?

I do have a couple, but I don't trust Western Digital. My family's experienced too many failures. The drives I got are the ones that failed on my dad. He got a GTech.

LOL, look at this:

Yeah laptops work just for what they're suposed to do, work as my image viewer and light editing/time passing on the planes, and as a 3rd backup besides my cards/epson p7000.

Jonny, it is possible,with windows and changing hw, and people who don't think about it might fall into this trap, and think they did something horribly wrong when they switched out their hardware, when all they needed is to reinstall windows.
Was just making sure shiva wasent going to be one of those people :).

Shiva, harddrives are kinda cheap these days aswell, ive got a server running with linux, with 22TB space on, no i haven't used up all the space yet, but with bird photography/wildlife and a d3x, yeah well you can see where its going.
i reckon these days with hardware when you build things yourself if you do it right you can really get a lot of bang for the buck.

Good luck, and if you have any more questions ill gladly answer them, and im sure jonny will aswell.

shivaswrath said:
crap. . .yeah, thanks Jonny/Demis. . .maybe I'll just add the extra internal HDD, copy things over, and then consider the mobo switch?. . .this seems like such a PITA, especially when I can get a "modern" machine for $699 that sports the same goodies without as much time invested in. . .mobo's are $300 or so for something new, with a dual core, correct?

Unless you're planning on using the old drive for the OS reinstall, I wouldn't copy things over since you'd need to reformat whichever disk you use for the reinstall.

It is a pain unless you like that sort of thing (I do).

As to prices on mobo+processor combos, newegg usually has something good going on in the 100-200 range. Look at this combo for example.

shivaswrath said:
which then makes me wonder if I should spring for a 15" MBP with an anti-glare screen and call it a day (then I could tether for studio)? . . .

You could, but laptop screens aren't my favorite for photo editing.

crap. . .yeah, thanks Jonny/Demis. . .maybe I'll just add the extra internal HDD, copy things over, and then consider the mobo switch?. . .this seems like such a PITA, especially when I can get a "modern" machine for $699 that sports the same goodies without as much time invested in. . .mobo's are $300 or so for something new, with a dual core, correct?

which then makes me wonder if I should spring for a 15" MBP with an anti-glare screen and call it a day (then I could tether for studio)? . . .

Demisthene Akatsuki said:
If you don't reinstall windows you're going to see serious slowdowns or instability.

I didn't even know it was possible to replace the processor and motherboard without reinstalling windows because it thinks it a new machine, Demisthene. Suneil, you might want to consider buying a new hard drive for the windows install so that you don't have to format your current one.

Shiva,
Make sure everything you have is compatible, also, you can already count in that you will need to reinstall windows if you change your motherboard, even if it was exactly the same mobo, chip numbers change and screw it up in the windows database.
If you don't reinstall windows you're going to see serious slowdowns or instability.
and no it isn't enough to just remove the old mobo drivers, ive tried it before, new mobo = windows reinstall.

shivaswrath said:
ugh, I have a Pentium IV 2.00 GHz from 2001 or 2002 (Dell Dimension 8400). . .I JUST maxed out my HDD, slowly transferring things pics to a 1TB MyBook (will get a second to mirror in case of failure). . .I think it's time I upgrade. . .

I added a GeForce 1GB video card and 4 GB's of RAM, which IMMENSELY helped CS4 and DxO performance. . .but the processor is showing it's age. . .

is there anyway I can just swap out the motherboard, or am I getting in over my head?? What would be compatible with an XP configuration (I DON'T want to upgrade OS)??

Yeah, I've done this before when I've had a motherboard fail. You just need to check to make sure the motherboard is compatible with your case, power supply, and your new video card (you most likely have an ATX case, but you need to make sure your power supply has the right connections). If you need more detailed info, let me know. It's hard to know if you're in over your head without knowing what your experience is. ;-)