What size Harddrive for photos?

“OK,I gotta get a new pc.What's the minimum harddrive size i should get?Is 10gig enough?I wanna store hundreds of hi resolution pics on it.Also is there a minimum memory and mhz speed i should get?Any other tips on buying new pc appreciated.Thanx:)”

“Davex- You and your damn camera. :)
You can never get a big enough hard drive, especially when you're talking about using it for a LOT of pics. My hard drive is like 40 gigs, it's starting to fill up- I already have about 7 gigs worth of pics alone. Memory and mhz don't matter too much when dealing with pics, but 256 MB of ram and a 950 mhz processor is what I'm working with- Never had any problems with those numbers. Good luck with the PC hunt.”

“CN,
How many hi res pics to a gig?”

“Hard drives fill up fast with pics. Go big.”

“lots, but it depends on your camera- What's the specs on the high res pics your camera takes? My old camera was a 2 megapixel, my new one is 3.2- The hi res pics on the 3.2 take up more room.”

“Just to give you a better idea- One folder I have takes up 380 MB, and it has 384 pics in it. Those are a mix of 2 megapixel shots, 3.2 megapixel shots, and pics that I scanned at about 600 dpi. Should give you an idea, you can store plenty of pics per gig, but when it comes to hard drives, listen to Phil. Hard drives fill up fast, no matter what you use them for. Bigger is better.”

“Dude, that's what burnable dvds are for.”

“I hear ya skully, I got some upgrading to do, it's hard keeping up to date on all these freakin' hobbies. My budget's stretched as it is with all this hiking gear, I haven't even considered getting a new PC with all those bells and whistles.”

“You can always add new hard drives after you fill one up. My son has a 40, 80, 120 and a 160 giga hard drives and all of them are full or close to it. He is always complaining he doesn't have any room left...lol

But the best thing to do is what Skully said, burn em”

“Yeah...putting 1200 X 1600 and higher high res pics on CD's makes the most sense.”

“But I'm lazy. It's bad enough I have to go on a hike to take the pics, then come home and plug in the USB cable, upload the pics to my computer, rename them so I don't get confused with all the DSC000546778 crap, upload some to webshots and- man, I'm getting tired.”

“Why in God's name do you want to keep high res (300 DPI) images unless you are printing them? If you must keep high res images burn them to CD or DVD and archive them. A hard drive isn't meant to be an archival tool and when used as one the performance of your entire system WILL suffer. (slower box)

If all you are doing is looking at them on your PC then all you need is 72 DPI versions at your preferred size. Your monitor can't display greater than 72. There is a reason why 72 is called screen resolution. Anything over 72 merely makes the image very big and difficult to view on a monitor that isn't running really high screen area setings.

I do image work professionaly (mostly web work) and I have a 60G and 10G drives. It's all I need.”

“DPI (dots per inch) is the measure of resolution.

800 x 600 or other numbers using that demarkation are not measures of resolution. They are measures of screen area required to view the image. A 1200x 1600 image isn't automatically a high res image. A 1200 x 1600 @ 300 DPI is hi-res. A 1200 x 1600 @ 72 DPI is just a freaking large low-res image.”

“Like HPM said, If you must store them, on a hard drive, instead of CDs, a separate drive, or partition at least, is the way to go.

Even with a speedy processor, these monster HDs will be slow to access, if their loaded up. You'll want to keep your operating system etc. separate, from your storage”

“I use a SanDisk thingie to download my digital pics into my computer. It plugs into a USB port, and I simply put the FlashCard in the San Disk magazine and it instantly downloads the pics. No need to hook up the camera to the computer. Costs about $30 bucks. I do, however, keep a separate hard drive for digital pics...don't ask why...I also have them on CD's as well as on my WEBSHOTS sites, and now that they have 4.7 Gig disks, you can get a group of pics on one disk.”

“HPM,

How do I find out what the DPI of a given pic is. When I click on the properties, it shows size 1200 X 1600, verticle res 300, horizontal res 300, byte depth 24, and the total megs for the pic is 1.02MB? Thanks for the info.”

“ya ,i forgot i can burn em onto cd!
Anyway the ystem im looking at is 10gig,128ram,cdrw,winXP fopr 259...
yesterday Frys had a total scam sale on where they advertised a system with 30gig,128ram,cdrw,ethernet10/100 ,monitor and printer for 299.Of course once u get to the store they say they are 'sold out'(like they only had 3 units at that price anyway).And when i tried calling them before wasting a 25 mile roundtrip,their phones just kept ringing-not even voice mail.So i ended up going to see this too good to be true scam and of course was fked by their scam tactic.
Fry's is the biggest bait and switch,never have what they advertise bs store ever.
BTW,this is a testimonial to never buy anything from Fry's:)”

“Fry's...been there, done that...I agree...they ain't worth the trip.”

“Got plenty of those stores here in NY, mostly the smaller electronics places. They do bait and switch all the time, and sometimes they do worse than that- There was one place that had killer deals on systems for one weekend only, you paid the money, they said all the PC's were in a warehouse waiting to get shipped out- When no PC's were delivered to anyone, the people went back, only to find the store closed and empty. It was in the news here a couple years back.”

“If you're getting a whole new comp, get a SCSII controller and two 40 or 60 gig 75,000 RPM or higher SCSII drives. Set them up in a RAID configuration and have fun.”