[Macworld]

Post your comments for LaCie d2 Blu-ray Professional BD-R, BD-RE Drive here

[fireblue]

$430 is still way too much. I'm surprised that BD-R writers haven't fallen in price more.

However, shooting 21 megapixel RAW files is moving me into the Blu-Ray area as I can shoot upto 24Gb of photo's at an average wedding now. Spanning data over DVD's is not a good way to back up!!

[Halibut]

fireblue, on 01 October 2009 - 05:43 AM, said:

$430 is still way too much. I'm surprised that BD-R writers haven't fallen in price more.

However, shooting 21 megapixel RAW files is moving me into the Blu-Ray area as I can shoot upto 24Gb of photo's at an average wedding now. Spanning data over DVD's is not a good way to back up!!

[Halibut]

Apple has missed the boat on Blu-ray. Still photographers need it for RAW file storage and videographers who are shooting high definition video need it to store original video files which are often 16 GBytes. Not to mention the inability to view HD video you've produced on Apple's tinker-toy Blu-ray output from Final Cut Pro and/or Compressor or Toast.

I installed the Pioneer Blu-ray drive I purchased from OWC in my second DVD slot in my MacPro. The interface was SATA direct to the motherboard via a cable OWC provided. It works perfectly with Snow Leopard, and cost around $250.00.

[xStep]

"And while there is some Windows software that allows you to watch Blu-ray movies on your PC, these high definition discs are not viewable on your Mac."

Does this lack of capability include booting into Windows via bootcamp?

[macavenger]

xStep, on 01 October 2009 - 11:13 AM, said:

Does this lack of capability include booting into Windows via bootcamp?

No. When you run Windows via bootcamp (or Parallels or VMWare Fusion, for that matter) you are running Windows - you are in no way running Mac.

[rant] It always annoys me when someone says "sure you can run our software on a mac! Just install parallels...". No, I can't run your software on a mac, it's just that I can run windows on my hardware. Mac does not live by hardware alone - if you install windows, you are running windows, not Mac, regardless of what the underlying hardware is! [/rant]

Ok, sorry about the rant, but this is a pet peeve of mine

[hillstones]

Halibut, on 01 October 2009 - 07:05 AM, said:

Apple has missed the boat on Blu-ray. Still photographers need it for RAW file storage and videographers who are shooting high definition video need it to store original video files which are often 16 GBytes. Not to mention the inability to view HD video you've produced on Apple's tinker-toy Blu-ray output from Final Cut Pro and/or Compressor or Toast.

I installed the Pioneer Blu-ray drive I purchased from OWC in my second DVD slot in my MacPro. The interface was SATA direct to the motherboard via a cable OWC provided. It works perfectly with Snow Leopard, and cost around $250.00.

Apple didn't miss the boat considering external hard drives in capacities that far exceed BluRay media are far cheaper and much faster for backup purposes. My wedding photographer had dual hard drives all around his office. Each hard drive had a twin hard drive for a duplicate backup. He said hard drives were so inexpensive and so much faster, that burning to optical media was a waste of time. The full size BluRay drives have come down in price. The slot-load version is still $999 if you are willing to drop that kind of cash just to claim you have a BluRay drive. The BluRay media isn't cheap either. Of course internal drives are cheaper because you don't need the external case or power supply.

[fireblue]

Wow, using external hard drives for backup, now why didn't I think of that!!

Probably because it's highly impactical and not a very safe way to store data long term. External drives are good for immediate access but not long term archival storage.

Fire safes are expensive and would quickly fill up with external drives - just thinking about the PSU's as well - what a mess that would be. Don't forget, we are pro's here, not someone worried about loosing a few family snaps.

I have 2TB of storage in my MacPro for online in progress pictures, 2TB of external storage for live backups and 4TB on a DROBO for archival purposes. What really matters is my offsite DVD copy.

Apple sell machines targeted at professional in the photgraphic and video industry and it would be good to have the option to have BluRay installed and fully supported.

[julianlove]

fireblue, on 02 October 2009 - 12:18 AM, said:

Wow, using external hard drives for backup, now why didn't I think of that!!
Probably because it's highly impactical and not a very safe way to store data long term. External drives are good for immediate access but not long term archival storage.

Actually lots of photogs use only hard drives for backup these days, including me. I just have 3 copies of everything. 1 working copy of every picture on my mac pro, a backup on external FW800 drives, and a backup on another set of external drives that I keep at home. Optical media are very slow, of limited capacity and have unproven and in some cases unreliable archival properties. Even Peter Krogh of The DAM Book recommends hard drives these days.

[rameeti]

fireblue, on 02 October 2009 - 12:18 AM, said:

Wow, using external hard drives for backup, now why didn't I think of that!!

Probably because it's highly impactical and not a very safe way to store data long term. External drives are good for immediate access but not long term archival storage.

Fire safes are expensive and would quickly fill up with external drives - just thinking about the PSU's as well - what a mess that would be.

Why are they not good for archival storage? All that you will store is the raw drive, no case, no PSU. Using a 1 TB drive that you can buy for $80 is a real deal for backup storage. Many companies do this and find it fast and economical. Use an external bay for your writing needs if you want real ease of use.

[People_Eater]

julianlove, on 02 October 2009 - 04:39 AM, said:

Actually lots of photogs use only hard drives for backup these days, including me. I just have 3 copies of everything. 1 working copy of every picture on my mac pro, a backup on external FW800 drives, and a backup on another set of external drives that I keep at home. Optical media are very slow, of limited capacity and have unproven and in some cases unreliable archival properties.

But hard drives are even less reliable than optical media. That's the point. They fail easily, and are highly susceptible to magnetic fields as well as physical shocks.

Quote

Even Peter Krogh of The DAM Book recommends hard drives these days.

Who?

[People_Eater]

rameeti, on 04 October 2009 - 07:26 AM, said:

Why are they not good for archival storage? All that you will store is the raw drive, no case, no PSU.

Because they are highly unreliable, and they need to be regularly "spun up". If you store just the inactive drive, the spindle will eventually seize up.