Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz

All my Canon photography gear for sale: 5D mark II, 24mm, 50mm, 70-200mm, 2x extender, crumpler bag

I learned photography as a teenager with my mother on a manual camera, the Minolta X-700. It was a great camera, and I learned composition, exposure, manual focus, etc. I didn't have much pocket money that I remember of, so I was careful with the film rolls I shot (36 exposures, sometimes 37 or even 38 :). 

Then as life has it, I went on to University, and for the next 20 years, I just used crappy point-and-shoot cameras (pre-iPhone times, remember ?). When my second child was born, I realized it was time to get back to photography and start shooting the kids again properly and my environment. 

After careful reading of the specialised press, I chose Canon over Nikon and have bought a lot of stuff from the brand, selling old gear to buy better one, or buying again everything after my house was broken into last year. 

In January this year, I suffered a serious back problem at a conference, whilst carrying my photography bag with all my gear + laptop as I usually did everywhere. Too heavy ! The only solution was to get into serious work-out sessions to strengthen my back (swimming, rowing) and to carry much lighter gear. So I now shoot with a nice compact Leica M9 and carry a tiny MacBookAir. I haven't really used my Canon gear in the past 10 months, so I guess the best thing for me is to put it up for sale. (all equipment bought either in October'09 or June'10). Click on each gear for a review on DPreview.

- Canon 5D Mark II, great full frame camera.

- Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L II USM : great wide angle, with almost no distorsion. Love it for landscapes.

- Canon 5F 50mm f/1.4 USM : multi-purpose lens, very luminous, great for portraits as well.

- Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM : great zoom, for portraits and distant details

- Canon EF 2x II extender for the 70-200mm to use as a 140-400mm. Great for wildlife shooting or conferences.

All lenses have a Hoya UV filter to protect them. I also have an extra battery, extra battery charger, 2 x 8 GB CF cards (SanDisk 60Mb/s), and a USB CF card reader.

Everything fits nicely in a Crumpler New Delhi 620 bag (black and khaki) where there's also room for a laptop (MacBook Pro for example). 

 

I'll sell to the best offer (DM me on twitter @rodrigo, or email - available on www.rodrigosepulveda.com) and everything as a whole, not separately. You'll have to pick everything up from me in Paris, I'm not shipping. Thanks for your interest.

 

Update: I just checked all this equipment on a number of sites. In one of the best stores in Paris (for price and service), Le Cirque, where I bought my gear actually, all this equipment adds up new (with some lenses having been upgraded to a newer version) to 7 400€. Amazon.fr is slightly cheaper, but you have to factor in shipping and handling from different vendors, and you get no service. I couldn't find much on ebay.fr, and priceminister.fr has most of this equipment sold from professionals, many from Hong-Kong (so you have to deal with customs...). Without handling and shipping, prices start at 5700 euros. 

So there you have a price bracket for your bids : 5,700-7,400€. And you know of course that 1. I take extra care of my gear so everything is in very good condition 2. you get all at once in a nice bag :)

 

In addition,

- you can check the pictures I took with all this gear here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsepulveda/

- thoughts I wrote a while ago on which camera to get : http://blog.rodrigosepulveda.com/2011/04/what-camera-should-you-get.html

- crash course on photography I wrote a while ago: http://blog.rodrigosepulveda.com/2011/03/a-crash-course-on-photography-at-sxsw.html

 

On Refait Le Mac #66 - Apple est-il en retard ?

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happy now with my backup strategy (aka. achieving piece of mind)

I've been struggling for some time now to get the best performance out of my computers, but also to get the best possible backup strategy suited to my needs. These are 2 fold :

- project my data, MAINLY my photography (originals and modified versions)

- my setup. My computers are very personal to me: I hate lending them or giving access to them to someone else (yeah I know, appointment with Mr. Shrink some time next century). But this is where I work every day, where I spend a lot of time, and my setup is both personal in usability and feature-set. I hate having to re-install a computer as it takes forever to feel at ease again. 

Aside of my iPhone, iPad, Blackberry (redundant piece of equipment, but I can't cancel my subscription just yet), AppleTVs, here's what I use.

1) an old DELL Precision 670 running Windows XP (windows Vista was slow on it, Seven doesn't rconize the mother board), and Linux Ubuntu. It doesn't have a backup strategy yet, and I could use maybe a suggestion on what best freeware to use for backing it up. (keep in mind that I also probably have tons of legal licences for backup software with all the hard drives I've bought over the years). My kid uses this computer in his room.

2) an old PowerPC iMac G5. It has a firewire hard drive attached to it, running TimeMachine. Happy with that setup. My other kid uses it to browse the net and play games.

3) my MacPro. As you know from previous posts, it boots off an SSD drive hooked on an eSata card. Fast boot and application launches. Then it has 4x2 TB of disks, running on a stripe of 8TB (RAID0). 2 partitions there for speed (measured up to x5 vs. a single disk). I was scared here, because if one disks fails, I would loose everything. I recently changed ALL the 10 (yes 10!) external disks I had to backup different directories, to an external RAID5 enclosure (love it !), running off an eSata connection (fast !), with 4x3TB disks on a RAID 5 setup (meaning 3 disks are used for data, 1 for security copying parity information. If 1 drive fails, it keeps working, no problem). This gives me 9TB of usable data and I use TimeMachine to backup my 3 partitions (boot on SSD, 2 partitions on internal RAID0) without worrying about backup anymore ! And I also get incremental backups with TimeMachine of certain files, although they are sometimes hard to find (config files, etc.).

And because, just because, I also set up 2x2TB LaCie drives (eSata link) as a RAID1 mirror (hey, I have tons of spare disks now), where i manually update a copy of my Aperture photo database (nothing else) using the built-in Aperture Vault mechanism.

4) now, I also use a MacBook Pro as a travelling laptop. I used to have a very simple setup with 2 external USB drives that would clone the internal disk with SuperDuper. I would do this EVERY single time I was planning on traveling, as in the past, I've had my laptop stolen already. Actually, when my house was broken into last year, I restored a new mac in a matter of hours (just copying the files after 3 clicks). I recently switched my optical drive with a SSD drive, hence I have 2 partitions now, and the capacity of both is greater than my external 2 disks. Maybe I could clone each partition with each disk ?

But I chose to do something different :) I hook up my laptop to my home LAN (cables, yes, but 1 Gb/s ethernet), and now do a TimeMachine from my laptop to the same external RAID5 enclosure. I could automate this (there's a trick described online to do TimeMachine backups over wifi) in order to always have the latest sync, but it's manual for the moment. I now use TimeMachine over WiFi for automatic backups. And for added protection, I also clone each partition, to an external USB disk.

I also do a manual Aperture Vault sync to the RAID1 disks.

Note: I moved my home directory to my DATA disks and they are not anymore on my SSD drives. Explanation on why and how here.

Next steps : 

I undertand that my data is now safe from a disk crash (MacPro's SSD + RAID0, MacBookPro's SSD + HD), or if my laptop is stolen, or if my MacPro dies on me. I have 4 copies of my pictures now too (internal disks, RAID5, 2 copies on RAID1 mirror). Even my backups are protected (RAID5 has 1 disk failure tolerance, RAID 1 too). 

But my physical backup drives in themselves are not fully protected. My house was broken into last year; what if they had stolen my RAID5 enclosure ? What if I lived in Japan and was struck by a tsunami ? I need a copy of my data elsewhere. 

The easiest way would be to go for an online service to backup everything. I wouldn't mind paying. My RAID5 with disks cost me $1,100. But with my current ADSL upload speed (< 1Mb/s), the original backup would take more than 3 months. I could of course send in a disk, but that's a hassle. This is the way of the future though, as soon as I get fiber optic internet at home. I hear CrashPlan is a great service, although there are other options.

In the meantime, the best option would be to get the smallest possible setup to carry elsewhere a full copy of my setup + data. I guess the best option is to get another RAID 5 enclosure with 12 TB, and swap them regularly (say once a month) with the one I have at home (leave them in the office, or with a friend or at the bank). But then I would have 2 RAID5 enclosures at home every now and then... Not good. The answer is to rotate with 3 enclosures, labeling them easily as quarter - month 1, month 2, month 3.

Bottom line, I'm happy now that I've centralized everything on this Raid 5 enclosure with TimeMachine. You can get the same one at MacSales.com, with 4 disks.

 

Now, I need to figure out how to fully backup my PS3 (there's a tool to selectively backup stuff), and my Xbox 360 (the saved data and config, not the games)...

 

what camera should you get?

Many of you know I enjoy photography as a hobby and as a way to do something unrelated to my work as an internet entrepreneur. It's kind of my way to relax.

Therefore, I usually get many questions from friends on how to take better pictures, on what camera to get, etc.

I tried to give the basics on how to take a picture recently here.

Now about the camera : 

- any camera will do. Actually the iPhone4 is a great device for that, because you a. carry it with you all the time b. has a pretty good sensor and resolution (not in low light though), c. has software to enhance the pictures significantly like Hipstamatic, Instagram, Pudding Camera, Incredibooth, Camera+, Picplz, Color, and so on. If you were to have only one, then go for that. 

- my blog has tons of info on how to customize your computer for photography workflow, for tuning your computer for speed, etc. Others do this with theirs cars. I got a lot of information from MacPerformanceGuide.

- there's tons of litterature on which point and shoot is the best. I hear the Canon G12 is good. Check dpreview.com and Ken Rockwell for more information on cameras. The important part is that it should be with you at all times, and have a decent resolution. Then it's all about the composition and the moment.

- I buy my gear from Calumet Photo in San Francisco, B&H in NYC, Le Cirque and Maison du Leica in Paris, on Stanley St in Hong Kong. Remember that service, advice and warranties are more important than a buck saved here and there online.

- There are some books I've really enjoyed. I just recommend buying stuff from the classic photographers: Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Albert Watson, Helmut Newton, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier Bresson, David Hamilton, Irving Penn, etc. Study their composition, their style, their lighting, and try to figure out how they took their pictures. I also likes 'the moment it clicks' where the photographer explains the background to every picture, and Michael Freeman's books on Light. I have 3 or 4 book shelves full of books. But you don't need all of that. Go to public libraries, explore art galleries, photography exhibitions, and read online (Ken Rockwell is a great place where to start). For Leica stuff, I enjoy reading Thorsten Overgaard and Steve Huff. 

 

Now on to gear (dSLRs) : 

- a camera body will usually last 2-3 years. Why? because there's always a new model, more mega-pixels (not that they matter), more features, more options, better screen, whatever. 

- a lens will usually lat 15-20 years, until manufacturers come with a better optical formula.

Hence where should you invest? in lenses ! definitively. 

You can always start with an entry-level camera, but get the best lenses you can afford, and upgrade your body (photography is an area where you can resell your stuff quite easily, and you should). I did this. I first got a Canon 40D body, then after one year, upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark II. I made sure my lenses where EF quality (not EF-S), meaning they were suited for full-frame bodies as well as APS-C (whereas EF-S lenses - cheaper - will not work with full-frame bodies, ie. are not compatible with your upgrade path).

 

Some other random thoughts : 

I would only buy either Canon or Nikon. No Sony, Olympus and other fancy gear. It's not that these are bad equipment. They are actually competitive in every sense. But serious photographers would go with trusted brands because basically everyone carries them (spare parts, repair shops, new parts such as lenses), and they are very good. ie. you can't go wrong buying Mercedes Benz or BMW. Buying Opel, Audi (if we stick with car analogies) carries a different mindset. Which brand you get doesn't really mind : however both are not compatible, so once you go with one, you're stuck with that product line. Canon tends to have some better lenses, more ergonomic bodies, where Nikon tends to be faster with more options. Check reviews online to suit your taste. The Canon 5D mark II for example is the best for low light photography. The Canon 85mm f/1.2 lens is the best for portrait lenses.

Full frame vs. APS-C. I like doing ultra-vide-angle sometimes (16mm). For a technical reason (Google is your friend here), non APS-C have a multiplication factor built-in. So Nikon APS-C has a 1.5x factor. A 50mm then becomes 75mm. Canon has a 1.6x on entry-level, 1.3x on the top tens, 1x on full-frame. It's great if you're using a 200mm lens and the body gives you a 320mm instead (think sports, conferences, etc.). But it forbids you of using a 16mm lens in 16mm mode :( You choose. I prefer simplicity, hence full-frame all the way ;)

There are ranges in the bodies product line of every brand. Basically to address different price points. Compared to prices of great lenses, the body price is IRRELEVANT. What is relevant though is how well the body fits in your hand (they tend to get bigger with the price, and I have rather big hands), how well protected the body is (only the top of the line can be used in extreme conditions such as sandy places - think Burning Man -, rain, mist, heat - think India roadtrip, etc.), how ergonomic the body is to use (read reviews), and weight (the bigger, the heavier). 

Some will only swear with a tripod. I have a small portable one for my Leica; and also a bigger one that I only take occasionally because it's cumbersome. I guess the best is the gorilla pod. You can always add a great head like this Leica one ;)

Photography means photography. Strip out the unnecessary : I don't do video with my dSLR, although it does it very well. You probably don't want one-size-fits-all. My cameras are for photography. 

Weight is a big issue for me now because of back problems : carrying the body +2 or 3 lenses gets quickly in the 10Kg range. Carrying all that + cables + a laptop and my back starts hurting very quickly. This is the reason I moved to Leica (at a hefty price though !) : same quality of pictures (or even better), between 35mm and 75mm, but in a very small compact and LIGHT device. I lose flexibility as I can't really use ultra-wide-angles and tele-zooms anymore. It's a different kind of photography.

Software : make sure all the addons you use support your gear. Lightroom or Aperture for picture management on a Mac. Picasa I suppose on PC. Then some people are experts at using Photoshop. I don't use it. But I have plugins such as DxO, Nik Software, etc.

 

Summary: 

- upgrade your iphone4 with about $20-30 of software to take great pictures. I have no views on Android devices. Blackberry pictures suck big time.

- get a point and shoot or a Leica to be able to take great pictures all the time. 

- invest in a dSLR only if you don't have a Leica :). OR if you need tele-lenses, or ultra-wide-photography. Go only Canon or Nikon. Get the best lenses you can, and a decent enough body that you can always upgrade later. 

- practice, practice, practice. In full manual mode, of course.

 

 

 

 

On Refait le Mac #40 : spécial shopping de Noël

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On refait le mac #29

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Using a BB 9700 as a GPS for geotagging pix - update

 

(screenshot of one of my day logs, imported into TrailRunner.app, after converting the log with GPSbabel)

Last week, I wrote a post on how to configure your Blackberry (Bold 9700) as a GPS tracking device.

Quick notes on the experience :

- my BB crashed once (that grey screen with hexa code) : not possible to track information during the time slot your BB is out of this world : there's no alert, so I guess it's a good idea every now and then to check whether your phone is still alive

- the battery lasted long enough each day to track each day. Alternatively you can carry a car charger (mini-usb) or your AC charger with you and recharge while tracking

- the GPS log is concatenated everytime you add information. This basically means you can stop/start the tracking at any time (pause for lunch, night, etc.), and information will be appended. In the first days, I copied the log to my computer every night, and deleted the log. Not necessary.

- you can setup a timeframe for waypoints (how often you want the device to write a point): I guess it's a good strategy to have a different rhythm for walking (photo-walking), and traveling (car).

- GPS tracking doesn't work when you're driving too fast (highway) or sitting on a high-speed train (it produces a weird straight line).

Bottom line :

- the BB is a great candidate for geotagging,

- the problem is that I now have 3 log files for 4 different days; I need to concatenate the files, and edit out the abnormal points (those producing straight lines for high speed travel), so that I can produce a nice 4 day log to import into Aperture, to geotag my pix. Currently looking at doing so with RouteConverter, or Prune, or GPX Editor.

TBC.

should I upgrade my MacBookPro 15" (mid'09) to 8GB ?

In a nutshell: ABSOLUTELY. The real question is when ? and what do I do with the current 2x2GB I have installed... (FB-SODIMM 1066Mhz DDR3)

I've been monitoring my new laptop for a while with 'Activitity Monitor', and free memory is just between 15-100MB all the time. And I'm just using standard stuff: Spotify in the background, evernote for brain dumps :), a browser (firefox), Socialite (real time web client...). So indeed I need more memory, because I regularly get stuck with the beach ball. But are memory prices going up or down ? Macsales.com says up.

It's a pity, as I just got my MBP a couple of months ago. So let's check prices online at the usual places (1 EUR = 1,3641 USD today):

- Macway.fr in Paris says €399,00 (=$537 at today's forex rate) with a few extra if you reserve or ship. You can always pick it up at their store.

 

- macsales.com says only $374,99 and $60 rebate if I send in my used RAMs... Hence only $314,99 (= 234€). But those are US prices without shipping to Europe.

If we put the rebate aside (I don't see that working easily for France), it's $374,99+$27 for Fedex Int'l = $404,09 = 296€. That's still a ~25% discount on French prices, and even with a 19,6% VAT tax at customs, that is still 5% cheaper than buying local. 

So are there other alternatives ? Let's try to famous brands for memory chips :

- RAMshopping.fr is a site I've used over the years. They offer Kingston RAM for 366,40€ and 6,50€ for shipping = 372,90€ = $508 (6,5% cheaper over Macway without shipping, with a renowned brand)

- interestingly Kingston in France prices a different SKU at 440,00€ and sells indirect through retail channels. If you click through to RAMshopping.fr you do get the above reference and price.

 

- Crucial.fr offers it at 366,99€ + VAT at 71,93€ = 438,92€ (shipping free).

So bottom line,

- if you're willing to buy in France, and want to try a FedEx shipment (bypassing customs), then MacSales.com wins with 296€

- if you want to buy from France, best option is RAMshopping.fr at 376€, a nice 80€ extra (mainly VAT I suppose, and a little retail gross margin).

1. designing a backup strategy that works for me - criteria

As more and more of our life becomes digital, we've come to rely on digital files to store and represent all that we've come to love: music (either digitized old CDs or bought oniine from iTunes), video (ripped from legally bought DVDs, or bought online on iTunes), pictures (taken with your great DSLR or mobile phone), and now soon (e-)books (for the Kindle, or iPad), etc.

Haven't you wondered whether the book you just bought will be available to read by your great-grand children (I have books from the mid-19th century!); that the picture you just took will be digitally framed on a wall by your great-grand children (I have pix from the end of the 19th century in my living room) ? (pix here is my great-great-grandparents crossing to Chile on one of their trips, over 100 years ago).

I've been bothered by the problem of data durability for quite some time (and if you browse this blog back a few years, it's a persistent theme). It's actually two separate problems :

- data integrity : this is what we usually call data backup. How do you maintain integrity of your files on your current system ?

- data persistence : but it's more than that. What happens when you change computers (or devices)? when technology changes ? when generations change ? See, I started collecting my data in the early 80s on 5"1/4 diskettes (remember those ?), then I moved them to 3,5" diskettes (I still have a drive to read them. Do you ?). Then I burned them to CDs (that have a limited life span !). I then moved the data to DVDs ! Currently I moved all my data to external hard disks. What's next ? The only question here is that I need to keep moving my data regularly onto new technologies before the previous one gets obsolete. I get worried though that I'll have a. the data, b. the software c. the devices to keep accessing all my data. Some steps I'm taking here is that I'll start printing books with my pictures.

- data repository unicity: the two points above assumed you keep all your data in the same place but that is not so. You produce very interesting and/or important data elsewhere as well on social sites and networks such as your blog, twitter, facebook, gmail, etc. I might come back to this point in another post, but online solutions such as backupify are spot-on and very useful.

So back to data integrity. The key criteria for a backup strategy should be :

- reliability vs. availability : do I want to have my data available (ie. accessible) ALL the time (such as my posts on my Facebook page - and I don't even know about that), or my data SAFE (a reliable hence usable copy)?

The best solution for 100% (or close) up-time is mirroring 2 or more disks (RAID 1), so that you get 1 more exact copy on the-fly. But it has drawbacks: a. it's expensive when you have large volumes, and might take a performance toll on your system. b. if you're saving a corrupted file (happens all the time), then you're saving several copies of a corrupted file. Not what you want.

Availability says you are guaranteed to have a recent enough copy of your data, and even several copies, scattered over time, so that you can roll back to an uncorrupted version of your data. Restoring an old copy might take time (such as getting an archive tape from somewhere, rebuilding a directory from incremental backups.

=> in my case, for my personal data (videos, pictures, etc.), my data doesn't change much once I store it: I usually only add new data, and do not work much with old data (modifying old pix for example). Hence I don't really need an incremental backup for my data (only for my system, and some office documents).

- usability: or should I say, simplicity. Most backup strategies fail because they become too complicated for a home use. You can impose procedures in corporations, but they are hard to follow otherwise. Therefore, the most automated system with automatic alarms is probably the best way to go.

I also don't like software that produce backups that are not immediately readable with the operating system (ie. restore a proprietary archive). Hence copies of my files that I can read just by plugging in an external drive elsewhere are just great. This should be just the same as inserting a data DVD. This last point becomes crucial when you are dealing with large data volumes; I'm currently working with more than 2TB which is the largest disk size on the market. TimeMachine will only allow for "backup" to ONE disk, and start deleting old copies. I don't want that. I could create a larger disk by combining several external disks (JBOD-style concatenation, or RAID0-stripping). But that is a problem in itself : if one disk fails in the target disk pool, all the data fails. Or if I want to re-read all the disks elsewhere, I need to setup all the disks just to read one file. Hence option out.

=> therefore I need a solution that allows me to backup (sync ?) specific directories to specific disks. Ideally though, a program would just say work like this : here are all the files I want to backup (from different disks, partitions, RAID arrays, directories, etc.) to this pool of disks. And the program would slice it down automatically without asking for more. The problem would however be that I would need to maintain a "master" disk with the logs and the index of all files: therefore restoring a file (smaller than 2TB of course ! which might be a problem, since my picture library for just last year is already almost 0,5 TB) would only require in worst case 2 disks: the index, and the data disk.

All backup strategies should include a combination of the following :

- on-site and off-site backups separated by a reasonable distance (think natural disaster like the earthquake in Chile, fire, theft, etc.) : we NEVER do this, but we should as our data is so much more important than the computer value these days. Backing up ONLINE is an alternative for a remote off-site, but it requires probably a very large disk for me (in the TBs, not GBs), and a very very fast line (fiber) unless I want a year-long backup. I will have to put my most precious data (pix, family videos, document archives from my work) on an external disk and put them elsewhere, just in case. I'd do this on a monthly basis at best. This is called a time-stamped archive. There's no point archiving data you can get back in some way or another.

=> off-site archive is key

- father/son/grandfather strategy, more usually known as day / week / monthly backup, or hour / day / week, etc. The idea here is to rotate between different copies of a disk, because sometimes your data gets corrupted and you need to go back in time. I would keep one full backup on-site next to my computer. However, when you do a new backup, you're scratching the current backup, so for the period you're rebuilding the backup, there's no proper backup... 

=> hence you need at least 2 rotating backup sets.

There is an incredible number of backup software out there for the Macintosh. Hence, probably the only way to choose the right one, is to FIRST decide on selection criteria, then narrow down the list by

- supported features

- usability

- price

I'll test out a few programs in a second post, then in a final post I'll describe the whole final setup and proper procedures.

dealing with disk errors in OSX

First error reports from my disk tests (see posts in the past few days) by checking :

1) power supplies: two of my external disks (LaCie) were showing time-outs when I tried copying the data. I tried tons of things on them. Basically, the power supplies of both them were kaput (these were my older 2 external disks). I changed them (at a HEFTY price), and I got back my data with no problem whatsoever. So always check the power supply of your disks and try that as a cure first. There's no way to know this unless you have a spare GOOD one around (from another disk. Keep in mind I had 2 that didn't work). And, after contacting LaCie support, they sent me a spare one... but I had already bought 2 new ones. That might help (contacting support). Now, one of the disks is showing difficulties again, but I lost no data; I guess the lifetime of that disk is gone.

2) S.M.A.R.T statuses: I didn't manage to recuperate data on one of my other disks, although I tried everything (new power supply, Data Rescue). It seems to me that the disk is physically damaged. There is a standard, called S.M.A.R.T. that can alert you to this. The problem is that you can't read the status when you're attaching them with an external fireware cable (400 or 800), USB cable or eSATA cable. I "hacked" my MacPro by using 2 unused internal SATA ports, to an external port (in the USA get it form MacSales, in France from Macway). And by booting up the disk first (always with this case), then the computer, you get to read the status as if the disk were an internal disk. And guess what? S.M.A.R.T. status = FAILED !!! There was indeed a problem. A total surface scan also shows this. LaCie online support are willing to repair / exchange the disk, as long as I pay for one way shipment. Probably a good choice, as it will cost me only 10% of the price of a full new disk. Still, it sucks, as the disk is only a few months old.

3) bad blocks: Most disks have a few bad blocks. The only way to deal with them is to zero-out totally the disk with a full erase (Disk Utility), so that whenever the OS can't write to a block, it will map it out in the file system table. It's a must-do step for every new disk.

4) drivers updates: finally, I've been trying to use my LaCie eSATA cards to pilot my external disks. I've been having regular kernel panics; I contacted support for an updated driver. There is one (2009), that is not indicated in the list of drivers for the PCIe card (2008 only). The bad news is however that it is still unstable, and will have my MacPro crash whenever I do something fancy such as a RAID strip with external disks. I've nailed it down to the card and its driver, since connecting the same disks with only Firewire cables, or with my internal SATA extender (see 2)), doesn't produce this problem. It seems the only way out here is to use a great eSata card from someone else : Firmtek or Sonnet, hopefully one that doesn't need any driver (plug & play).

Bottom line, test extensively your disks when you FIRST get them (zero them out with Disk Utility, then surface scan them with Drive Genius to check everything is OK) to prevent any data disaster in the future. And set up a slave backup disk (also tested) for your master disk. TimeMachine is good enough for this.