Digital print File saving and backup

[no9to5guy]

How about a ZIP drive with 100 MB disks (I think you can get even bigger onces now), wich you cab re-use once you don’t need the files anymore

[Robert Lambie]

zip drives are great.. we have 100 & 250 mb ones on all our comps.
they are basicaly a thicker floppy disk. (well appear to be) you add and take away from it just the same as a floppy but holds much much more.
when a zip is full & we arent using it any longer we just burn the content to a disk and store. 😉

[no9to5guy]

Or just put a second harddisk of 60 GB in the same computer, to save the endresults, that’s what I’ve got at home…

[Gordon Forbes]

You can get external Hard Drives plug into usb or as I have buy an Ibuddy a holder for an internal drive and use it as an external about 40 45 quid and you can put any size of drive got a 160 gig just now

In fact I put it in as an internal drive to be correct.

Or use a burner you can buy a lot of Blank CD media for the price of any of these drives and this makes them ultra portable if you need them.

When you burn your discs just leave them open (session) so you can add more to them if you haven’t enough to fill one disc at a time. easy to copy for duplicates for back up etc.

Goop

[Bill Dewison]

There is also a replacement for the floppy disk drive that can hold upto 20 megs, I think its called an L20 or something like that. Its the same size and shape as a standard floppy, but you buy a disk for about a fiver rather than 5p 😕

The zip drive is one of the best though, 100mb model, external with USB connection. It is easily transported to other machines and I’m told it works well with both PCs and MACs. The disks are between £5-£7 (depending on who you buy from) and they’re pretty hardwearing.

Other option is an external hard-drive (or removable hard-drive). You can buy multiple hard-drives and store anything upto 120mb at a time (obviously depends on the size of your hard drive). This is an expensive option, but very effective for large quanties of data.

Another option, DVD-R. You can write upto 4.8gb onto a single disk, much more effective than a CD-R. Unsure whether you can get them rewritable, but if you can, even better. With this, you’d need a drive and the disks, but its a great cost effective option.

One last one, you can buy a SCSI card and then multiple SCSI harddrives. This can be added to and is instantly accessible at all times. Expensive, but if you really need this facility, well worth the money.

Now then, Signs For The Times…. should I be changing this to Computers For The Times??? 😮 😆 😆 😆

Cheers, Dewi

[Pryam Carter]

I’ve had exactly the same problem.
My advice is to get DVD writer, the disks hold plenty of info. I burn onto one at the end of each month.

[jon vital]

You can get CD writers now for £35 and the discs are 20p each. Even Dvd-RW drives are available for £65.

[Rodney Gold]

The graphics you print on your colourcam should NOT be that massive.
What can be really big are files generated from the graphic like EPS files or the print queue files from the RIP (sometimes ours are up to 3gb) and to increase workflo and spped of rip , its often better to generate and keep these on a seperate fast HD.
The colourcam will print at best about 100 lpi (It might be a 600/1200 dpi device , but it needs to print clumps of dots to reproduce a single pixels colours , the amount of clumps it can print in an inch is the lpi)
So essentially , your graphics should really only be 100 pixels per inch of printed output – bear in mind this has NOTHING to do with DPI when you store or insert a graphic. That DPI has to do with output devices and is only related to size of a graphic in relation to output (a 720 x 720 pixel can be stored at ANY dpi , yet will be 10″x10″ on a monitor(72 dpi device)
In digital printing SIZE is the ONLY thing that counts.
DPI or PPI (pixels per inch) also count when scanning , and here’s a REAL simple rule to know at what resolution you must scan a graphic to print it best at a given size
Output size/Input size x 100 (100 is the LPI figure)

IE if you have a 3″x2″ graphic and you need to print it 15″ then using the formula 15/3×100 means you have to scan at 500 DPI (PPI)
If you take a 30″ x 40″ graphic , the size of it should be at WORST about 35 megs (thats WITHOUT jpeg compression)
The Jpeg file should be a LOT smaller. (30 x 100 x 40×100 x3(RGB))
Thing is , if you do exceed this it slows you down a LOT – IE you must optimise the size of these graphics – more info is discarded and actally wastes a huge amount of time in ripping and processing.
Dealing with such huge files (even optimised) eats computer resources and if you are using a rip , will rip VERY slowly.
I dont know what computer you are running , but upgrading it is a very good option if it doesnt have a fast processor and big HD and this will benefit overall productivity.

There are various strategys to minimize graphics size in the package you use , for example if you step and repeat a graphic that has a raster image embedded , then look at the program you are using to find out whether a copy , a clone or a duplicate doesnt actually PHYSICALLY copy the data in the drawing and use that option.
If you RIP lots of decals , rather rip 5 rows than 50 , and let the RIP print this 5x
Depending on what RIP or driver you use to work the printer , you can actually do one graphic in the drawing and tell the rip to step and repeat.
With the colourcam its always better to do small chunks of repeated graphics then do it all in one go.

There is also another strategy to save ribbon (if you dont have the ribbon saver) and that is to do step and repeat work in columns rather than rows , its quicker and can save 50% + of ribbon especially if the graphics are widely spaced.

[Kevin.Beck]

get a bigger hard drive.

i`ve just had a new computer, the differance to upgrade to 120Gb was supprisingly low.