Since then I have been revising my work flow and acquiring pieces of hardware that I hope will reduce the impact of this catastrophe.
Had I been more diligent and backed up all the photos from the day’s excursion before I went off to sleep, I would have lessened the loss. It was fortunate that the SD card failed an hour into the morning and we have just reached the foothills of our intended destination.  Had it occurred later, the loss would have been more immense.

So this is now my new workflow:

• In the most extreme of circumstances and for my most important photo shoots, I will be using the dual memory card feature of my Sony A7RIII, mirroring the photos into each of these cards simultaneously.  That way, if one card fails, I am still able to retrieve the pictures from the other card. I very much doubt that both cards will fail at the same time, but if that happens, then I must be the unluckiest photographer in the world.
• For my travel pictures, I now back up the memory card immediately upon reaching back to the hotel or whichever place that is most convenient. For this I need the services of a very fast and rugged portable SSD, and the one that suits my needs the most is the SanDisk Extreme Portable 1TB SSD. It is capable of 550MB/sec (Read speed). There are 2TB versions but for most of my short jaunts, I usually do not exceed 1TB of photos. 

• If time permits I use the Pioneer BDR-XD05B Blu-Ray reader/writer to make a second back-up into BD-XL 100GB M Disc media. This is the same equipment as described in Part III of my series of Preserving Your Precious Memories.

Hopefully this new workflow will lessen the impact of an SD card failing.

I had taken my radarscope off from the optical drive scene for about 10 years. The last optical drive I owned was an LG drive that is able to read and write multiple formats. At that time there were two competing standards – HD DVD from Toshiba and the eventual winner, Blu-Ray from Sony. Since then, I have only used the drive to read old legacy CD and DVD discs, create the odd DVD for friends and relatives and had not really kept up with the scene.

 So it was quite surprising to me when I found out that there were several advances since then – triple and four-layered BD-XL formats that can extend the storage space to 120GB. For me, a 100GB media is the ideal solution as I can use it to archive my data from my 64GB and 128GB SD cards. Plus, this capacity is the sweet spot when it comes to cost per GB of storage media.​

​Another recent incident convinced me to take a second look at optical storage media.  My wife found my old APS cartridge film container with a dozen of my old films intact, together with two CD-discs which I had created over two dozen years ago. As they were kept in the container it was not exposed to any sunlight. That together with the fact that it was kept in a well-ventilated warehouse ensured that the data was readable much to my surprise. So my faith in optical media was renewed enough to consider it as my alternative backup-of-a-backup storage archival media.

​In the process of researching for a suitable Blu-Ray drive to purchase (for the BD-XL format), I stumbled upon a DVD and Blu-Ray compatible storage media that was purported to last 1,000 years – the M-Disk! I don’t need it to last that long. If it is able to last over 50 years, I am already elated. Nevertheless, my curiosity was aroused and I eventually settled on two drives able to read and write M-Discs – the LG WH16NS40 for my desktop PC and of course a portable USB model (the Pioneer BDR-XD05B) in line with my Part II assertions on longevity and accessibility. This portable drive is to be kept in cold storage together with my bundle of M-Discs.

As for the M-Disc media, I must say that it is really hard to find and I even had on vendor cancel my order as he was not able to source for a pack of my requested 25-disc carton. Prices vary from between US$10 to $15 per disc of BD-XL 100GB media. The 4.7GB DVD variant is even harder to come by. Reading the documentation and whatever resources I could find on the Internet, here are some of my findings:

• The M-Disc claimed longevity is due to the proprietary rock-like data layer from a company called Millenniata. As we all know, the CD, DVD and Blu-Ray recordable media makes use of a layer made of dye to store the data. And dye fades over time, no matter how resilient the nature of the components. So if you can substitute the dye for a solid non-volatile material that is rock-like, then in theory the disc can last a long, long time.
• The M-Disc media does not have a reflective layer. That is a huge win for me!  In the past, I have carelessly scratched the surfaces of many CD discs and rendered then unreadable. So that is another reason to raise my hopes for using M-Discs as part of my archival strategy. But who knows whether all this propaganda is true. Only time will tell but unfortunately I might not be around long enough to report about it in this blog.
• As for the 1,000-year claim, well, the US Navy tested these media and subjected them to 185-degree temperatures and at 85% humidity for over 24 hours in three cycles of tests and all of them suffered no noticeable degradation. So if it is good enough for the DoD, it is good enough for me!
• So the next question is, can my existing 10 year-old Blu-Ray drive be able to burn and read M-Discs? Well in theory the laser strength must be sufficient to etch the surface of the rock-like material and according to Millenniata, any complaint Blu-Ray drive should work. But I am not leaving it to chance, so I bought a new optical drive sporting the M-Disc logo to say that it conforms to the M-Disc specifications.
• A more pertinent question is whether the old DVD optical drives can read and write M-Discs. Well, according to my research, there is a very high probability that the DVD drive might be able to read the M-Disc BUT there is little or no likelihood that it will be able to burn M-Discs as the laser strength is just insufficient.

​As of this writing, I have been able to successfully burn a couple of 100GB BD-XL discs will success at 4X write. The LG WH16NS40 drive comes with Nero software and is very easy to use.  As for the Pioneer BDR-XD05B portable drive, it uses a novel clam-shell design and is really portable and handy to carry around. The Pioneer drive also comes with a set of CyberLink software to edit and create photo albums and videos.

No, I am not trying to be “kiasu” (a Singaporean word which literarily translates as “afraid to lose”), but it pays to have a backup of your precious memories in another media or format. Here I use a combination of several technologies in order to preserve my precious memories.

First and foremost is a USB back-up drive. I have several now, from easy-to-carry around 2.5 inch formats such as the Seagate 4GB drives all the way to the more robust Western Digital My Book Duo 20TB drive that is in a RAID 0 striping mode. I could easily have reconfigured it to become a RAID 1 mirroring system but then I would reduce the storage capacity by half to only 10TB. And that is not enough for me as I store my pictures in both RAW and JPG formats. With a 42MP camera such as the Sony A7RII and RII, you find that you quickly run out of storage space, no matter how big they are in the first place.

​So why a USB drive? Well for me the first reason is its ubiquity. USB or Universal Seral Bus has been around for since the late nineties. Hopefully it will be around for many more years to come The standard is constantly being upgraded from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 and now to USB 3.1. So why is this so important? Well, I don’t know whether you were around in the days of the Iomega ZIP and Jaz drives? I still have several of these removal media but alas, there are no more working readers I can use to access the data.

​The second reason why I chose the USB drive is the convenience. With a USB drive such as the Western Digital My Book Duo, I get 20TB of storage right out of the box. It is really a plug-and-forget device and I am connected the minute I plug into the USB port on my desktop or laptop. I do not even need to power down the unit. When I power down my PC, the WD My Book Duo goes straight into power-saving mode. That saves me time and saves me the effort to physically reach out to the unit and press the power down button. Likewise, when I power up my PC, the unit is automatically ready for use.

​The other convenience factor is the speed with which I can transfer the files. Believe me, transferring several terabytes of data is really time-consuming.  It took me about a full day to back up my faulty Synology NAS into the WD My Book Duo. I cannot imagine how much longer it would have taken had I not taken advantage of the built-in USB 3.1 interface. Paired with my dedicated USB 3.1 port on my PC, I was able to get a sustained transfer rate of over 100MB per second using the FastCopy software (https://fastcopy.jp/en/). I found this to be one of the fastest freeware software available.

​Hopefully, with the RAID-optimised WD Red disk drives, I can look forward to a longer mean time between failure (MTBF). Additionally, the WD My Book Duo comes with a whole list of software utilities to ensure that I am alerted to any failures. For instance, the Windows version of the Data LifeGuard Diagnostics software will perform S.M.A.R.T. drive tests to verify the integrity of the media. An extended test is available to do a full media scan to detect bad sectors if needed.

So let me share the mobile phone I am using. After an extensive search for the ideal phone that suits my exact needs, I am happy to announce that I have just found the ideal product.
So before I reveal what it is, let me share my must-have features:

1. It must have a large enough screen fro my failing eyesight. And I discovered it is not so much as large fonts but how bright I set the screen.
2. It MUST have the ability to add an expandable memory card. My photo collection has gone beyond a 128GB microSD card, so the minimum for me then is a 256GB card.
3. As I do a fair bit of travel, the ability to switch to a second SIM card is also a requirement.
4. In an effort to travel light, I have dispensed of the laptop on short jaunts. SO if the smart phone can connect to the hotel room's LED screen via the HDMI connection it will be a bonus.  But more about that later.

So my ideal smart phone?  Well it is the Samsung Note 8! No surprise as many of the choices - Google Pixel XL and IPhone X do not make the cut.