Shooting RAW + JPEG

I have always shot RAW for the many advantages RAW offers in image quality over JPEG. With the latest release of Aperture 2.0 I have found it very easy to work with large RAW files, but recently I started shooting RAW + JPEG for one simple reason, backup. Now this isn't a great backup mechanism, but any storage device (CD, DVD, Hard Disk or Compact Flash card can fail). This simple stupid backup mechanism should reduce the possibility of completely loosing an image if a sector or two of your Compact Flash (CF) card die. A sector is what holds the data on a storage device. See Wikipedia's defenition of sector for more information here. Dead sectors can occur at any time even with the best memory cards. It does happen less frequently with the best memory cards because only the creme of the crop makes it to be the best memory cards like the Sandisk Extreme IV. I always use the best SanDisk cards I can get, starting with the Ultra II, Extreme III and now the Extreme IV. To date my Extreme IV cards have not had any corrupt sectors but they are also my newest CF cards.

So how does shooting RAW + JPEG avoid loosing an image completely? Well at least in the event of a failure the chances of a failure happening in two sectors is less likely than it happening in one sector. Since the RAW file and the JPEG file are separate files, one sector dieing will not affect the other file.

Of course the best solution is having RAID in the camera like the Nikon D3. The Canon 1D series cameras have a similar two card design but they use a CF card and a SD card requiring the user to have two different types of memory cards in order to utilize both card slots. Lame. I really hope that Canon fixes this in the future.