"I'd like some advice. I have a hard drive docking bay that I'm using to store and archive files from my iMac. I use naked hard drives in duplicate for storage. My question is whether i should just copy the actual files to these drives, or should I create a sparse bundle (or sparse image) on the storage hard drives and copy the files to the bundle or image? And why would that be better, worse or neutral?"
Just my opinion follows, and I realize that others' may be different, but...
Always, ALWAYS, A-L-W-A-Y-S keep your archives in POFF (plain old finder format).
You DO NOT want to make this stuff "hard to get at" in a moment of need.
Store the files in something _other than_ POFF and, you may go trying to retrieve a file, and find that you have problems getting to it.
One other thought: if you're archiving files (that is, copying them to a backup or archival drive and then removing the originals from your "main drive"), you ought to have each archived file in TWO separate locations (separate drives). A drive _can_ go bad on you at the most inopportune moment!
