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Backup solutions
What are you guys doing for professional backup? Our facility shoots all HD, and all tapeless (EX-1). We’re currently backing up to dual-layer blu-ray, but it’s expensive and insanely slow.
We’d like to do some kind of mirrored raid setup I guess. But we’ve got about 15 TBs of data already, and we’ll probably go through another 10 TBs by the end of the year.
Any suggestions? What do you guys use?
Thanks for any advice!
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11 Replies
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LTO or DLT tape drive. Expensive for the drive unit itself, but then the cartridges are relatively cheap. I don’t use them myself, as I don’t have the need yet…I use RAID 1 hard drives. Until I can afford the LTO.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Tape drives are the answer…
Look at the Quantum tape drives made to preserve metadata et all… They have product made expressly for media backup in postproduction situations… it’s the way to go for now. LTO-3 is what they are showing now, and after the drive is bought, you can back up about 400 gigs for around 50 bucks for the tape cartridge…
LTO drives are about the same speed for backup and restoring as a FW drive.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s
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I’d keep using Blu-ray if I were you, but the alternative is to just build yourself a super inexpensive tower with eight 1Tb SATA drives onboard. Drives are available all over for less than $100 now. Just check out Newegg for the best prices and feed to it over your network if possible so you don’t change or put anything in your editing system.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Not terrible idea and less expensive in the short term, but drives die eventually.. tape cartridges are good for 50 years. Not only that, drives have to be mounted every so often and run or the data they store simply goes away over time… the tapes don’t need to do this. They are used by banks to backup account data with, in fact- they are super reliable, where drives just aren’t…
Problem is the original cost… around 6k for the LTO drive (Though I hear of setups coming for about 2500), but after that, the tapes are less than hard drives would be so it’s a matter of biting the bullet now, and saving in the long term, with a more reliable back up. Next generation tapes will hold 800 gigs after that 1600 etc.. so even as drives go down in price so will these tapes per gig.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer
Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here
8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s
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[Jerry Hofmann] “Not only that, drives have to be mounted every so often and run or the data they store simply goes away over time… the tapes don’t need to do this. “
Yes Jerry, you’re right. I’ve read more and more about the potential for lost info on hard drives lately. However, if Mike is constantly running the backup tower and adding additional material, that should do what’s necessary to keep the recorded data intact, especially if he mirrors the drives. And, he could backup stuff required long-term to Blu-ray at his leisure as well. The whole deal would probably cost just about $1200 or $1300.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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That Quantum LTO-3 looks perfect. Thanks so much for all the great responses, guys!
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For a few years now we have been backing up to hard drives and place them in our ‘controlled’ tape library and never had a failure.
Recently we have invested in a few SATA docking stations and use inexpensive 3.5″ 1TB drives which really are the cheapest $ for Gb solution. The docking stations connect via USB (sloooow) AND eSATA (fast) and on really important stuff we backup to 2 separate drives.
And for those who can go back in time, can you imagine the library’s physical ‘footprint’ of what can me stored on a 1TB drive as compared to a HDV tape, beta tape, 1″ tape or even a 2″ tape! And then to the ridiculous… 2 hours of XDCAM on a Sandisk 32G stored in your wallet!!!! Try and put a 2 hour 2″ videotape in your wallet… if in fact you could lift it!?!
Baz (the times they are a changing)
What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!
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[Jerry Hofmann] “fact- they are super reliable, where drives just aren’t…”
I dunno Jerry, I just had a DLT drive destroy a DLT tape the other day.
The motor went bad….I know one in a million and all, but it’s not as bullet
proof as I’d hoped. Thankfully it was just a data backup I already had. -
LT04 Tape is actually the current technology. It’s the way to go.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
I picked up a little 2 bay SATA chassis from Maxx Digital and we simply slap 1TB drives in there to back up media for projects. We’re also planning to use this same method for some new series shooting tapeless. Basically slap a drive in there, back up specified media, pull the drive out and put it on the shelf.
Now the 1.5TB drives are out (we just go two new media arrays full of 1.5’s) so we’ll be able to get even more on each drive soon.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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