Anyone use one of these hot swap SATA rack mount devices?

[David Smith]

Does it have to be a rack mounted solution? I use the Firmtek four bay enclosure which has plenty of cooling capacity. Granite makes boxes with fans too.

By the way there was a post last week about hard drives not being a good medium for archiving. I don’t recall the poster using any kind of citation, just that they had read it somewhere. Just thought I’d mention it so you can check it out. I have no information as to the accuracy of the statement.

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Steve –
I did not look at the Granite Digital chassis. If you use a Cal Digit or Sonnet Fusion chassis, these products can be use not only for backup, but for actual work. A single Cal Digit S2VR chassis will give you identical performance to your expensive Xserve RAID. There is ABSOLULTELY no problem in running all 3 cards (Kona, SATA host, and Apple FC card) in the same G5. It works just fine. All the SATA guys have rack mounted solutions that are either out now, or about to come out. But a simple small 5 bay port multipler SATA box will handle all of your back up needs – or drives for REAL performance (not just backup).

Bob Zelin

[Arnie Schlissel]

I’m using one of these: https://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosures/scsat84x.asp
$409, with fans out the wazoo! 3 fans for the chassis, plus one fan on each tray. They also sell 10 & 12 drive enclosures, and enclosures and these enclosures are available with eSATA connectors.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Joe Murray]

I’ve been using one of these:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812104062

with bare drives for temporary backup. $69 for a 250 Gig drive plus $25 for this little adapter makes it easy to backup to hard drives and there are definitely no screws involved. But I don’t really trust hard drives for permanent archive purposes. Up to this point I’ve archived everything to DVDs, but with more HD and P2 I am going to have to find a better solution. For me hard drives are not the answer, but I have had success using the above device to move stuff back and forth easily between drives and as a P2 backup device on location, tied to a laptop.

Now all I need is an inexpensive, padded storage case for these bare drives. Any takers?

Joe Murray

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Joe Murray] “Now all I need is an inexpensive, padded storage case for these bare drives. Any takers?”

Oh man, if you find something, please please let me know. I back up all AE renders, project related stuff, DVDs, self contained of finished timeline, raw p2 mxf files to SATA with one of these:

https://www.wiebetech.com/products/satadock.php

I would love a convenient to store/carry these things. Try searching for hard disk storage on google, and it doesn’t really work out.

Jeremy

[Steve Covello]

Thanks for the suggestions. What’s curious to me is that HDDs have been around and have been improving year after year, yet some of you prefer to backup to optical disk, which has not proven itself AT ALL as an archival medium. If an optical disk goes bad, forget it. No recovery service will salvage a warped or stained reflective layer [as far as I know]. Whereas, there is an an entire industry dedicated to resurrecting HDDs no matter what happens to them short of evaporation. Seems like with proper care and consciousness of static electricity damage, archiving to HDD could be as reliable [or unreliable] as anything else. We’re not talking about swapping drives in and out like cassette tapes on a cross-country road trip. Any evidence to the contrary? steve covello double wide post

[Jeremy Garchow]

I have definitely created more DVD-R coasters in my time than I have seen hard drives completely die. Since these SATA drives are just sitting around and not being spun around and written to at all times, I feel comfortable with them in the long run. Also, when I have seen single hard drives go bad (such as external firewire drives) die, it’s usually the bridge chip or host controller that goes first. If you pull out the disk and plug it into another enclosure, it works like a charm. None of this applies to any drive in a RAID or RAID set as that’s a totally different application and use.

I have only been doing this backup method for about six months so it remains to be seen what the longevity will be. When someone calls and needs a title change or one more copy of the final DVD, there’s is no easier way to restore a project , or burn a DVD than off of a SATA drive. If the change is easy enough, I will make change right off the the backup drive instead of dragging it all back to my edit system. It’s a lovely method. I use a cataloging software called (off all things) DiskCatalogMaker https://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008942/library/diskcatalogmaker/ This is the icing on the cake. This simple software creates a database that is searchable. As of now, I have 9 SATA disks in my archive (labeled disk1, disk2, etc.) When I make a backup, I have the DiskCatalogMaker scan the disk and make a record of the contents. That way, I can search for projects without even plugging in a disk. It is extremely efficient and useful. I was looking into a DLT system, but it was pricey, seemed like a slow process, and I couldn’t find anyone to sell one to me.

Jeremy

[David Smith]

[JeremyG] ” I use a cataloging software called (off all things) DiskCatalogMaker https://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA008942/library/diskcatalogmaker/ This is the icing on the cake.”

Very cool Jeremy, and $19 for a single user license! Thanks for the information.

Regards,
David

[Steve Covello]

I’ve been using CD Finder for the same purpose. Hugely happy:

https://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/9950

steve
double wide post

[Bob Zelin]

the firmtek boxes are great
bob