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hard drive management and archiving suggestions
I have a client with projects that take up a 1tb drive every month. They want me to save everything when a project is complete, even the unused media. Needless to say I have quite a collection of external G-Raid drives. I’m just curious how others manage there media drives as well as archiving.
I’ve been toying with the idea of sticking two 1tb drives into my MacPro and using one as a media drive and set the other one up to mirror the first one. Then when the drive gets close to being filled I would simply pull one out for archiving and then replace it with a new one. Everything on these drives is for one specific client. I have another drive for other projects.
The projects are all HDV or DVC Pro HD.
Any comments or suggestions are welcome!
Thanks,
Greg
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6 Replies
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Better to invest in a LT04 or DLT tape storage solution. Raw drives on the shelf are not a good backup method, IMHO.
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
Hey Kevin,
I totally agree. I’ve read about the dangers of archiving on drives. Is there any specific LT04 or DLT solution you can recommend? Is that what you use?
Thanks,
Greg
Greg Mulvey
Designer:Animator
https://www.gregmulvey.com -
Please tell me … what are the problems with archiving on hard drives.
I should have thought that tape was a more vulnerable medium.
Harry
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Hi
This has been doing the rounds recently – I can’t vouch for its veracity…
https://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_hard_disk_warning.html -
Hard drives that don’t spin are the problem. If your backup was on a spinning drive with RAID protection, then that is the preferred way to backup onto hard drives. However, eventually you run out of room or it doesn’t make sense to store data that has little chance of being used in the near future.
As an engineer at Deluxe, periodically we would pull material off the spinning drives and onto LTO tape. This takes down media that isn’t being used and allows for new material to be placed on the RAID array.
These tapes have an average life of 20 years whereas drives sitting on the shelf gathering dust would not last nearly that long.
Here’s a great portable solution from Silverado Systems:
https://silverado.cc/shop/product.php?productid=997&cat=1&page=1
Kevin Monahan
http://www.fcpworld.com
Author – Motion Graphics and Effects in Final Cut Pro -
I have been backing up to LTO3 tapes for the past year (I use Bakbone Netvault software and an Overland Arcvault Tape library drive). On friday, my Xserve Raid (3.5tb) became corrupted and i cannot access any data at all. Fortunately i had finished and sent out all my pre-christmas commercials only 3 days before.
Because the failure happened whilst i was installing a second raid onto a new macpro, I have been able to utilise the new raid and have set the backup system to restore the data onto the new raid.
Until yesterday, I looked on the tape drive as nothing more than a necessary evil and a bit of a drag having to change the tapes every so often. i doubt i will ever be quite so blaze about it again.
Get a tape system, its a proven technology that is recognised as less susceptible to degradation than hard drives (plus the tapes are actually quite a bit cheaper than drives)
I’m really glad we got one!
Adam
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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