Iomega REV discs as archive medium?

[Ned Soltz]

Other than the bad history that many folks have with Iomega, I just don’t think the Rev drives make economic sense. First, there is the matter of $300 for the drive. The 70 gig cartridges are $70 or 4 for $250. That gives 280 gigs of storage for $250. I much prefer to buy large loss-leader hard drives at Fry’s and the like and use those for archive. A 750 gig Seagate is around $335-350 on-line. I would prefer a large hard drive and then either a Wiebetech drive dock or even a hot-swap sata enclosure. I think ultimately this delivers more back up for the buck. The real question is at what price point does the Rev or similar device become viable.

Ned Soltz

[Ken Summerall]

I see your point. I guess that I just have this aversion to placing a HDD on a shelf for an indefinite period of time. I should just get over that.

That makes me think though. What about an expresscard esata interface and one of these external hot swap boxes. Seems that I could get a lot of bang for the buck with something that would not only provide a fast backup option with one drive, but also another external scratch drive when used with 2 drives in a RAID config.

Does that make sense? My brain and my fingers aren’t talking today.

Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.”

[Shane Ross]

Iomega has a way of becoming absolete VERY fast. Remember ZIP drives? JAZ Drives? Well, I know a company that has loads of things archived to JAZ disks, and a JAZ drive…but the JAZ drive only has a SCSI interface. Not ony machine in thier office still has that interface. So…SOL.

But Hard drives also have that interface…SCSI. And there are plenty of converters to convert that interface into another. And another thing you have to do is be aware of the technology changes and adjust your archived footage to keep up with the times. Like tons of people with 3/4″ master tapes and very few places with 3/4″ decks.

I have my footage archived on internal SATA drives, and my producer has them copied on a TB G-Raid. Now I have a SATA>USB 2 converter, so as long as USB is an option, I will be fine. But once SATA interfaces and USB interfaces go away, I will have to transfer to the new format to keep up with the times. Or keep a G5 in the back room as well.

REVO is cool, but expensive. And you will have to keep your REVO drive around, and if you wanted to send a disk to someone, THEY will need a REVO drive. But if I send a drive in a firewire case…they have that.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Ken Summerall]

OK, I’m convinced that this REV thing is not so great an idea. Thanks Ned and Shane for your thoughts. Now to decide between just another firewire drive or eSATA. Hmmmm.

Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.”

[David Roth weiss]

Ken,

Your Firewire drives will become doorstops much faster than SATA drives. The entire industry is already very SATA oriented, and for good reason. SATA is much faster and much more reliable. The faster you dispense with buying firewire drives and start buying SATA, the sooner you’ll be investing in your future rather than your past.

DRW

[Margus Voll]

Hi.

I would not use archive drives for scrach.
Once your computer stall or something like that
you might loos all your stuff 😉

Simply make copys and put them away.
Ideally i’d make 2 disks.
First back up to one and then to second one the same stuff.
It gives you more redundancy.

I use my self 4 drives striped in raid 10
so if used online and one disk fails the others work
and no stop in work.
And later in the evnening i make external HDD backup.
But ok it is a bit different aproach.

It is still good idea to self storage your SATA drives.

—

Margus

https://iconstudios.eu

[Ken Summerall]

Thanks David, I think that I will buy a 5 disc enclosure from Sonnet that uses port multiplication and use this to swap drives in and out. I can use it to make an archive copy, take that drive out and put 2-5 discs in and use the same enclosure for a scratch drive. It’s all SATA so I get a lot of bang for the buck.

Ken Summerall
Wellwater Productions, Inc.
“A non-profit production company specializing in media with a mission.”