media storage and backup for big FCP project

[Walter Biscardi]

[Jane Greenberg] ” I’m not sure of the advantages/disadvantages of using RAID drives, mirror drives or daisy chaining single drives. Any suggestions or recent experience in this regard will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jane
“

There is no disadvantage to using a RAID. A RAID is simply multiple drives connected together to act as one large media storage system. What you really want is a RAID 5 system for your particular project. This gives you fail safe redundancy built in. If a drive fails in the array, your media is not lost, you simply replace the bad drive and the unit rebuilds itself. Depending on what unit you purchase, many systems can rebuild themselves while you keep editing.

Are you actually planning to capture all of this footage into your system? I’m working on a documentary now with 75 hours of material and I’ll probably actually capture about 20 to 30 hours into the system after reviewing it all. I would recommend no less than 8TB for your project as you have to keep in mind all the render files and such as you are working with the project. I always tell folks figure out how much storage you’ll need for actual capture, but then at least double that for render files, graphics, music, etc…

I recommend the folks over a Maxx Digital as we run both their EVO HD system and their EVO2 HD systems here. The originals are 8TB (we have two of them) and the new one is 16TB of shared storage. The EVO2 is what I’m using for my current documentary. But their also a reseller of a lot of brands of storage so based on your needs, they can set up best for your particular situation. https://www.maxxdigital.com

Also, be sure to pick up Shane Ross’ “Getting Organized in Final Cut Pro.” He has awesome advice in there on working with many types of projects and I just re-watched the part about organizing a large project right before I started this one. It’s a great DVD and everyone should have it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Jane Greenberg]

Thanks a lot, Walter. I don’t think we will capture all 350 hours, but I wouldn’t be surprised if 250 went in. There are a couple of reasons we’re planning to capture such a large percentage of the material. At some point the footage will be given back to the community where it was shot for a historical archive. We are also having an assistant capture the material so that the editor & director can scrub through it quickly to determine what parts need logging. It’s rather daunting to have such a huge amount of material– a little less daunting if we can access it from a drive.

But if we assume 250 hours of DV footage needs storage, we might be able to get by with 6TB drive (although I’m a little confused about how much space is used in a RAID for redundancy and how much is actually available for use). I’ll look into that. Given the nature of the project and the real time rendering capacity of FCP 6, I don’t expect we’ll need to double the space for render and other source files. Plus we’ll have a few hundred GB on our hard drive available and may get a portable FW drive as well.

My initial thought was that a RAID might serve the dual purpose of storage and backup drive. But since we are not making clones, I think it’s risky to have one drive serve as the media drive and backup. So now, with the understanding that a RAID 5 will likely be the best option for the media drive in terms of reliablility and protection for the project, I think we ‘ll need a second drive on which we can copy all the media files and store offsite as a backup. Not sure if you have any thoughts on the second drive, and if you would still recommend a RAID for that job. I’m grateful for your input. Thanks, Jane