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mirrored RAID or 2 separate HDs?
I am in the field with 2 separate external HDs – to which I am dumping my footage on a daily basis. On the advice of my EX1 instructional video – I set them up as a “mirrored RAID” so that I could dump to just “one drive” and the data copied to both.
It appears I neglected to turn one of the drives on when I dumped the footage yesterday (which I would never know – because just 1 drive name mounts in the Finder) resulting in a data inconsistency between the 2 “RAID slices” – thus leading to my RAID appearing as “Degraded” in the disk utility. I then went to “rebuild a mirrored RAID set” in the Disk Utility – thinking it would quickly copy the missing 10 GB of data – but instead I’m getting “Estimated time left in Rebuild” of 2 days!!
There is only 10GB data total on the “good” drive – so even if rebuilding from scratch – there is only 10GB total to mirror? why on earth 2 days?
I am reconsidering my workflow – thinking I should start fresh with 2 separately formatted drives – this way – if I make any such future mistakes – or for some reason the 2 drives data becomes inconsistent – I can simply copy the missing data – vs. having all my eggs in the one basket of the joint/mirrored RAID?
Why mirrored RAID vs. 2 separately names drives? are the file transfer times any quicker vs. copying to both drives separately? I am worried about one month down the road – a similar issue occurring – but at a time when I have 2TB+ data on both drives and some small inconsistency between the 2 messes everything up, requiring 2+ days of “rebuilding” to fix???
This is my first time trying this workflow but so far see it as highly risky vs. formatting 2 separate drives and “mirroring” them manually?
I appreciate any advice as to what is my best strategy moving forward, many thanks!
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4 Replies
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I think that you are making it all too complicated. It does depend though whether you are wanting to archive all your camera original footage or, as in my case, merely store it safely pending ingesting into the edit suite. I have two separate drives, one portable USB powered for location downloading and another, bigger one, for additional back up on return from location. I download the BPAV folders from the camera through my MacBook on to these drives. I make sure all the clips are present before deleting the card in camera.
I do have a raided larger G Safe drive to which I archive the finished production. Like I said, I don’t need to keep the camera originals.
Michael Slowe
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I agree you are making it complicated. I use my HP laptop that has the reader for the Sony cards built in or if using another laptop the sony reader to copy the cards to the laptop hardrive. Then I just copy then again to a Passport USB 3 1 TB external hard drive. That way I have the source clips in two places. The real safe way is to have enough cards to capture the project without downloading them in the field. I have shot hundreds of hours with the Sony pro cards with my original EX-1 and now with my Ex-1R. Our other cameras also use the same cards. Sony PMW 320 and Ex-3.
I prefer to use the KISS system…. KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID. and I do stupid things continually.
Hope this helps
Ronnie
Ronnie Martin
Kato Video Productions
http://www.dirtracingvideo.com
http://www.ramtv.tv -
Many thanks for the insights.
Perhaps I should clarify – I am outside of the country filming for 35 straight days – I have 2x 3TB external hard drives in separate enclosures. I have enough cards to get me through a days shoot, but must dump all my footage nightly and reformat my cards.
My question is whether I should set the 2 drives up as a mirrored RAID, or as 2 separate hard drives and manually copy the files to both? which is the better workflow/more secure option? Thanks for the help!
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I always copy to one HD and THEN to another, both times from the original card so that the possibility of data error is minimized. And you know for sure that you have made two copies. I make three copies though, in the studio, because I have several (cheap internal) hard discs lying around that I use with HD docks.
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