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OT-Media Backup Strategies
Just thinking of how to implement a sound media backup strategy. Main drives will be a RAID of some sort. Back up will either by FW drives or bare SATA drives. Will this work? If I keep all media related to a project in one folder on the RAID. Can I simply drag and drop this folder onto the backup drives and say “do not replace”? Hopefully then only copying over new media?
Is there any software that would do this either automatically or with a simple procedure?
Thanks in advance,
Scott Davis
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3 Replies
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[Scott Davis] “Main drives will be a RAID of some sort. Back up will either by FW drives or bare SATA drives”
If you do this, I suggest you have two drives for every backup because drives can die or just start acting up. Store one drive on location and the other offsite.
There are several enclosures that will hold two drives and you just need to buy an inexpensive tray for new drives.
Our long term plan is to use DLT-S4 (800GB/tape for about $110) for our offsite storage and FW drives for our onsite.
Also, stay away from external enclosures that have more than one drive in them. While they might be less expensive, it increases the chances of the drive going down because there are two drives in it. It’s also easier to recover data from a single drive unit than a dual drive unit if you have problems.
-Russ
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For RAID, I would recommend level 5, and you can use anywhere from 4 to 10 disks. RAID level 5 is slower than level 0, and you lose 1 disk to parity, but if you have a disk failure, it can rebuild itself. If you have a failure with RAID 0, you have to put everything back together by yourself.
In any case, it’s always a good idea to have at least 2 copies of your files. A lot of people use Superduper! for backup, so you might want to give that a look.
For long term storage, you would want 2 copies, too. But if you have the original footage on tape, then you might get away with one copy of the project with footage, and one without (if you’re short on storage space).
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All of these are great ideas….
I agree with the RAID 5 deal… this is your only REAL form of protection. My personal suggestion to make sure that you have backed up what you can on DVD (DVD DL) or Blu-Ray if your fortunate to have one.
We have everything on tape or XDCAM disc in house, so all I really need to keep is any components that relate to that project and any video files that are not on tape or disc (which almost never happens) and then I “Make Offine…” my video media. Then, the components get saved to a DVD or possibly a DVD DL discs. I label these with my project names and place them on a shelf.
DVDs have a much better life span than hard drives. This is my workflow for backing up projects. It works for me!
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Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
http://www.schazamproductions.com
https://blogs.creativecow.net/waynecarey
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