raid 0 long shot

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Craig –
It’s February 17th, at 8:20pm. I see that no one has responded to your post.
This will be a smart ass answer, so I apologize in advance –

you write in your “signature” –
” teach video production in L.A. ”

Really-
well here are some lessons –
1) NEVER use RAID 0
2) ALWAYS backup your data – I don’t care if it’s RAID 0, RAID 5 or RAID 6 – ALWAYS backup your data.

if your answer is “I can’t afford to backup my data” then my reply is NEVER EVER USE RAID 0.

now, for an answer to your question, and how to get this resolved for $300 bucks –

https://www.300dollardatarecovery.com/

and if your valuable data is not worth $300 for a short drive to get there in LA, then please don’t post on Creative Cow anymore. They are in Studio City.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Craig Alan]

Thanks for the link. I’ll keep them in mind.
They are cheaper than other places.
I like that it is free if they can’t recover anything.
like that its a short drive for me.
Good to know.
FYI: they want $1600 to recover a raid over 2TB.
Have I had projects that if lost I’d pay that to recover? Yes.
Are those projects backed up? Yes. Have I done back ups of back ups and taken one off site?
No guilty. Do I wish that I could afford your services and have automatic incremental back ups? Sure.
And I wish I could order Alexa cameras instead of the Sony FS7s I am applying for.

The raid that died had a small percentage of class projects over last semester and the one just 5 weeks old. I’d prefer to recover them but wasn’t counting on it and I apologized to the 2 teams that were effected. And told them they still had time to produce some nice short films this year. I saved the four drives, labeled them, and figured if there was new software out there that could make that doable I had nothing to loose. Last semesters films were already graded and finished. This semester they will reshoot the two projects that were lost. They still have time to produce something that will be included in a montage reel of student work and/or a short film that is stand alone.

I had just received a large order which included 6TB drives that will be replacing the 2TB drives in these raids. I planned to use raid 5 and I bought copies of softraid to format them and to monitor them. So more than twice the amount of storage and with some protection. Important projects get backed up. At the time I made the decision to go with raid 0 it was because 6 TB was not really enough overhead for our needs, Pegasus or equally expensive raids were the only recommended raids for the new thunderbolt Macs, and 2TB drives were the best bang for the buck. So I went for the larger capacity and faster speed. I backed up what I thought was important. I was one week away from swapping out all the drives when one died. That’s on me. Bad management.

AFAIK I can’t afford incremental backups of all 7 raids in the studio. Individual projects backed up on a stored drive, sure.
But its tedious and time consuming. Open to suggestions and if I had a ball park figure I’d consider better solutions for future grants.

Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic HPX250P, FCP X 10.3, teach video production in L.A.

[Bob Zelin]

everyone who does not backup their data, will eventually lose their data. Drives fail. Even SSD’s fail.
As the Creative Cow saying goes – “raid 5 is not archive” but RAID 5 is better than nothing.

Bob

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Craig Alan]

yup. So what system or service should I look at that could do incremental backups of 7 stations with a raid 5 media drive each without my needing to be doing it? I’m wearing too many hats and working 2 or sometimes 3 times the amount I’m being paid for as is. What would it cost? I have gotten over 3/4 mil in grant funding over the last few years. And we are building a new studio next year where me plan on closer to 30 computer stations.

But for now 7 iMacs and raids with softraid software. That would be a lot of storage. And I would want it to run without needing my supervision. Backup storage systems across the internet. What would be the cost. The studio is crowded as is and so is my home office. Would love that safety net and off site would be better. theft fires etc happen

Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic HPX250P, FCP X 10.3, teach video production in L.A.

[Daniel Fletcher]

look into a better folder and project structure so you and your students can more easily ID unique assets. i.e. assets that exist only on one volume/location.

Footage etc should be cloned to a separate location before entering post.
project files are typically small enough to be backed up to the “cloud” i.e. dropbox google drive.

This is a workflow and organizational issue primarily.

It sounds like you may want to add a media management course or section to your curriculum.

[Dean Tyson]

As mentioned a few times…

NEVER EVER USE RAID 0 unless the data is not important and you just need speed…

I also learnt the hard way and lost 8TB of data! ALL OF IT!
Because the previous IT guys setup the server with 4 x 2TB drives in RAID 0.
He didn’t tell anybody and 1 drive failed about 3 weeks ago!

Lucky for me, I implemented a backup system (which also didn’t exist!) before the disaster happened!

So, yes. All the data was lost, but I was able to redo the RAID in a 0+1 config (Safest IMHO) and restore all the data.
This way, I can have at least 1 drive fail without losing any data….

We all learn the hard way at some stage…