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Sparse Bundle Users: How do you backup?
This has come up in another thread and I thought I’d pull it out into into one of it’s own.
How do those of you using sparse bundles for organising your projects manage backups? I loved using sparse bundles but recently stopped because I couldn’t get them to back up reliably if they were open and in use – and it’s not always practical to quit FCPX, then eject every sparse bundle that’s open before a backup runs.
I use Chronosync to backup my 4tb RAID to another 6th RAID (larger so I can keep deletions for a few days) and it’s set to run and sync changes every couple of hours.
As a test I ran ten consecutive backups of a typical project and two of the ten sparse bundle backups were corrupt. I don’t consider a 20% chance of failure good enough so I had to stop using sparse bundles.
I can’t always guarantee I’ll be able to close a bundle before a backup runs, or I’ll have to leave a bundle mounted so FCPX can do a long render – so how do you guys deal with your backups?
Is there a different approach or better software I should be using?
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
23 Replies
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I tend to do it at the end of the day. When I’m taking a 6 hour or longer break I just move them onto my backup RAID. Because they are bundled I just have 1-2 to move and overwrite the previous days version. Of course, I also don’t use Time Machine or any other automated backup. Always just preferred to do it myself I guess.
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Avid MC, PPro CS6, FCP7 – wasting away on my SSD.
I just can’t quit X.
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Sometimes keeping it simple is the best 🙂
Experience tells me that it might not be wise to trust myself with a manual solution though :-/
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Jeff,
It’s not a good idea to backup while things are in progress.
Quit FCPX and any other app before backups starts.
For your info: Apple’s Time Machine is also based on Sparsebundles.-Andreas
Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby
become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
also gaze into thee.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil -
Corruption of .fcpevent and .fcpproject files does seem to be a problem for me with incremental backups. I always make sure I run a backup of those files to another location. But this problem is why I want to ditch sparse bundles. If Apple just had a better way to manage and share projects and events. At this point sparse bundles are a necessary evil.
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As long as we are revisiting from other threads:
some end users are reporting that their sparse images are slower than the media drives they are in and a call to Apple Care pro app department got me a strong recommendation not to use sparse images – that they would slow things down. My tests on a raid with plenty of overhead and relatively small images housed in it did not show this however. I used Black Magic and AJA apps to test the speed of the raid and the sparse image. If anything the images were faster.
Do any of you experience speed/performance issues using sparse images in FC?
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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I would back up your small project files using FCP itself.
https://help.apple.com/finalcutpro/mac/10.0.6/#verb6acb2fb
“Control-click your project in the Project Library, and choose Duplicate Project from the shortcut menu.
In the window that appears, type a name for the new (duplicate) project and choose your external storage device from the Location pop-up menu.
Select an option to specify what is duplicated:
Duplicate Project Only: Duplicates files specific to the project you selected. You may want to select this option if you use the same clips in multiple projects and plan to back up your events separately (perhaps in your backup copy of your entire Project Library and events). This option does not duplicate event media.”
And to back up the entire sparse image, I would use CCC (or the like) to make a clone of it.
If it had been previously backed up and you haven’t added any new media and you have at least two copies of the project file, I think you are pretty well covered. If the footage is valuable I would have a second back up of the raw footage on yet another drive.
This is the one thing I miss about tape. It was a pain to digitize but the tape itself was way more reliable and easier to store. A labeled tape cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is. I think as SSDs get bigger & better this might all become easier and more reliable. They have no moving parts. Run cooler. Etc.
Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV30/40, Sony Z7U, VX2000, PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.
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Thanks everyone – but surely there must be a way of automating the backup?
This year I have lost disks in my RAID0 primary work drive twice – both times with absolutely no warning. With that in mind I want at least a daily complete clone of my work drive, preferably with deletions archived for a few days just in case.
The notion that I have to completely stop work and wait for a backup to finish is exactly why I’ve stopped using sparse images. Chronosync has the odd issue with the actual FCPX project and event files but warns me if there was a problem so I can quickly do a manual backup of just those two files. Only happens very occasionally though.
Looks like sparse images are still a no-go for me at least… i was hoping maybe there was something that could recognise a sparse image was open and skip backing it up until next time. A 48 hour old copy would be far preferable to a completely corrupt copy.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
In the time I was using sparse bundles I didn’t really notice any great speed difference. Just ran a test with Blackmagic’s test app and the speed difference if any was negligible. This was on a 50% full Thunderbolt RAID drive. Write was 3mb/s slower and read was actually 10mb/s faster than the non-sparsebundle test.
i get similar feedback from other FCPX editors I know so while I have no doubt sparsebundles may be slightly slower sometimes, I think in general there’s no great difference.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Thanks Andreas… I’ve not really looked at time machine because it doesn’t have the control that Chronosync does.
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Here is one test I ran:
AJA System Test
Volume: Promise Pegasus R6
Video Frame Size: 1920×1080
File Size: 1.0 GB
Write: 317.7 MB/s
Read: 446.8 MB/sVolume: 20 GB Sparse Bundle on Promise Pegasus R6
Video Frame Size: 1920×1080
File Size: 1.0 GB
Write: 266.0 MB/s
Read: 236.7 MB/sJason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!Check out my Mormon.org profile.
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