Time Machine backup in the editing world

[Cody Walters]

Sean,

With my Mac Pro I have an external RAID 5 where I keep finished videos, video card contents, project files and any other assets that I need protected against hard drive failure. I have 3 1TB internal hard drives configured into a RAID 0 as my scratch disk. I choose this over RAID 1 because of the speed. I then have an external drive that keeps a clone of my OS drive and a RAID 5 network drive that keeps copies of the project files and OS drive.

This configuration has worked for me. Just think, if the asset is important to you, make sure to back it up, and if you have extra money, make back ups of your back ups. Also keep in mind about fire, theft, flood. You need back ups not on location as well. Take all steps necessary to ensure you don’t loose your data.

Cody Walters
JW Studio LLC
Houston Video Production
Houston Wedding Videos

Final Cut Studio 3
Adobe CS5 Master Suite
Panasonic HVX-200
Canon 7D

[David Roth weiss]

Sean,

Whoever told you to use RAID 1 is obviously not an editor. It’s a good choice for data files, photos, etc., but not video editing. The throughput you’re getting from your two drives striped as RAID 0 is much more valuable to you as an editor than the safety of RAID 1, which also cuts storage and throughput in half.

Also, time machine does not restore FCP properly in case of problems, you need to make a bootable clone for backup using Carbon Copy Cloner if you want to really make a useful backup of your system drive.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Sean Winn]

Cody, thanks for the input and knowledge about setup…
S

[Sean Winn]

David,
Ok, that helps my understanding of my current setup and what not to do with it. I have CCC and will utilize that.

Question remains then…as an editor, is TM useful at all? Do you/others use it for anything?
Thanks again,
S

[David Roth weiss]

[Sean Winn] “Question remains then…as an editor, is TM useful at all? Do you/others use it for anything?”

Time Machine is really hardly useful at all for editors Sean — since it doesn’t do the job properly for ProApps, it’s creates a false sense of security and simply wastes drive space. And, while you could theoretically set it up to make auto backups of your media, the fact is backing up media is not really a constant effort, it really only needs to get done when new material is captured or imported into a project.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Sean Winn]

Very good. I’ll keep the focus on CCC and backups of media as needed..
Sean

[Barbara Santi]

Hi David – wonder if you could help. Ive read the posts with interest…

I have 2 x 1.5tb hard drives – one with various film project (I use FCP) the other as its back up (with other bits n bobs). I cant find an effective way of backing up individual projects – eg just what needs adding rather than overwriting and starting from scratch. As we speak I am trying out Time machine which seems to be taking far too long – Ive excluded certain files which didnt need backing up and left it running over night and its still backing up. The project is 352 GB although on the back up har drive the project already exists but as an earlier version (324 GB).

Ive looked into the CCC as per your post but the website is going above my head…
1) is this the best way to go for backing up FCP projects?
2) Do I have to partition as it says? Im concerned because I already have files backed up on that hard drive that I dont want loosing – I only want to back up things that Im working on and activate as and when (rather than all the time in the back ground like Time machine does with my ‘admin’ files)
3) is there a simple step by step guide you can suggest as there is far too much info to digest on the CCC site.

many thanks and hope you can help
best
Barbara

[Matt Holmes]

Someone correct me if I’m wrong in any of this:

CCC uses a function called RSync to back up data. In other words, it only backs up what has changed, but you have to tell it to work that way. Just to be safe, it may be in your best interest to simply buy a new hard drive for CCC, just in case anything goes wrong. Set your TM backup in a safe place for the time being. Go ahead and download CCC and select your source and target (the new one) disks. If it tells you to format your target disk first you can do this in Disk Utility (it’s included with the OS). Format as HFS+ as CCC tells you. So, with your disks selected, you’ll see a “Cloning Options” section on the right side of the window. Select “Incremental Backup of selected items.” Below that you can have some options. I guess the safest thing would be to uncheck the “delete items that don’t exist on the source” box, though it will use more space. Anyway, now when you run the task it will only copy over things that have changed. Mind you this will still take a little while as CCC has to read everything to see what has changed, but 350 GB should be doable overnight.

CCC also allows you to schedule tasks, so you don’t have to manually initiate the backup everyday and redo all your settings. Just click the “Save Task” button at the bottom and follow the prompts. Hope this helps.

Matt

[Matt Holmes]

This explains the Incremental Backup options:

https://help.bombich.com/kb/explore/backup-options

Matt

[Rusty Shackleford]

aside from the external backup,
with the 3 internal drives setup as a raid 0, does that raid setup show up as one 3tb drive in your os?
and what if one drive fails internally, can you easily replace the failed one with a new hard drive?