How to back up TONS of data?

[ken koller]

I have searched around in this forum and have not come across this topic. Hopefully this is not a re-post, I am also aware that this is a cinematography website, but I have found it to be full of smart, respectful, and helpful people.

 

My situation is that I work for a small production company. We shoot interviews and concerts on a regular basis. Primarily we have been filming with DVXs and some other miniDV cameras. As we start to shift towards HD however I am becoming concerned with how to properly backup our data.

 

This data includes HD footage we have imported off of our P2 cards when we shoot with our HVX, in addition to terabytes upon terabytes of video files and final cut project files from 3.5 years worth of filming, capturing, and editing.

 

Up until this point the solution has been to buy more hard drives. This has been done due mainly to budget constraints. Now however we are coming into some bigger business. So I am looking for a safe, secure, and relativly affordable solution for backing up footage on site, as well as storing copies of this data off site, just in case.

 

Up until this point the best solution I have been able to conjure up was to set-up a large raid array, such as a LaCie 16TB 2x4big Quadra Bundle that can be upgraded later to a 32TB capacity, and the purchasing a tape drive to backup this data and store it off site.

 

Is this a reasonable/safe/secure system? Any and all help would be appreciated, thank you.

 

Also let me know if I left out something.

[Phil Rhodes]

This is the last bastion of tape - get yourself one of cache-A's LTO4 drives. Not terrifically cheap, but it works.

 

P

[ken koller]

This is the last bastion of tape - get yourself one of cache-A's LTO4 drives. Not terrifically cheap, but it works.

 

P

 

 

I took a quick tour of their website and found no pricing information. They also seem like a relatively new company, which makes me skeptical, not of LTO4 drives, but of this company. I have heard stories of someone using a certain brand of tape drive, only to have that company go under and retrieving their data at a later date to be very difficult.

 

Does anyone here have experience with this company, or have used their products before?

 

As a side not, we are using strictly Macs will this be an issue?

[ken koller]

I took a quick tour of their website and found no pricing information. They also seem like a relatively new company, which makes me skeptical, not of LTO4 drives, but of this company. I have heard stories of someone using a certain brand of tape drive, only to have that company go under and retrieving their data at a later date to be very difficult.

 

Does anyone here have experience with this company, or have used their products before?

 

As a side not, we are using strictly Macs will this be an issue?

 

 

I looked further into Cache-A and they seem like a really good solution, problem is I can't find pricing anywhere. Suggestions?

[Phil Rhodes]

I looked further into Cache-A...

 

As far as I know the company was founded by people who worked on the similar A-series drives for Quantum. I've met their head guys at NAB several times, and discussed technical aspects of tape storage for digital film work with them during the development of their software. They've always seemed to be very decent guys to me and I can thoroughly recommend them.

 

If they're actually shipping product, that is. I got the impression they were.

 

P

[ken koller]

As far as I know the company was founded by people who worked on the similar A-series drives for Quantum. I've met their head guys at NAB several times, and discussed technical aspects of tape storage for digital film work with them during the development of their software. They've always seemed to be very decent guys to me and I can thoroughly recommend them.

 

If they're actually shipping product, that is. I got the impression they were.

 

P

 

 

Yea I have had a very difficult time finding someone who sells their products.

[Paul Bruening]

This is the last bastion of tape - get yourself one of cache-A's LTO4 drives. Not terrifically cheap, but it works.

 

P

 

How does this system stack up gig-for-gig and penny-for-penny with 1.5 or 2 TB SATAII HDs?

[Paul Bruening]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...&CatId=4357

[Phil Rhodes]

We pay under £40 for 800GB LTO4 tapes and a bit more than that for a 1TB hard drive.

 

So: pretty well, really!

 

Also, the tape has a longer archival life and is more universally readable.

 

You will, of course, have to write quite a few tapes before you pay off the cost of the drive.

 

P

[Paul Bruening]

We pay under £40 for 800GB LTO4 tapes and a bit more than that for a 1TB hard drive.

 

So: pretty well, really!

 

Also, the tape has a longer archival life and is more universally readable.

 

You will, of course, have to write quite a few tapes before you pay off the cost of the drive.

 

P

 

You know, Phil, I rarely ever even question your presentations. 40 GBPs come out to 67 USD at the moment. That puts your 1.6 TB worth of tape right at the same price as a 1.5 TB SATAII HD here. Wouldn't the obsolescence issues be about the same with both systems? As well, I was under the impression that shelf life for low spun HDs was rather high. If I'm off, set me right.

[Phil Rhodes]

You know, Phil, I rarely ever even question your presentations. 40 GBPs come out to 67 USD at the moment. That puts your 1.6 TB worth of tape right at the same price as a 1.5 TB SATAII HD here.

 

Not here, gah.

 

Wouldn't the obsolescence issues be about the same with both systems?

 

I think the idea is that it has very long shelf life based on the fact that it's linear rather than helically scanned and is based on an open standard. It's specifically intended to be an archival format and as such is likely to be widely supported for a long time. There's a long roadmap. Manufacturers such as Quantum have voluntarily discontinued very similar competing products such as SDLT in order that the industry benefits from all this.

 

Of course a lot of that goes for SATA too.

 

P

[Paul Bruening]

I can remember when SATAs went down to 52 cents per gig. I was delighted. Now, you can get them for 8.6 cents per gig. I can stuff 9 TB onto my 6 port MOBOs. My 5 card MOBOS can cram up 30 TB per computer. My system, as is, could run 216 TB for under $20,000 in drive costs. The biggest bottleneck to my render farm is the gigabit LAN that links them.

[Rob Vogt]

mozy.com

 

5 or 6 dollars a month until you get an offline, or until you dub your files to HD Cam depending on budget.

[Steve Wallace]

RAID 1 (mirroring) and LTO offsite is a reasonably fool proof system. Double system redundancy with a failure rate well under .25%.

[Rob Vogt]

Not if youre these guys ^_^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfa8_j0R-TY

[Paul Bruening]

5 1/4" floppies.

[Hal Smith]

RAID 1 is a good way to go...but...a RAID 1 system I administer lost both drives last week. One drive physically destroyed itself and something about that failure croaked the FAT information on the other (actually the NTFS index). Kroll Ontrack got the data back but it wasn't cheap.

 

LTO or similar safety backups are absolutely essential if you've got data that can't be replaced.

[Paul Bruening]

5 1/4" floppies.

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/3613...oppy_Disks.html

 

Let's see: 1.5 TB / 1.44 MB = 1,041,667 floppies X $0.395 per floppy = $411,458.46

 

...a bargain!

[Paul Bruening]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/3613...oppy_Disks.html

 

Let's see: 1.5 TB / 1.44 MB = 1,041,667 floppies X $0.395 per floppy = $411,458.46

 

...a bargain!

 

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1671...ormal_Bias.html

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette

 

1.5 TB / 200 KB = 7,500,000 cassettes X $0.69 = $5,175,000.

 

So, to match the total storage capacity of my current system with datasette storage would cost $74,520,000 in tapes.

 

Does that mean if I patch my VIC 20 into my network seventy four million bucks will spontaneously appear in the room?

[Jamie Metzger]

LTO BABY

[ken koller]

Thank you all for your help.

 

I can remember when SATAs went down to 52 cents per gig. I was delighted. Now, you can get them for 8.6 cents per gig. I can stuff 9 TB onto my 6 port MOBOs. My 5 card MOBOS can cram up 30 TB per computer. My system, as is, could run 216 TB for under $20,000 in drive costs. The biggest bottleneck to my render farm is the gigabit LAN that links them.

 

I dont have nor need 216 TB of information, yet, but can you tell me a little more about your setup that you have?

[Neil B Sadwelkar]

I took a quick tour of their website and found no pricing information. They also seem like a relatively new company, which makes me skeptical, not of LTO4 drives, but of this company. I have heard stories of someone using a certain brand of tape drive, only to have that company go under and retrieving their data at a later date to be very difficult.

 

Does anyone here have experience with this company, or have used their products before?

 

As a side not, we are using strictly Macs will this be an issue?

 

Stay away from that LaCie. LaCie are terrible when things go bust. And these drives perform only average.

 

Get an LTO-4 drive from Quantum or HP. Get a FC card from ATTO. And get BRU software for Mac. This works and will backup everything you currently need to LTO for long term safe-keeping.

 

If you can't afford all this, find a post house in your region that has LTOs. Buy one or two 1-2 TB drives as 'transport drives'. Copy your data to these drives and take it to this place and have them write to LTO for you. I could offer you this service as well, but I'm in faraway India so shipping will be too costly for you.

 

For more 'online' kind of storage that's safe as well as gives you access to your material, get XRAID from Active Storage. This is a storage company made by ex-Apple employees who made the XRAID for Apple while they were there. You'll get 16Tb for $ 10,000. But very safe storage. I have Apple XRAIDs for the past 5 years and haven't lost any data in them.

 

ProMax also make great and safe storage.

 

By the way what is the total size (in TB) of your data?

[Paul Bruening]

...but can you tell me a little more about your setup that you have?

 

I've got a boiler room style editing facility. And when I say facility, I mean, they are in my house's rec room. I've got 8 dual core work stations with 2- 21", 2K CRTs per station. I've got them G-LAN'd together to move files and grind them as a render farm on the off hours. The workstation assignments are basically: 3 stations for sound (dialog, music and SFX), four for picture (Maya, Adobe AE, Adobe Premiere, and a scan/record station) and 1 for administration (it will probably get turned into a CGI station when I can get out of broke).

 

I went broke from a heart attack about a year and a half ago and all my remaining capital disappeared (I am, needless to say, in favor of UHC). So, currently, I am a guy with chest pain who owns 8 large paper weights. Though, I am always hopeful that someone will need some cheap editing and rent my joint. With the economy gone bust and investments dried up, I am content with just sitting on it and waiting for better times.

 

That's probably more info than you needed.