Video Backup Woes
msimpson
4 Mar 2009 18:16
Well I am at a delema od what to do with my 5D vids for backups.
The FX1000, and HV30 miniDV was a no brainer as I have a tape that I can tuck away.
With the 5D I have Tons of small clips on the hard drive. I am thinking of deviding the directories up into 9Gb source directories. Then I can backup to Dual Layer DVD. I could even drop down to 4GB and put them on dir cheap DVD.
My machines all have blueray burners but the meda is just too darn expensive. Would I be better off getting some sort of external tape unit and using that?
Another option is to purchase some 1.5TB drives. ($110) and backup a new direcory to this drive every 25GB or so. I could keep it off line so its live would be 10 years+. This is probably the lowest cost per byte of back up.
Any recomendations?
The FX1000, and HV30 miniDV was a no brainer as I have a tape that I can tuck away.
With the 5D I have Tons of small clips on the hard drive. I am thinking of deviding the directories up into 9Gb source directories. Then I can backup to Dual Layer DVD. I could even drop down to 4GB and put them on dir cheap DVD.
My machines all have blueray burners but the meda is just too darn expensive. Would I be better off getting some sort of external tape unit and using that?
Another option is to purchase some 1.5TB drives. ($110) and backup a new direcory to this drive every 25GB or so. I could keep it off line so its live would be 10 years+. This is probably the lowest cost per byte of back up.
Any recomendations?
vadervideo
4 Mar 2009 18:59
What about writing out to tape - to one of you miniDv cams?
RekindlePhoto
4 Mar 2009 19:48
Many software video programs will allow saving back to tape, that might be the answer, back to miniDV. Where can you get 1.5TB HS and what brand for $100?
Normstock
4 Mar 2009 20:38
How about http://www.drobo.com/products/index.php
msimpson
5 Mar 2009 05:23
Drobo looks like hard drive storage so a raw drive in a BlacX stand would be cheaper and easyer to swap drives. Plus BlacX can do USB2.0 and ESATA. ESATA is much faster than Firewire 800 and USB2.
going to mini DV you loose resolution. I wont even write back to minidv unless its unaltered miniDV footage. MiniDV *HD) is only 1440x1080.
I think I am going to go with the Hard Drive. I talked myself into it as rereading my post.
I can get the 1.5TB drives for aout $110 from my local Microcenter. They are now $129. Its a Barracudea 1.5TB 7200 RPM Serial ATA-300.
going to mini DV you loose resolution. I wont even write back to minidv unless its unaltered miniDV footage. MiniDV *HD) is only 1440x1080.
I think I am going to go with the Hard Drive. I talked myself into it as rereading my post.
I can get the 1.5TB drives for aout $110 from my local Microcenter. They are now $129. Its a Barracudea 1.5TB 7200 RPM Serial ATA-300.
marcus
5 Mar 2009 12:25
I would not trust those 1.5G drives to have a super long life. I would definitely RAID5 them as write speed is not important here.
Marcus intend to rant about Raid5 now, for those who don't know what it is and wants to be confused:
XOR
0 xor 0 = 0
0 xor 1 = 1
1 xor 0 = 1
1 xor 1 = 0
You have N data drives (N > 1 otherwise RAID1 makes more sense) and one parity drive.
When you write a block to a drive, the RAID controller XOR the data for this block on all drives (if you write block 124 then you XOR all the data drives's block 124 and then the raid controller puts the result on the parity drive.
If a drive goes down, the block you want to read can be reconstructed by xor:ing all the working data drives's blocks and the parity drive's block.
Advantage of RAID5 is that you loose very little disk compared to a RAID1 (full mirror) solution.
Cons: Writing is slower.
Varieties:
Depending on how it's done, reading can be faster. Block N and block N+1 for a logical drive could be spread over two drives so drive 2 could prepare the head and possibly start read block N+1 at the same time as block N is read.
More than one parity drive. The advantage of this instead of having two RAID5 setups is that two drives can die in the one setup.
Parity data could be spread out over the disks so not one parity disk will be the bottleneck.
Marcus
Marcus intend to rant about Raid5 now, for those who don't know what it is and wants to be confused:
XOR
0 xor 0 = 0
0 xor 1 = 1
1 xor 0 = 1
1 xor 1 = 0
You have N data drives (N > 1 otherwise RAID1 makes more sense) and one parity drive.
When you write a block to a drive, the RAID controller XOR the data for this block on all drives (if you write block 124 then you XOR all the data drives's block 124 and then the raid controller puts the result on the parity drive.
If a drive goes down, the block you want to read can be reconstructed by xor:ing all the working data drives's blocks and the parity drive's block.
Advantage of RAID5 is that you loose very little disk compared to a RAID1 (full mirror) solution.
Cons: Writing is slower.
Varieties:
Depending on how it's done, reading can be faster. Block N and block N+1 for a logical drive could be spread over two drives so drive 2 could prepare the head and possibly start read block N+1 at the same time as block N is read.
More than one parity drive. The advantage of this instead of having two RAID5 setups is that two drives can die in the one setup.
Parity data could be spread out over the disks so not one parity disk will be the bottleneck.
Marcus
vadervideo
5 Mar 2009 16:46
Marcus, think about what you write in regards to speed. If it is a hardware based controlled raid5 - the speed issue becomes a moot point. Heck, stuff is running so fast in today's technology that even it it ran at half speed of everything else, it would still be fantastic. It wasn't that long ago that we were dealing with P4's and IDE raids.. and we all thought that was blazing fast! :) A few milliseconds or even seconds here or there ain't gonna kill no one. ! ;)
msimpson
5 Mar 2009 21:21
Well I think they will be ok since they are one time stoarge then placed on a shelf. I really want to store them on Blueray disks but the cheapest write once disk you can get is $7. That holds 25Mb.
Fyi the main drives on my system are already Raid5. I just want some thing thats off the computer to keep them on. I wont even bother with the stuff I have on tape. But all my compositions and non tape source. I just want a second storage medium untill blueray medai drops in price then I will move to that.
In retrospect though a raid 5 external with a group of 1.5TB drives would probably last me a long time. Hell I dont know what to do now. I may go back to dumping the darn things to data DVD disks.
Fyi the main drives on my system are already Raid5. I just want some thing thats off the computer to keep them on. I wont even bother with the stuff I have on tape. But all my compositions and non tape source. I just want a second storage medium untill blueray medai drops in price then I will move to that.
In retrospect though a raid 5 external with a group of 1.5TB drives would probably last me a long time. Hell I dont know what to do now. I may go back to dumping the darn things to data DVD disks.