I work at a small post-production house. I use about 1000GB of space on external harddrives for storing video projects. The external harddrives keep going down, so I was wondering what the best way to backup the projects would be. (Raid, mirroring drives...???)
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Best way to backup video
- Thread starter megantaylor
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I would tell you that the safest way is optical media. But thats a whole lot of DVDs to burn.
If transfer performance isn't a huge issue, just mirroring the drives should be fine. If you want to, you can use the type of RAID that stripes and mirrors the drivesfor better performance. (I always get the numbers mixed up as to which is which.)
A better question is why do your hard drives keep "going down." Its bound to happen once in a while, but having consistent hard drive failures is really strange.
If transfer performance isn't a huge issue, just mirroring the drives should be fine. If you want to, you can use the type of RAID that stripes and mirrors the drivesfor better performance. (I always get the numbers mixed up as to which is which.)
A better question is why do your hard drives keep "going down." Its bound to happen once in a while, but having consistent hard drive failures is really strange.
more help thanks
What is optical media?
I am very new to RAID. Where do I start?
We move our drives back and forth between computers often, so I am guessing that might have something to do with it. Any suggestions.
What is optical media?
I am very new to RAID. Where do I start?
We move our drives back and forth between computers often, so I am guessing that might have something to do with it. Any suggestions.
If you need portability, that adds another problem... but first your questions...
Optical media is DVDs or CDs, called so because they are read by a laser (hence optical). After these media are burnt, there is no chance of data being corrupted unless the disc is physically damaged (in a fire or something like that) since they are not magnetic like hard drives.
Dealing with RAID is not difficult, Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities will allow you to set up RAID configurations. Open the Help file after opening Disk Utility and it will give you a lot of details.
Here's an example:
Also, a Google search for RAID should give you a ton of results helping you understand the basics.
It sounds to me like your best option will probably be to invest in a few external hard drives since you need portability and a lot of disk space.
LaCie makes external hard drives that hold 1 terabyte (1000 GBs) or 1.5 TB. These drives have FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 interfaces, so you could use them with pretty much any Mac.
Here's the 1TB version. Its not cheap, but its cheaper than buying several smaller hard drives.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail~dpno~356797.asp
Keep in mind that mirroring will require twice the disk space, so you'd need two of these morrored to have 1TB of storage. Hope this helps.
Optical media is DVDs or CDs, called so because they are read by a laser (hence optical). After these media are burnt, there is no chance of data being corrupted unless the disc is physically damaged (in a fire or something like that) since they are not magnetic like hard drives.
Dealing with RAID is not difficult, Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities will allow you to set up RAID configurations. Open the Help file after opening Disk Utility and it will give you a lot of details.
Here's an example:
Also, a Google search for RAID should give you a ton of results helping you understand the basics.
It sounds to me like your best option will probably be to invest in a few external hard drives since you need portability and a lot of disk space.
LaCie makes external hard drives that hold 1 terabyte (1000 GBs) or 1.5 TB. These drives have FW800, FW400, and USB 2.0 interfaces, so you could use them with pretty much any Mac.
Here's the 1TB version. Its not cheap, but its cheaper than buying several smaller hard drives.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail~dpno~356797.asp
Keep in mind that mirroring will require twice the disk space, so you'd need two of these morrored to have 1TB of storage. Hope this helps.