Backup suggestions? What do people use?

I have backup in place for documents, preferences and so forth, even have the family photos backed up.

But what do people do when it comes to backing up projects and footage? Do most folks do that? I may have up to a terrabyte or two of footage on my system at any time, projects I'm working on, stuff I've captured to work on later.

Does anyone actually back up all their footage in use? If so, how? And how much do they spend?

Thanks!

i do one of two things:

1. use removable esata raids and simply pop out the modules and pop in new ones for the next project

2. just work to external fw800/esata raid drives and shelve them when im done.

been doing this kind of thing for years and have had no problems.

Thanks. What kind of esata raid would you recommend? What's the pricing like here? I buy the raid setup, then the drives to swap out? Links to recommended systems? Thanks.

We NEED to have a "Backup Suggestions" thread in the FAQ. There are just way too many repeat inquiries.

Get a hold of a recent DV Magazine. There is an informative article called "The 4 Principals of Storage" or something like that...talks about storage & backing up.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

there are all kinds. and as joe very accurately says - we cover this all the time!

there are some folks who swear by nothing less than tape (AIT/DLT/etc...) then there are those of us who just shelve our drives - its a long and sometimes heated conversation

i use primarily promax, owc, caldigit, gtech, and glyph brand products (in various fw400, fw800 and estata configs) and not one has ever given me even a hiccup.

id suggest the easiest thing to do is get you a few of these:
[eshop.macsales.com]

work on one until it fills up then shelve it. if you need to revisit it, you can always daisychan them via fw800

IMHO, RAIDs should not be used for backing up...it's for high performance use. A RAID Array writes to all the drives at the same time. If you "pop one out" for archive, you have to pop them ALL out (keeping them together) & replace them with fresh ones.

I personally do not believe in using hard drives as shelf storage / archiving. I use Dual Layer DVD's and soon - BlueRay. They are safely tucked in a protective soft book so as not to get scratched & stored in a cabinet. This works for me because my work is mainly short form audio / video & grafix /animation files.

Remember this:

It's not "IF" a drive fails...it's "WHEN".

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

see ; )

the way i've worked on the longform projects i've done is to have a duplicate of the media on a second set of drives.
this also allows an assistant to do work on the project while i'm cutting away.

a RAID solution isn't just about speed.
you can also configure the multiple drives to give you redundancy as well.
this is an alternative to have a completely separate "backup" copy.
if one of the drives in the RAID fails, you replace that one drive, and the data is recreated from the other drives.

there's quite a few RAID solutions out there in the 1-2 TB range that could be just what you're after:
[www.caldigit.com]
[www.dulcesystems.com]

while that could cover your media,
have another backup strategy for your project files wont hurt.
if you keep all your project files in one place, then it would be easy to back them up to a small external drive, say.
i've use LaCies free "Silverkeeper" for this in the past, but some of the backed up files got corrupted
Super Duper is around $30 and may be better
[www.lacie.com]
[www.shirt-pocket.com]


all the best,
nick

if you manage your files well (or might i be so bold as to say "properly", back up can simply be a matter of dragging a folder and going to lunch

a little too bold, perhaps, wayne

what's proper for one person isn't necessarily proper for another.

sounds like you're talking about an "end of project" back up,
if it was a daily, backup, copying the whole folder is overkill, and possibly far too long a process to be viable.
(unless you have a really long lunch everyday, and if you do, good luck to you!)

the backup apps i mentioned will analyse what's changed in specified folders, and only copy over NEW or UPDATED files.


nick

ha! - maybe...

but i'll put my management practice to the test ANY day ; )

except for that one day earlier this year where i zeroed my work drive by accident - OUCH!

As drives get bigger and the amount of media to be backed up grows, the challenge becomes how to back up economically from both a money perspective and a TIME perspective.

We're regularly running nearly 50 terrabytes of data that's changing on a daily basis. I have yet to find a back up solution that is BOTH cost effective and time efficient. It's like that old saying, "Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two". I've explored "disc to disc", "Disc to tape" and disc to DVD data, and none really hit the sweet spot.

Throw into the mix the Panasonic P2 format and now you're really in a pickle!

Suffice it to say that this is a topic that is going to get alot of attention moving forward.

For Jeff, the original poster, I'd suggest a big honkin' firewire drive. 750 gigs are now less then $350 bucks.

mark