Need advice on a storage solution

Peace everyone~

I have a very small production company. It's just me and two business partners and I do all the post.

We have one system:

version 10.4.11
processor dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5
memory 2 GB DDR SDRAM
AJA ProIO LA

Decks:
betacam sp VW-1800
dvcam DSR-80
dvd player

Right I have 5 external hardrives: three 1TB, one 500GB and 1 250GB. We have just been adding on as needed. Well, obviously we are need of a better storage solution as well as backup. Right now I have the TB drives partitioned and I use one half and back it up on the other. Someone please suggest a better storage solution. Thanks!

Peace~
Q

Sure hope those drives are raided.

Q,

Your question is a frequent one, worthy of placement in the FAQ folder. Only problem is, there is NO overall answer for everyone.

It really comes down to money and what kind of performance you need. As you've noted, you seem to be reaching the end of the "daisy chain" firewire methodology. At a certain point, you'll want to migrate to a RAID. The G5 will only support two internal drives (although some folks have squeezed more inside), so you're really looking at an external raid.

Here's a few options to start your searching:

[www.dulcesystems.com]
[www.gmaxstorage.com]
[www.caldigit.com]

Good luck.

Mark

My very best recommendation, if your serious about using Final Cut Pro as a professional, is to absolutely buy the Apple XServeRAID, set it up as RAID5 for mirrored protection and purchase the Apple Protection Plan for the 3 year contract. You will be set for 3 years!

I'm the Technical Manager for TMZ TV and this suggestion is the best solution!!!!! Absolutely!!!!

Robert Moore

"I have the TB drives partitioned and I use one half and back it up on the other."

sorry to say, but this is kind of useless.
if the drive fails, you'll lose both halves.

i work in a small situation, too.

i tend to work on one drive, or set of drives, and have a copy that can be a backup, AND be used by another editor.
it's only just acceptable, as we both have to be very careful about adding any new files, or changing names.

it's a LOT cheaper than a shared system,
but if you're not needing to share, then there are lots of multiple drive raid systems out there.

the basic concept is you have a bunch of drives all in one big box,
they can be "RAIDED" so they appear as one drive to your system, and some of the drives act as backups for the others.
with some set-ups, if one drive fails, you can even replace it while still working.

these articles might help:
[www.lafcpug.org]
[www.lafcpug.org]


nick

There's a pretty good book to pick up on that- "Optimizing your Final Cut Pro System".

RAIDs are pretty good backups. My general advice is to go on a RAID 3 or 5 or a combination of these. You have a dedicated drive striped for parity, which means that if any one of the drives fail, you don't lose information. This is opposed to "mirroring" where all information is written to 2 hard disks- slower and if a hard drive fails before it is written to both disks, you lose information. I believe that's in the FAQ...

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[www.caldigit.com]

Recommended by BlackMagic Design:

[www.blackmagic-design.com]

You simply cannot go wrong with this product.

This product is being used by NBC (Promo Dept) in Burbank for the 15-30 second spots between commercials for upcoming shows, in HD. They have 18 of these.

The HDPro was used to cut in FCP this movie 5-25-77 : [www.moonwatcher.com]
tape to FCP to tape, movie has yet to be released nationwide.

& The Larry King Live show also uses the HDPro product.

Thanks everyone!!!