Chenarch Posted July 14, 2010 Report Share Posted July 14, 2010 I'd like to spend a little time this summer organizing backup HDs which contain resources like EIAS models, materials, as well as .IMG footage and stuff that then might be used in AE or FCP. So far, I've never had a Lacie HD that didn't have FW connection. But I see that they do have some models that use only USB 2.0. ?? Is this adviseable to rely on USB 2.0 for big and fast transfers, or do you think a bu HD should also have FW? My Mac Pros are connected by FW800 for render farming. Thanks! Richard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardJoly Posted July 15, 2010 Report Share Posted July 15, 2010 Richard, I'm old school... Raid is the way to go for video and secured big and fast transfers. Firewire 800 is good, SATA is better. At work, I use a LaCie Biggest FW800. At home, my Macbook is connected to a USB2 Western Digital Drive that I use to edit family video and render animations without problem. It would scare me to use it with HD Video Footage for a 15-20 minutes production... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juanxer Posted July 15, 2010 Report Share Posted July 15, 2010 If you anticipate using many hard drives, an alternative to external HD cases is a drive dock. There are several brands and models, some of those with FW interfaces. Myself, I got a double bay drive dock to be able to copy material between them (I bought an USB3 model for futureproofing: faster than SATA. Here I am waiting for silly Apple to add OS support for the dozen or so USB3 interface cards floating around in PC land). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickaelBehn Posted July 18, 2010 Report Share Posted July 18, 2010 I can say the Western Digital My Studio II Drives are great and priced right. We use them for HD edits on a daily basis for about 3 year now and out of 19 drives we haven't had one fail on us yet. We connect via FW800 for Editing but they are really quick even in USB, i just wouldn't use USB for any live projects, just for backup. We tend to run 2 of the drives in parallel. Just like a raid but it allows us to send our mirror drive to be sent out to another building for protection and 1 for live production. I believe Western digital also make all in one Raided mirror drives which is great for archiving. In the long term I haven't found a proper solution. HD shelf life is about 5 years to what I hear. Anything after 5 years and you taking changes with corrupt data and failing mechanics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chenarch Posted July 21, 2010 Author Report Share Posted July 21, 2010 Thanks Everybody!! These thoughts and ideas are very helpful, and sort of confirmed some of my suspicions.... Cheers, Richard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeordieJames Posted July 22, 2010 Report Share Posted July 22, 2010 For what its worth we're just trying to work out the whole 'best case backup system' ourselves. What we're thinking of is a 2TB eSATA 3 7200 disk running off an old G4 as a server with an external caddy holding 2 2TB eSATA 5400 disks. The 7200 spin disk will be used as the 'online' storage for myself and my business partner with the other two disks providing the back up and archive (swapping them out when they are full) Does that sound sensible ? James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MickaelBehn Posted July 22, 2010 Report Share Posted July 22, 2010 For backup you don't need speed but reliability. you should be fine using an external drive with fw800 or 400 using time machine. I tend to swap out my time machine backups for offsite every month. so i have a rotation of 3 drives on time machine. the third drive becomes my deep storage unit that i leave off site and never touch. although here is an article that should scare most of us on HD usage shelf life. http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_hard_disk_warning.html also i hear the drobos are awesome for storage. For what its worth we're just trying to work out the whole 'best case backup system' ourselves. What we're thinking of is a 2TB eSATA 3 7200 disk running off an old G4 as a server with an external caddy holding 2 2TB eSATA 5400 disks. The 7200 spin disk will be used as the 'online' storage for myself and my business partner with the other two disks providing the back up and archive (swapping them out when they are full) Does that sound sensible ? James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.