affordable storage/edit long-term solution for indies ?

[Denis Buhot]

I've been reading across post-production related threads for a while... to my growing confusion... I'm a pure indie, engaged in single long-term projects (5 years in average). I need a basic but reliable mac solution for storing (circa 30 hours of 4k material) grading and editing (final product : 1h maximum), rendering and exporting in different formats, from high-end to SD.

Storage solution should thus allow compatibility and access for final conformation on external professional workstations... 5 years from now.

I had thought an up-to-date mac with about 8 To external drives would do... but I read about over 30.000 USD solutions, which are far beyond my reach. My maximum budget would be around 7.500 USD ! I must have missed something... Can anyone tell me ? Any solution at hand within this cost ?
To me, high speed is not an issue. Thanks for any answer !

[Michael Thornton]

I can get you quality high speed raid system for less.

8TB for 6K USD.

PM me.

Tek

[amrrahmy]

30 hours of 4k material

how did u get that u needed 8TB

a good and efficient way to do it would be to calculate how much do u shoot and how fast, every storage or raid or san system is upgradable. so u don't have to buy the whole system at once, u can add hard-drives while u progress in project.
if u dont mind the storage speed, go with 1TB sata hard-drives, with ur storage system, but get a storage solution compatible with raid and san for future upgrades.

nothing u can buy today, would mean anything 5 years from now.
try to evolve with ur system.

[Denis Buhot]

how did u get that u needed 8TB

Thanks for answering... 8To ? well, simple calculation: red drive is 320GB, providing circa 3h of recording in 4K...Assuming that the same disk capacity is used when downloading, that adds up to around 3 To for 30h, or so I guess... Raid 5 configuration for safety will double that to 6To, while 2 extra To for storing edited material and saving some capacity to avoid excessive fragmentation will make the whole set-up 8To... I might be wrong, please don't hesitate to correct me. You mean any material I might store on any current raid system will not be retrievable 6 years from now ? What's the solution for long term storage, then .. LTO back up? anything else ?

[JoakimZiegler]

LTO-4 is a good solution, and is getting cheap. It seems LTO-4 SAS drives are less than 3000 dollars now, and the tapes are down to less than 100 dollars for 800 GB (quite a bit less than that if you buy in quantity). Get a RAID for working on projects, and and LTO-4 drive for storing stuff after you're done.

LTO tapes are designed to have a 30 year life span, if stored properly, and both LTO-5 and LTO-6 drives will be able to read your LTO-4 tapes. As a reference, LTO-2 drives are still available, and are cheap (800 dollars), even though LTO-2 is from 2003. They will probably be available for a long time still. The only reason you can't still get LTO-1 drives is that LTO-2 drives can both read and write LTO-1 tapes.

[Harva Raj]

caldigit HD pro? $3999 for 2TB and can add up to 8TB. "Pay-as-You-Grow" Scalability kind of idea. Put on RAID 6 maybe?

[chocblu]

I think what the previous poster meant by "nothing you buy now" is that in a years time the speeds will have got faster, storage will get bigger and cheaper.

Ive got some HDD that i bought 5 to 10 years ago, I would still be able to read them if they were working. The point is to get a solution that will last your storage needs for this year and the next...and then plan to upgrade your storage a few years after that, If you getting heavy use out of your drives you might want to do something like that anyway, just to make REALLY sure you dont get drive failure. Most drives have a 5 year warranty these days....but that doesnt save your data :)

[Nir Shelter]

If your planning a long term project then as many have mentioned already plan a long term up grade of your system. I wouldn't trust the LTO tapes for more than 20 years a friend of mine has been backing up to tape for the last 20 years and re records his archive every 10. I wouldn't trust HDD for more than 3 years as I'm sure like many others here I have experienced the OH SO BITTER TASTE of corruption and drive failure. Which ever way you choose, Raid or LTO, you will still be needing to keep backing it up at some point. Ideally combined with a performance/security upgrade.

A smart choice could be leasing, you end up paying over time as much as you would to purchase the system out rite and then maintain and or upgrade it. A good plan will mean that you can upgrade at the end of a 2 year term at no extra cost.

[Ed Watkins]

I'm planning on a similar shoot with a similar storage budget.
30hrs of 4K, $8-9k.

I will probably buy an LT0-3 or LTO 3A, and 4Tb Raid. I dislike the idea of having a backup sitting on a RAID system, when that space could equally be used for more project work.

I plan to archive the whole project to LTO at the start and and have just one copy on my Raid. Then archive project files/rendered media etc. daily to the LTO.

No media is forever, and copying over data every 10 years is not an issue. Also, bear in mind that in 10 years time our current r3d files may well not be readable by whatever operating/edit system exists, so chances are you'll have to transcode the footage before then anyway.

[Harva Raj]

which LTO-3 unit is affordable and best in the market now? i heard some unit are very buggy. is it true?