Desktop RAID Solution

[J.D. Frey]

I've been running a 9TB RAID (the old apple promise version) since 2007. Had my first drive failure this year. It was a hassle, but didn't lose any data. However my backup is not "live" so I was basically not working for several days while the drive re-built itself followed by a bunch of diagnostics. I've since developed a new solution to the problem of working during a failure/repair cycle.

1. The current 9TB raid is now my working drive- it is basically I/O and temporary storage setup as RAID 50
2. I have a second RAID that is a 12TB thunderbolt device that is used to mirror the 9TB working drive
3. The Thunderbolt is managed by a Mac Mini using XSan and connected to the fiber channel raid via a FC slikworm switch
4. The thunderbolt RAID is backed up to LTO

I still edit with the Mac pro and the mini backs up my projects. As I finish a project it gets archived to LTO and the client gets a copy on portable hard drive. Now if I have a failure I still have live data that allows me to continue working. Instead of rebuilding the drive I can wipe the set and restore the project from backup. Alternatively if something happens with the backup, I'm still protected by the RAID 50 config which will allow me to rebuild from parity.

Also- don't go DROBO. Probably OK for a stills workflow, but not motion.

[TonySegreto]

JD, I'm not that familar with your lingo, but is your working 9TB raid an internal array? Then you manually backup that raid to an external thunderbolt device? What is that enclosure? Thanks man!

-Tony

[Paul S.]

Synology DS1812+ is worth checking out. User friendly, fast, and expandable. Not so cheap though.

[Nathaniel Kramer]

We had a drobo that we used fr archiving of raw footage. we delete transcodes a few moths after a project, but we keep the raw and a copy of the fcp project file for xml later if we need to reconsruct or just go back to our selects... But as of last week we have ditched the drobo..Instead we now use a Newer Technology Voyager Q Quad-Interface Drive Dock for 2.5" & 3.5" SATA Drives, and every job goes on its own 3.5inch drive. and a backup goes on another 3.5 inch drive.Most of our projects are in the 1.5 TB size range. I not sure if this method is the most economical but it already is proving to be the easiest system.. I no longer will have shelves loaded with gtechs. It's very reminiscent of how we used tape.. our workflow is the following.. On location we copy to a glyph raid .. we then copy raw to a 3.5 drive, and transcode to our gtech gspeed 8TB that is permanently attached to our mac pro.. SInce we work mainly with the transcodes as proxy, the gspeed will at any time have probably the last 6 or 6 projects and as space is needed for transcodes, we will delete an existing to make room..On each 3.5 drive we store the raw the fcp project file and our final export wether it be 422, 4444 etc. Back to the drobo- all 2 tb drives have been removed and wiped, and lots of old redundant files have been deleted.. Drobo is great for music files, documents, photos and yes even video archives, but its not up to the task of video editing..

[Nick Pasquariello]

Synology DS1812+ is worth checking out. User friendly, fast, and expandable. Not so cheap though.

Less than the Drobo shell, though, and would need to eat just as many drives: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...812_8_BAY.html

It's between that, and the OWC right now.

We had a drobo that we used fr archiving of raw footage. we delete transcodes a few moths after a project, but we keep the raw and a copy of the fcp project file for xml later if we need to reconsruct or just go back to our selects... But as of last week we have ditched the drobo..Instead we now use a Newer Technology Voyager Q Quad-Interface Drive Dock for 2.5" & 3.5" SATA Drives, and every job goes on its own 3.5inch drive. and a backup goes on another 3.5 inch drive.Most of our projects are in the 1.5 TB size range. I not sure if this method is the most economical but it already is proving to be the easiest system.. I no longer will have shelves loaded with gtechs. It's very reminiscent of how we used tape.. our workflow is the following.. On location we copy to a glyph raid .. we then copy raw to a 3.5 drive, and transcode to our gtech gspeed 8TB that is permanently attached to our mac pro.. SInce we work mainly with the transcodes as proxy, the gspeed will at any time have probably the last 6 or 6 projects and as space is needed for transcodes, we will delete an existing to make room..On each 3.5 drive we store the raw the fcp project file and our final export wether it be 422, 4444 etc. Back to the drobo- all 2 tb drives have been removed and wiped, and lots of old redundant files have been deleted.. Drobo is great for music files, documents, photos and yes even video archives, but its not up to the task of video editing..

Hmm, specifically the opposite of what my colleague is looking for (she has a ton of drives now, and wants to have just one volume instead). However, definitely in the running for me when I look for a storage method in a few months.

I thought of proposing something similar at my day-job, where I DIT some shoots: instead of treking GRaids back and forth (as we now have a shelf filled with well oever 100 of them), why not use rack-mountable dual (or quad) hard-drive dock, and just send back and forth enterprise grade drives between the set and our post house? Now we're looking at all-in-one turn-key cart solutions, so it's probably a moot point now. For shame.