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Safe Backup of Red 4k Files?

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lot49

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I'm a director new to the Red. I've shot a feature on the Red One MX and just been informed that my editor never backed up our several TB of 4k files. We've only got a single copy!

Now, people are telling me that I have to take the drives to a professional w/ the proper software and redundant power supplies to do a "safe" backup, to the tune of several thousand dollars.

I'm being told that there's no safe way for us to do such a backup ourselves. Can anyone with experience weigh in on this?

BTW - we're in the LA area if anyone can point us to a place they've used before.

Thanks!
 
Go buy a firewire 800 or esata drive larger then you need and copy the files onto it. The end.
 
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Rob Gardner said:
Go buy a firewire 800 or esata drive larger then you need and copy the files onto it. The end.
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No concerns about a power interruption during such a transfer? (People are telling me this would spell disaster.)
 
Assuming you have the files on standalone HDDs, my way would be to use an eSATA docking station, a UPS battery backup for computer and docking station if power loss is a concern, pull individual batches of files off onto a large :D internal drive on your computer, (do the small batches of files if you fear a power outage that would last longer than the battery backup time of your UPS), then when the drive is safely copied to your computer, put a fresh HDD into the docking station and reverse transfer the files onto the blank HDD for your copy. Delete files from your computer :D drive and repeat until all drives are safely backed up.

This will be time consuming and probably require someone to monitor the process, but should be an inexpensive and safe way to get the job done. But if the expense is not a problem, let someone do it for you who does this as a business.

ADDITIONAL: If you use 2 TB Low Power drives, you can generally purchase them over the Internet for about 50 cents per GB. A UPS battery backup should run in the neighborhood of $100 if you only need short time allotments... i.e., from copying a few files at a time. An eSATA docking station should run no more than 50 bucks or so. If you want to play the odds, how often does the power fail in your area? I would probably risk transferring the whole disk at a time, but then, I haven't just busted may ass on the movie as you probably have.

Also, this is not taking into account what your computer setup is. Do you have an eSATA port out? Do you have a second large drive on the computer? Lots to consider.
 
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lot49,

was just about to go to sleep when something popped into my mind regarding my earlier post.

Don't know how you offloaded your data originally, so I just want to make you aware of something that happened to me once. I offloaded some mini DV data onto a USB external drive, then at a later date tried to retrieve it on the same computer by hooking up the dual interface external drive via the eSATA card on my laptop (same computer). If memory serves, I was unable to access or even read the USB offloaded data via the eSATA port, nor was I able to retrieve or view it via USB after that eSATA attempt. Don't know if this is unusual or just specific to my setup, but I would advise transferring your data back to an internal HDD using the same interface it was originally offloaded.

As I said, that may not be necessary but just wanted to make you aware of my own previous experience.
 
No worries at all, just copy as you would any data, no special setup is required, no UPS required, but not a bad idea.

We always back up to two hard drives before the edit and then from the SAN to two LTO tapes. The redundant hard drives are reused and the LTO tapes archived.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
I just copy to drive as mentioned on the above posts. Power failure shouldn't do anything since its a copy command not move.

I guess, it would be possible to minimise the risk even further with UPS etc, but I would think it might be a bit overboard.

Cheers,
 
Power can be a bit dodgy where I live, so I always put all my computers and drives on a UPS. They're very affordable and very good - it seems the prudent thing to do.

Graeme
 
Graeme Nattress said:
Power can be a bit dodgy where I live, so I always put all my computers and drives on a UPS. They're very affordable and very good - it seems the prudent thing to do.

Graeme
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Power can always go out, and when having tone of equipment connected, and working on sensitive material is always a good policy to have UPS to back up your electronics, and in fact I make a point to recommend it to any one using any sensitive electronics regardless of concerns for files transfers, it just sucks to have the computer shot off on you when you are in the middle of any work, and also it safes the Electronics form getting damaged, so always use a good quality UPS!!

As far as backing up anything important.. ALWAYS COPY THAT TWO TIMES!!
 
You may want to consider LTO services too. That's one of the few ways of truly archiving the footage. Pricey, maybe. You can always find deals. Lot of personal owners out their with their own LTO setups that might cut you a deal. Until then get them on redundant drives asap! But bare in mind, the laws of a hard drive are, not if they will fail, is simply when. The recommendation for a RAID setup is bad, even a drobo can be cost effective and help you keep redundancy if you don't want to go to LTO. But whichever you decide, THE most important thing right now is go buy a couple hard drives as quickly as you can and start backups.

and flog the editor.
 
Would you guys say it safe to copy (back-up) from a FW800 card reader or Red Drive to two harddrives on two separate usb slots at once?
 
Urball said:
Would you guys say it safe to copy (back-up) from a FW800 card reader or Red Drive to two harddrives on two separate usb slots at once?
Click to expand...

Safe yes, fast no!
 
Leo Ticheli said:
No worries at all, just copy as you would any data, no special setup is required, no UPS required, but not a bad idea.

We always back up to two hard drives before the edit and then from the SAN to two LTO tapes. The redundant hard drives are reused and the LTO tapes archived.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
Click to expand...

That's what we do as well. HDs are not a great storage media for long term storage.

Hans
 
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