Data management advice

[Scott Talbot]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently waiting to get the new Mac Pro when that comes out but I want to have all my data organized when it comes. So I'm looking to set up some sort of system where I say "okay this is my back up, this is my photography, this is my footage, this is my current project... etc".

Currently I have the following.

500gb passport for photos and easy transfer (USB 3)
4tb Lacie porche designed thing (USB 3)
2tb WD Black internal that I took from my pc that I'm not using.

My needs are as follows:

1) Right now I'm early in my "red life" so I don't have a ton of footage but I want room to grow. Right now I have no room.

2) I'm in school and work their 50% of the time so it would be nice to have a drive for my current project that is portable.

3) I would like to have everything backed up

4) And I have a lot of non work data like ripped movies that I only need at home but I would like to add to.

5) This is more of a concern: Right now the 4tb is like my work drive, but that's a lot of data on one drive. For example whether its backed up or not, if that drive goes down... that's a lot of data.


I've looked into RAIDs but everyone says go with a RAID 1. Problem with that is that is essentially just two backups because I'm not going to be taking that to school with me. So it can't be my main drive.


Sorry for the long post but I thought I would get everything out off the bat.

Any advice would be awesome! Thanks!

 

[Jarek Zabczynski]

Well, for editing or as a scratch drive, you really should be looking at something like a RAID5 tower. Storage comes in many flavors. Single drive solutions aren't that great for editing off of, especially RED footage. Look into Thunderbolt towers from Promise or similar. That should point you in the right direction. As far as storage and backup, just about any drive will do, as long as you have AT LEAST two identical copies of everything. Rule of thumb is that if it doesn't exist on at least two places, it doesn't exist at all.

If you really need something portable, I wouldn't go any lower than something like a G-Raid from G-Tech.

You just need to understand that a single drive solution will not meet all your storage needs.

 

[Eric Rothman]

I like Jarek's advice. I would add, since you're going to be out in the world traveling with your data you might consider a 2 volume setup:

-A RAID-5 or 6 as a home base. Home base is going to sit on your desk at home and house all your active projects.

-Your Lacie drive (or a new G-Raid or something else if you decide to replace it for performance) as your little portable roving guy. Little portable roving guy exists purely for portability and is not permanent storage at all.

Your roving guy is gonna see some wear and tear just from moving it around a bunch, which is why you have everything safely stored back at home base. Every day when you get home from school, plug little roving guy in to home base and back up. You might also consider saving your project files to a dropbox folder so if your little roving guy goes bust in transit somewhere, you're still covered.

When home base fills up, look into grabbing one of these toaster guys and some bare drives. Make copies to two bare drives of whatever projects you want to archive and you're good to go. Just make sure to spin up those drives and check on your files every couple months and you should be fine. They won't last forever on the shelf.

 

[Scott Talbot]

My friend suggested taking the 2tb black drive and buying 3 more to create a RAID 5. Where can I get the tower though? Any recommendations for brands?

 

[Marc Wielage]

If you're going to try to make your own RAID5, then I'd suggest buying bare drives and the enclosures from Other World Computing:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

Ideally, the G-Tech drives are really good, but the OWC's are the next best thing. And be sure to buy double as many drives as you think you'll need, building in a backup plan.