G-Tech Hard Drive Question

[Dillon Brown]

Hello everyone,

Before I begin my RED shoot on Tuesday I just wanted to ask a really important question to people who know more than I do about external hard drives. From my research I have found that G-Tech seems to be the brand that is the most reliable, or better than Western Digital, Lacie, etc.

So with that said, for my shoot I am planning to purchase two G-Tech drives - one for backup that is never touched and one for editing. I am looking at the G-Drive Q 500GB Quad Interface External

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop...0)+7,200RPM-External+Hard+Drives&dpno=7003386


500 GB is more than enough for my project and this drive will be used for editing.


I am also going to purchase the G-Drive mini 250GB External

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop...0)+7,200RPM-External+Hard+Drives&dpno=7003386

This drive will be used for backup purposes that will never be touched in post-production, and 250 GB is enough space. This will not be used for editing but just backup.

I am just wondering if these drives are good and reliable, or if you would suggest another brand. Also, is it okay to have all my footage on two drives that are the same brand. With G-Tech I have had very good experience, and I think these drives would suit very well for this project. Also, I am a bit ignorant about RAID and are these drives good for the way in which data is managed on the drives themselves?

Also, on set I will have both drives and make identical copies of the RED footage on each one when I am offloading footage. Then I will store them both in physically separate locations. I will also be backing up all my footage onto HDCAM tapes just in case, even though it is only 1080p and way less than the raw RED footage.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[Chris Gearhart]

Many use the G-Tech drives--I have and have had great experiences. I would make two backups (each from the RED media directly) onto two drives that are never touched, however (three copies total). Much better than an HDCAM backup, IMO.

 

[Michael Mayda]

I have four G-Tech drives, they have all operated flawlessly. You might consider the G-Safe for longer-term backup. It is a mirrored RAID, up to 1.5TB capacity. I use one for short-term accessible backup and LTO4 tape for long-term backup and archiving. The G-Safe is not fast enough to edit from but is great for redundant backup. The G-Raid drive set is quick enough for most editing needs. Not sure about the Q. FWIW, I use a Caldigit RAID for editing Red footage. Oh, and I use a G-Mini to shuttle HD files to/from edit an suite in SF. It's been back and forth a couple dozen times and I've never lost a frame.

In short, I don't think you would regret purchasing any G-Tech product.

 

[joe hedge]

I make the producers buy the Avastor eSata drives we get from Melrose Mac, have put about 15 terabytes of raw camera files, backups and transcodes on them for a couple different shoots and they have performed flawlessly so far. If the G-Tech drives you mention are actually G-Raids, I don't know if 2 drives striped together with no RAID redundancy, which is what the cheaper G-Raids are, is such a good idea for backup purposes. If one drive goes down you lose everything on both drives because the data is distributed between the two. Non-redundant Raid set-ups are for data access speed, not security. I would only use Raid for backing up in mirrored config if at all.