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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

REDDRIVE offload in the field - practical workflow?

I'm in the same need as many of you -- doing field documentary work and need a portable backup solution. Right now I'm shooting a documentary with the HVX200. I have four 8GB cards and two P2Stores which gets me through the day. Then when I get home at night I transfer everything to two 500GB G-Raids -- copying the data once to each drive for backup. When I get home it all goes on my G-Raid Pro (imported through FCP) and then gets archived onto Dual Layer DVD. This is great in HVX land, but I know I'm going to need more storage when the Red arrives. Here's what I'd like to to:

1. Have two Red-RAM modules and record 2k to those. Anyone know approx. how much recording I'd get out of that?
2. Come home at night and transfer the Red-RAM's to some sort of tape backup that I could plug directly into my MBPro, like LTO or DLT or AIT. Someone mentioned a Sony AIT drive not too long ago that looks like it might work:

http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/subcategory/storage/branded-tape/AIT_Drives/AIT-4

The trick would be connecting this to the MBPro. Does anyone know if there would be an ExpressCard adapter to be able to plug this into the MBPro? Jeff, Mike?

What I like about this solution is that you're backing up to tape, which I trust much more than hard drives, and you already have your final tape backup, which saves another HDD to tape transfer in the process.

Does anyone know if a workflow like this is feasible? Is there a better tape-based/portable solution out there? Curious to hear thoughts.

Peter
 
ElysianChris said:
Found another one: "Ninja 121" - This one is a bit cheaper.
Click to expand...

Hey, that's a pretty cool find, Chris. Expensive, but if it does testing and repair as well as duplicating to two target drives, that might be an alternative for archival in the near term.

EDIT: I saw it (the first linked one--the "Solo-3") has a PCMCIA slot on the side--wouldn't that be great if they came out with one that had an Express Card slot! Pop them into this puppy on set, press COPY and get two verified copies while you're shooting with another--hand one to the client, archive with the other. Kinda like the P2 Store, but much more flexible.
 
That sony drive is silly you can get an LTO-3 drive for the same price with double the tape capacity. Notice that the 390 GB is based on a 2:1 data compression.
 
The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.
This product: http://www.gethitch.com/ is kinda mickey mouse and slow, but its a viable field option if you don't want to bring your laptop. But if you've already lugged your backup discs and cables and power supplies along, then why not add your laptop?
 
Sean Michael 808 said:
The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.
This product: http://www.gethitch.com/ is kinda mickey mouse and slow, but its a viable field option if you don't want to bring your laptop. But if you've already lugged your backup discs and cables and power supplies along, then why not add your laptop?
Click to expand...

I hear you, Sean--good points to consider, but for me, I actually don't mind exact copying if I could be assured an easy and fool-proof workflow. (Btw: P2Stores suffered from the same duplication issue--it didn't matter how much you recorded on a card. I hated the idea of it, but it wasn't really an issue that often.)

I'm not so much propounding this as thinking out loud, here: what are 40gb hard drives now, 15-20 bucks? You can always archive them to a different medium/size later and reuse the 5-20 you could have around. And I wouldn't be surprised if you could get one of these duplicators that could do a safe append copy.

Besides, if you are handing a copy off to a client, one-to-one disk copy is like handing tapes--much easier to sell as an "original".

As for adding a laptop into the field duplication workflow, unless you have a van or video-village, my experience has not been good:
1. It hinders you from using your laptop for other things;
2. There is too much room for user/mouse error--I like the press-button ease of a dedicated solution like, e.g., the P2Store.
3. If it overheats or gets unplugged and runs out of battery (this happened twice on a shoot this year), you have to wait for it to reboot before you can start the copy over; which brings up,
4. Setup is more complicated to get it up and running.

Still, with the plethora of IT solutions spilling forth, I suppose we'll all find something that works with our styles and tolerances (price, storage efficiency, and workflow).
 
Jeff is there an LTO solution you recommend for field work? Something I can plug into my MBPro would be ideal. Thanks,

Peter
 
Peter, no good portable LTO solution I know of. Look back a ways for a thread on backing up in the field... Tape drives were discussed heavily and while a single-slot, desktop tape unit actually didn't seem too bad (a bit slow, but workable), there is no good way to connect to a Macbook Pro or most any other notebook. In other words, no one and I mean *NO ONE* makes a PCMCIA or ExpressCard version of a Wide Ultra SCSI interface.

One possibility though is that Quantum has a desktop DLT unit that interface via Gigabit Ethernet. It's not all that portable, about 10"x8"x14" and you need a place to plug it in. This just came up in a thread around here the other day. It might be a good possibility for field use in some situations.

I'm hoping that by the end of this year, RED RAM will drop to half or less of its current price and will quadruple in size -- yes, I'm that optimistic! If that happens, I see it becoming the field-recording device of choice and a huge market for renting these units.

...Other Jeff might have a suggestion or two. ???
 
Thanks Jeff #1 :) I was just checking out that Quantum DLT drive you referred to -- does seem a bit bulky for field work, though by field I am really talking about backing up at night in a hotel room somewhere. Did you get a chance to check out the Sony AIT drive? Thoughts? The form factor seems right for field work and they will have a SATA interface come May, which I believe could interface with Express Card, correct? Honestly, even if LTO is more cost-effective, if the Sony is better suited for the field I'm happy to go with that. I found 150GB AIT tapes online for about $46. I would love to use one of these in the field instead of lugging around two G-Raids. Let me know what you think of the Sony.

Peter

PS You are indeed optimistic about the Red RAM, but I'm hoping you're right! Do you plan on using that, instead of one of the other solid state storage solutions? BTW, you'll be happy to know that it was your rant about P2 that finally turned me from Panny to the Red. So sad to see them ruin a fairly good product by gouging on the P2 cards. What a shame. Oh well, at least there's Red to keep them honest, I hope.
 
There is a Ultra 160 SCSI interface to firewire that I had working a while back.

http://www.ratocsystems.com/english/products/FR1SX.html

Its not the fastest thing in the world but I had it working with a macbook 2 years ago with an IBM rebranded Dell LTO-3 single slot tape drive. It would be a little cumbersome but it would work.

Ypu'd definatly be able to backup redcode raw in realtime at least if not faster. All depends though I'd hesitate to tell anyone to undertake a science experiment in regards to their data backups.
 
The Ratoc adapter is only Ultra SCSI II. In that other thread I keep mentioning, we discussed a few of these adapters... They should work in most situations, provided the tape drives allow for connection to lower-speed SCSI channels. But you're the first to actually post saying that you tried it and it worked with an LTO-3 tape system. Theoretically, it should work as most SCSI systems are backward compatible provided you keep your terminations and differentials straight. USCSI-II still provides about double the bandwidth to run the fastest LTO-3 and DLT-S4 tape systems.

I'm hoping to see more interface options (eSATA, FW800) on some of the upcoming LTO-4 and SDLT units due this year. Other things to hope for are the UW320 SCSI ExpressCard adapter announced by Adaptec over a year ago, only to become complete vapor.
 
I remember I had to do a little trickery on the Ratoc though as far as async options on the ratoc, but yeah it worked on the LTO-3 and the DLT tape drive I had at the time.

I'm also looking around if there are any fibre adaptors for laptops as a lot of the LTO-3 drives come in fibre variants as well. Thats what we use here and the speed is great.
 
Sean Michael 808 said:
The problem with the duplicators is that they DUPLICATE exactly. If you only shoot 15 minutes of footage on your RED drive that's what you get on your duplicate disc. You can't add more later. You can only clone the source drive.
Click to expand...

Yeah I thought of that same problem. I emailed both companies in regards to that and got replies from both. They each have a product that can "append data". (I.e. if you have 2 32GB flash drives that you want to copy to 1 500GB HDD).

The product that I like the best is the "ImageMASSter Solo-3 Forensic" - It can append data to the destination drive from multiple sources, it supports SATA/SCSI/ATA, and has flash drive adapters. It can duplicate to 2 drives at once (one for editor, other for backup), with fancy error checking. It also has Firewire 800 & USB2, so it might be a viable option for getting data off the 2.5" Red Drives while in the field. What I don't like about it is the $2500 price tag.
 
I dont know when these came out, but G-raid have a similar product to the LaCie Little Big Disc, the G-Raid mini but with one major difference, it has a fan !
http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-RAID-mini.cfm

About tape drives, I was thinking LTO-3 for a while but now I think the best solution is Stuart's proposal, Quantum's SDLT 600A (also available as an autoloader) :
http://www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

It's not too big that it could be taken along and has the advantage of connecting over Gigabit. All macs have Gigabit. Capacity is only 300 GB, but are we really going to be able to fill up the 320 GB of a Red Drive, I doubt it, so 1 drive should fit on 1 tape. It can be connected to a laptop in the field, you do need power, than to your network in the office.

Cheers,
Damien
 
Tape drive rant...

When I started out, I bought a DAT backup, and that 1 gig capacity backed up my biggest drive ten times over. Tape cost 6 bucks or so.

Couple years later, upgraded to an 8mm Exabyte (also used to move my image sequences from the Amiga to A62 disk recorder) and now could still back up a massive gig drive 4 times over for 6 bucks a tape.

Then things went to Hell in a Handbasket. Drives got BIG and tapes remained fairly SMALL and more and more expensive.

I haven't forgiven the tape back up world yet, and am waiting for that same economy of scale that I had back in '95... where are the 2 Terrabyte tape drives with under 10 dollar media? That's where we should be at this point in history...

Rant off...
 
And the problem with tape drives is the manufacturer usually has poor software support. You have to keep some old legacy computer running just so you can off-load the tape if you need to. I had a Sony AIT and when we went from NT to Win 2000 - good-bye tape drive for Win 2000. They did not have drivers available for Win 2000....I tried installing the software for the
drive - would not work. So I off-loaded what I thought I would need and sold the whole POS on e-bay.
 
I'm waiting to see what comes of the new LTO-4 and other new tape formats due later this year. Most newer tape systems don't require specific drivers and many are starting to incorporate gigabit ethernet or other connectivity, so use down the road isn't as much of a concern.

Hard drives are becoming more appealing in terms of price, but still are more expensive than tape if you need to back up 30TB or more. And with HDD backups, I would definitely make duplicates. Using RAID-5 arrays for archival doesn't make sense as the cost per GB really shoots up. But if I only needed to make duplicate backups of 8 to 15 TB of data over the next year, I would go for 500GB hard drives. They're $125 now... That's insane. I can buy a 20 pack carton of 500GB Hitachi drives for less than $2200 (plus shipping). And having duplicate drive backups may not be a bad solution for a year or two until something truly better comes along in the form of holographic storage, or $2 300GB BluRay media or high capacity tape or something.
 
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