P2 Storage

[BobDiaz]

I was cleaning out some of the stacks of "stuff" (OK, junk) that seem to pile up around my house. Buried in one of the stacks was a Fry's Ad from the LA Times, dated Friday, August 22, 1997. I won't list everything, but here's some of the things on sale about 8 years ago:

Seagate 2.5 GB FATA-2 Hard Drive $164, limit one per customer

IBM 4.3 GB EIDE Hard Drive, 5,400 RPM $259

Packard Bell R501 computer, 200 MHz MMX, 2.1 GB Hard Drive, 32 MB EDO RAM, $1,349

16 MB Memory, 64ns,168 pin DIMM, $54.95


OK, what does an 8 year old Fry's Ad have to do with long term P2 Storage? Plenty, just compare the 1997 IBM 4.3 GB EIDE Hard Drive, 5,400 RPM $259 with a 2005 Maxtor External 300GB USB 2.0 drive for around $250 (today's price) and you'll see that hard drives increased in size roughly 70x. That comes to about a 1.7 times increase per year.

Using today's prices, here is what it would cost to store your P2 Video files on a 300GB USB Drive: (The price varies, from $300 at Best Buy to $230 at PC Mall; so I'll use $250 for the cost estimate.)

DVCPRO HD (at maximum data rate): Requires about 60GB per hour, 5 hours on a 300GB USB Drive, around $50 per hour.

DVCPRO 50 or 720@30p: Requires about 30GB per hour, 10 hours on a 300GB USB Drive, around $25 per hour.

720@24p: Requires about 24GB per hour, 12.5 hours on a 300GB USB Drive, around $20 per hour.

DV: Requires about 15GB per hour, 20 Hours on a 300GB USB Drive, around $12.50 per hour.

Price comparisons become somewhat complicated because it all depends on how we want to compare things. Still, the one thing I can say for sure is that the price per GB of External Hard Drive Storage will be less every year. Back in August 22, 1997,you would pay around $60 per GB of hard drive storage and that price does NOT include an external box, power supply, or high speed interface. Today, the Maxtor I used for my example costs $0.83 per GB and includes an external box, power supply, AND high speed USB 2.0 interface.

You can look at this one of two ways: (1) For about the same cost as the year before, new hard drives increase their storage by around 1.7 times every year. (2) The price per GB of storage is divided by 1.7 every year.

Either way you look at it, using a Removable External Hard Drive for long term P2 video storage is or will become very practical. Here is a rough estimate of what the storage costs would be //today//1 year from now//2 years from now//3 years from now:

DVCPRO HD (at maximum data rate) per hour: //$50//$30//$18//$11

DVCPRO 50 or 720@30p per hour: //$25//$15//$9//$6

720@24p per hour: //$20//$12//$7//$5

DV per hour: //$13//$8//$5//$3

(All amounts less than $1 were rounded up to the next dollar amount.)


Will some production companies find it practical to store their P2 video data on an external removable hard drive now or a year from now; I believe the answer is yes. What about 2 or 3 years from now? IF no other storage system comes along, the answer is yes, but with Blu-Ray coming, an even better, more cost effective system could be in use 2 or 3 years from now. So even if you record at the maximum data rate, figure that you'll spend $11 OR LESS per hour of storage 3 years from now.

Video Tape's days are coming to a close.

Bob Diaz

[mmm]

Imagine a 1TB disk crashing - Goodbye to 15 hours of footage with NO backup. For important footage you have to double those costs.

Nice summing up though.... more expensive than I was planning, but I guess it is $ not £. I just bought a 320GB Lacie for £150. So once formatted, £0.50 per GB = £30/hour with zero backup.

P2 costs more than just the cards!

[Luis Caffesse]

MMM-
The thing to keep in mind is that a 60 minute DVCProHD tape will cost you roughly $80.
So the archiving is actually cheaper on disk than it is on tape.

Also, while we've all had drives crash at some point, it is generally from continued use.
If you're archiving footage on a drive then odds are you aren't keeping it running.
I've never had a drive crash from sitting unused in a filing cabinet.

[Icarus2005]

MMM-
The thing to keep in mind is that a 60 minute DVCProHD tape will cost you roughly $80.
So the archiving is actually cheaper on disk than it is on tape.

Also, while we've all had drives crash at some point, it is generally from continued use.
If you're archiving footage on a drive then odds are you aren't keeping it running.
I've never had a drive crash from sitting unused in a filing cabinet.

Actually, archiving on DVCproHD tape is more than 80 bucks unless you own the 25,000 deck. I would assume you'd have the rent the deck which is often about 200 a day range. so that's 280 bucks for one hour verses having an entire hard disk for the same price that will store much more.

easy choice in my mind. But I would, with very important stuff want a backup hard drive stored in different location.

[BobDiaz]

The issue of a hard drive crash and loosing data does present some interesting points. Yes, to be 100% safe, one should have 2 copies of their files that they can't afford to loose. This would hold true even with tape. A fire, flood, or something else could destroy your work, so the second copy should be kept at a second location that's far from the first copy.

The chance of a failure is greatest when the drive is brand new. This is called infant mortality of a product. Once the drive has been used 20 to 100 hours, there is always a chance of a failure, BUT with increased usage, it becomes very unlikely. Near the end of a product's useful life, the failure rate increases rapidly. This failure curve is also known as the "Bathtub Curve".

Assume that we have an External USB Drive that we wish to archive our videos on. First run the drive through its paces with a drive check program when you first plug it in and after 20 to 100 hours of operation. Next copy all the files from your main system to the External Drive. IMPORTANT: Use a Drive Check Utility to verify that all the data is intact on the External Drive before you put it into storage.

Once the drive is safely in storage, you can delete your video files from the main drive of the computer. Still, if you want to be 100% safe, place a copy of the files on a second drive and store that drive in a different building.

Let's say that 5 years from now you need access to those files. Chances are very good that the drive's files will be intact. Nothing is ever perfect and there is always a SLIGHT chance of failure, but that can also happen with tape.

In the case of a hard drive failure, there are companies that will recover as much of your data as possible for a price. It won't be cheap, but if that is the only way to get your data back, it can be done.

Bob Diaz

[Emanuel]

Bob, thanks!

[mmm]

MMM-
The thing to keep in mind is that a 60 minute DVCProHD tape will cost you roughly $80.
So the archiving is actually cheaper on disk than it is on tape.

Also, while we've all had drives crash at some point, it is generally from continued use.
If you're archiving footage on a drive then odds are you aren't keeping it running.
I've never had a drive crash from sitting unused in a filing cabinet.

It is very expensive for people used to a DV(CAM) workflow though.... which is what most people here are.