Archiving Media: Raid 0 or Blu-Ray

Nick Royer

Nick Royer

Well-known member
Right now I'm using Mini DV tapes on a Canon XL2. Next year I'll buy either an HVX200A or HPX170, and I want to have an archiving system in place before that. Blu-ray seems to be a common option but it can be quite expensive and time-consuming. So if I bought a Raid 0 hard drive, will that be a good archiving option? And if one of the drives fails, can you run off just one drive? I think this would be a better solution for me if it's possible to do that.
 
Thanks for the link. But how likely is a hard drive failure to happen? On the most critical footage, I will put it on two drives but for most stuff it would be easier to use one.
 
IMO with the ever decreasing cost of mass storage, there is absolutely no excuse to not back up everything you have shot.

How likely is a drive to fail? I don't think anybody can actually say. I have drives that have been going flat out 24/7 for over 4 years with no hiccups, and then I've had drives fail a month after buying them. It's just not worth the risk. Once your footage is gone, it's gone and you'll never be able to re-capture those exact moments. It's happened to me before, as I'm sure it's happened to others and let me tell you, it's a bad feeling and very expensive if you desperately need that footage.

Don't skimp on your backup, it's absolutely critical. Going with one drive would be like leaving your master tapes somewhere they might get damaged. They might not, but would you take the chance? For a couple of hundred dollars I'd take the piece of mind.
 
I have seen so many hard disk failures that I just can't recommend a hard disk based system for such valuable data. Setting your disks up in a RAID-1 array is a lot better than nothing, but tape is the king of archival. Hard disks simply have too many moving parts to trust over the long term. Give me a Quantum DLT-V4 160/320 tape drive and a stack of tapes any day.

Unfortunately, it's hard to beat the price of hard disks so they will be used for archival by many. In those cases. RAID is the only way to go.

RAID-1 configures each drive as a copy of the other (mirror) so if you loose one drive you should be able to remove it and carry on with the other(s). Depending on the capabilities of your RAID card/motherboard, you can configure RAID-1 with three or more drives so you have more than just one redundant copy. As paranoid as I am about hard disks, I recommend you have at least 3 drives in your RAID-1 array and 4 if you can do it.

"Drives are cheap. Throw a bunch of them at the problem."

As far as hard disk longevity, I have drives that are over 10 years old that still work. A few years ago I experienced a 40% return rate on new drives I purchased for resale. Even today, using a different manufacturer, I see 2% return rate. It's hit and miss with these devices and you never know when a manufacturer will sell a bad batch.

Tape is much more reliable and forgiving but you have to be able to live with sequential (slow) access and backup software that may or may not be fun to work with. Also, you'll really appreciate a tape when one accidentally falls on the floor. Tapes are pretty sturdy devices. Try dropping a hard disk and see how it likes that!
 
Is a blu-ray disk less likely to fail than a hard drive? Will it last longer? And how long does it take to write a 23gb Blu-ray disk on a 6x writer?

Also, what is the difference between Raid 0 and 1? I think I was thinking Raid 1 when I said 0.
 
I use inexpensive USB/Firewire drives. If it’s very important stuff, I store it on two drives. If not, one copy is enough. I had to many DVDs that I can’t read anymore and blueray will be the same. Hard drives are the best option in my opinion.

Rudi
 
Why do you need a raid configuration if it's just for storage ? You're chances of a failure always increase with a raid.

Rob
 
There are many flavors of RAID, and while RAID 0 does increase the chances of data loss, others do not. RAID 1 provides simple redundancy so that either of the two drives in the array can fail without causing data loss, and higher-order RAID methods can improve both performance and data protection.
 
RAID-1 is the way to go for redundancy. You can have more than two drives in a RAID-1 array too.. At least under Linux you can.
 
Nick Royer said:
Right now I'm using Mini DV tapes on a Canon XL2. Next year I'll buy either an HVX200A or HPX170, and I want to have an archiving system in place before that. Blu-ray seems to be a common option but it can be quite expensive and time-consuming. So if I bought a Raid 0 hard drive, will that be a good archiving option? And if one of the drives fails, can you run off just one drive? I think this would be a better solution for me if it's possible to do that.
Click to expand...

For long term storage I would recommend tape. It sucks to maintain, but that is what it is made for. LTO2/DLT/DAT tapes and a single tape drive. Each tape is like 70-200gb or so and they are made to sit on a shelf for a long time, CD's/DVD's (and very likely BlueRay) aren't really meant for longterm stuff (5+ years) and I wouldn't trust sensitive data to them.

The other option you have is something you are kinda glazing over a bit too lightly... Archiving to Disk.

To be honest, this is not really an option, the reason being is that the disks you will likely be backing up to (SATA) are consumer disks, they are cheap, have a lot of space, easy to get working, and have a low life expectancy. Even backing up to higher end disks isn't guaranteeing you anything and probably just costing you a lot more money and giving you a LOT more hardware to muck with.

Backing up/Archiving to Disk is really meant to be a Nearline solution, meaning you would back up to an array of disks (RAID) running on a server that is on all the time. But then you are walking into a pretty big headache and it gets costly VERY fast... (2) 8HDD raid controllers, (8) 500GB-1TB disks, setup as a RAID 5, RAID 1 is over-redundant but it is more a waste of drives as you buy more drives. Also including highend server parts and whatnot the starter cost would be 5-10k, plus you practically have to have an IT guy for it.

Alternatively, you can account for failure, backing up data to individual HDD's is extremely simple and if the drive fails the data is somewhat easy to get off with recovery software, but for a major drive failure it is just gone.

TLDR: Hard disks aren't meant for backup, CD/DVD/BlueRay isn't meant for long term storage, Tape is your best/cheapest option for long term storage/accessibility.

I do IT work for vfx houses, I work with a lot of different types of backup/storage and everything inbetween on a very regular basis.

Simple Tape Drive from Dell (718$):
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pvaul_100tdat72?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

Add in the 39320A SCSI Controller Card in the customize section, make sure you call Dell and confirm that the card will work in your computer, add in the Yosemite Basic Backup thing and you are pretty much done, other than tapes. Not sure how much DAT72 Tapes go for 10-20$, they apparently hold 72GB of compressed data, since you are backing up video that doesn't compress well you may get 50GB on each disk, but you can put them on a shelf for a long long time and not worry too much about it.

If you need more space on the tapes you just upgrade your tape drive to an LTO2 catagory type of tape drive and quadruple your tape capacity (200GB uncompressed.)

Joe
 
And what is the workflow retrieving from tape?

And aren't there some issues with tape being magnetic and subject to loss?
 
Keep in mind that RAID-1 only protects against single hard drive failure. If your system is compromised (or you delete/overwrite files yourself), the redundancy will not save you. Then you have to consider things like theft, fire, etc. Best bet for dual hard drives is to backup to an external and then store it off-site (or backup off-site to begin with).
 
David S. said:
And what is the workflow retrieving from tape?

And aren't there some issues with tape being magnetic and subject to loss?
Click to expand...


If you are talking about LTO tape, it is good enough for almost ALL banks to do their daily backups of your bank records.

Thats good enough for me.
 
I agree that LTO is great for long term archiving. But my question relates on how you get it out of the archive for editing again.

Transfer speeds, locating files, etc?
 
David S. said:
And what is the workflow retrieving from tape?

And aren't there some issues with tape being magnetic and subject to loss?
Click to expand...

Workflow is essentially the same, you plug in the tape with the data you need on it, open up your backup application, and restore the data you want on the tape back to a Firewire or your local drive/array. You just have to make sure you are labeling your tapes correctly, but that is the same for everything.

Tapes and Hard Drives both hate magnetics, the simple fact is Tapes are meant for long term storage (5 years plus) and Hard Drives definitely are not.

Joe
 
David S. said:
Transfer speeds, locating files, etc?
Click to expand...

Transfer speeds vary greatly with what tape drive you get and the data you are backing up, how much compression you use, the speed of the drive(s) you are backing up from, etc. Ideally you will see about 50MBps to the tape (3GB per minute.)

Once you put the tape in and open it up with the backup software it will just give you a treeview of the tape and you can/should be able to just pick and choose what you need off the tape.

Joe
 
Later on this year, according to this article (bottom of the page), you should be able to drag and drop files for archiving onto XDCam disks, using the Sony PMW-U1. 50gb storage per disk.
XDCAM HD Professional Optical Disc
pdw-u1.jpg

If you own a PDW-U1 USB Optical Disc reader/writer, you will soon have some really super cool, and I do mean ‘SUPERCOOL’ writing options; Panasonic P2 users and Digital Stills Photographers read on.

When the write capability is added to the U1 (imminently) it will be for standard XDCAM HD formats only i.e. 1440x1080 35mbps 4:2:0 and 1920x1080 50mbps 4:2:2. However, get ready for the supercool bit, later in 2008 Sony are going to release a further free firmware update for the U1 Optical Disc reader/writer that will allow you to back up and archive absolutely any type of file or folder your heart desires i.e. just like a conventional hard-drive or blank Blu-Ray disc.

This is brilliant news not only for Sony XDCAM owner/users, who can store their native XDCAM HD and XDCAM EX MP4 files, but it is also brilliant news for Panasonic P2 owner/users, or anyone else who needs a cheap and reliable long-term back-up/archive solution.

P2 owners for example can buy a PDW-U1 for £1595 and a bunch of blank 23GB or 50GB XDCAM HD Optical Discs from either Sony, TDK, Fuji or Maxell for approximately £15 each for the 23GB discs or £35 for the 50GB discs. You can then go ahead and drag/drop your P2 MXF HD video files directly onto Professional Optical Disc for safe future archiving (Sony’s Professional Optical Disc has a 50 year shelf life).
Click to expand...
 
And aren't there some issues with tape being magnetic and subject to loss?
**********************************************************************************

If it's properly stored away from magnets it's not a problem.
The issue is that the medium is made up of oxides that will eventually oxidize enough to break down and become unreadable.

LTOs and DLTs are pretty robust formats. However Sony claims that blu-ray discs do not use the same organic dyes used for DVDs. Instead they are some metallic-based media that is supposed to have a 25-50 year shelf life. Only time will tell.

I took a chance and bought a Sony internal blu-ray burner and installed it into an eSATA enclosure, and so far it's been backing up P2 data from my laptop without a hiccup. During the day I download P2 cards onto the local hard drive, then in the evening I make a copy on a 250g external drive. Then when I have enough time I zip off a blu-ray copy for good measure.

It's essentially the same thing as the Optical Disc reader/writer except the discs are not protected in a caddy and I can use it to back up P2 cards right now. The caddy does add to the reliability of the system, though. Then again, the naked blu-ray discs are cheaper.

I just figured it could do double-duty and author on blu-ray when I'm ready, where a tape drive will only serve as back-up. I'm not re-using any media, though, so that's also a factor in favor of tape as I don't trust re-writable optical as much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top