Backing up 16 GB cards? do or don't use this method?

G

ggdelarge

Active member
Someone else may have already posted something like this but I (think i have) thought of a great way of backing up the 16 gb p2Cards to DVD. I used to use 4gb cards and that was no problem to back up, but now i have several 16 gb cards, which doesn't fit onto a DVD-R. What i thought of doing, and have starting doing, was create 4 Burn folders for one 16 gb card.

My method:

1. place the LASTCLIP.TXT file on every disc.

2. Create a CONTENTS folder on every disc.

3. Copy the folders CLIP, ICON, PROXY, VOICE onto every disc

4. Create an AUDIO and VIDEO folder

5. Copy over as many video clips (that will fit) to the new VIDEO folder

6. Copy over the correlating audio clips to the new AUDIO folder

7. Do this for all 4 discs.

This seems like the best (affordable) way to back up the footage to a disc without having to get a blu-ray burner. 16 gb p2 cards partition the cards into 4 drives, so if you record straight 40 minutes, you will end up with 4 different perfect sized video files for each DVD. The downside? It seems like there is huge opportunity for Human Error. Especially if you shoot many shots and have to really stay organized to get a perfect 4gb of footage. you might need to skip a clip because of file size and not stay in perfect 1,2,3,4 order but have to copy 1,2,4 then have to burn 3 to a different disc.

I have been able to transfer clips off the disc (it gives you a message "preview unsupported for this clip" for the clips that are on different discs). There may be clips that are spanned. in this case, you have to copy the disc to a hard drive and re-compile the card as if it was a 16 gb card.

I was wondering if anyone else has tried this or has any thoughts to this method?
 
Seems like a lot of time & effort . . .

Blue-ray isn't much faster (and IS more expensive).
Extra hard drives are the best "down and dirty" quick solution.
If you are going to have a lot of data to back up over time you might look at LT0-2 or LTO-3 tape backup . . . extremely fast.
(been using LTO tape for 18 months, haven't lost a single frame).
 
We just use roxio which will span discs and figure that out for you. We dont have any 16gig but works well for mutiple 8gigers.
 
External HD's are so damn cheap now I use those Lacie Bricks. They are cool cause they stack like legos so it's two 500gb drives for each backup. Then you put them both away in a cupboard. If for some reason one failed out on ya you still have a second one. Total cost $240.00 for 500gb's of storage with a backup.
 
I use a Drobo - http://www.drobo.com/ - with 3x500 GB and 1 x 250 GB drives. Drobo lets you use any SATA I or II drive of any capacity, which is great because I had different size drives when I got it. It's only USB 2.0 right now, but it's been rock-solid for me. It doesn't use traditional RAID (it's their own proprietary system). Traditional RAID doesn't let you use different size disks as far as I know.

When one drive starts getting full, you just yank it out, slap in a bigger drive, and it takes care of the rest. Mac or PC (I have a mine attached to my Mac Pro).

For under $1000, with those 4 drives (from NewEgg), I have 1.1 TB usable space with protection. What I think is cool is that when I start getting close to being full, I can pull that 250 GB out and slap in a 750 GB or a 1TB drive and expand it without having to do anything else.

edit: forgot to mention I have 2 x 16 GB P2 cards.
 
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Proprietary storage and backup solutions scare me.

I used to have an OnStream tape drive, and they went the way of the Dodo bird even though they were a spinoff from and closely associated with Philips Electronics. I tried to save money on the acquisition cost and media by going with OnStream, and for a while it worked out, but eventually the supply of tapes ran dry, I needed a new drive, and I don't know if they ever came out with drivers for XP (this was during the Windows 2000 days).
 
THoff said:
Proprietary storage and backup solutions scare me.
Click to expand...

THoff,

I understand your concern... I've been burned a time or two myself. What sold me on the Drobo was that I wasn't locked into buying any particular manufacturer or capacity hard drive. The way Drobo stores data is proprietary and it blows my mind, so I try not to think about it :)
 
I put together a gigabit NAS using Naslite software and an old case with 4x500GB drives. Plenty fast and plenty stable. Cheap too.
 
I always have two copies on various harddrives (working drive and backup drive) whiel a project is "active".

To backup once a project is done I use a 4mm DAT drive (via USB2.0) from HP (the external USB version costed € 200 on ebay).
The one I use has 20MB uncompressed/40GB compressed on the tapes.
I fit 2 8gb cards or one 16GB card per tape. It takes 1,5 hours per tape, so slow, but it does it while I work in Photoshop, on sounds or other office work. And 1 tape is € 1,60, so it costs about what a cheap DV-tape does.

Again, slow, but reliable (tapes, software is part of Windows) and cheap.
 
ggdelarge... I think this is a great idea, because you have a physical back-up and I've been backing up my 4 gig cards for everything onto both DVD and Hard Disk. Having it backed up to DVD seems like a great solution and not time-consuming... And Hard drives crash.. and have crashed on me. But so far I've been able to grab a DVD that I burned a year and half ago... put it in and rip it to quicktime without any issues.


I thank you for the solution as it seems like a simple enough of one. I've become really anal about backing up to DVD and this seems like a great solution for the 16 gigers.. THANKS FOR Figuring it out.. CHEERS!
 
I too back things up to drives too, but that is scary. Tapes are a great way to back things up, but could be very expensive. So far this has been a great solution. It could be time consuming, and as mentioned, there is a bit of human error, But its WAY cheap, reliable, takes up little office space, and you don't have to worry about DVDs being out dated.
 
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