backing up

Steve Laramie

Steve Laramie

Veteran
Iv had a few close calls over the last few weeks and I am realizing more and more each day my hard drives are not reliable. I have a 1tb my book and a 500gb lacie both hooked up to mac pro 8 core through a dazy chained fw800 going into my 1tb my book. (I know mybooks arent meant for HD video but I got it for free) I am shooting on the HVX so I guess thats DVCPro HD. My problem is I need some very reliable solution to backing up my files and have them still be able to be easily accessed from fcp. I dont know if this means DVD's or god forbid tapes. I know my hard drives are just about shot and I could be convinced to go with hard drives for backup but im not sure which ones.

thanks
 
You just need two hard drives. One a copy of the other.

Q: What do you mean your mybook isn't meant for HD? It's FW800 and a 7200rpm drive or it's not. I use several mybook studio 500mbs chained through FW800s and have no problem.

I hate the external shape / look of the mybooks but the WD drives seem reliable and they are so cheap. I just shot a project for a client and told her she had to purchase to mybook studio $500gb HD, total was less than $300. Told her we had to have fw800 and there had to be two of them (one for back up).

You can use OSX to set up an external raid (where one HD is automatically copied to the other and appear as one drive) but I've had mixed results with this and prefer to back up manually or do timed backups. The big thing is that you have your P2 footage on two hard drives, that's the irreplaceable stuff.

Lacie's have killed me several times. In fact if you are running stuff on a chain and having problems I bet it's the lacie. At the very least I would put it at the end of the chain.
 
I'm a mybook fan myself. I just have duplicates at the office that get switched out and backed up to twice a day. One stays at the office, one goes home with me, and then I switch. If the office and my house burn down at the same time its gonna be a bad day... These usually stay hooked up via fw400, but I actually just finished a 40 minute piece I edited on a laptop with a mybook using USB at my kitchen table. It was a tad slower (1080P in premiere) but not bad at all. RT playback with a little color correction was done easily.
 
I was a mybook fan for a month but I got the most ridiculous problem. The power button on the back gets stuck pushed in. I called tech support and they told me to hit it. Thats been working out fine until I almost lost a wedding. would you really recomend buying new mybooks. Im sure this is probably just a 1 in a thousand thing but I really cant be taking these chances. also this is totally unrelated but can a client sew you for technical difficulties leading to the deletion of their project (wedding) even if you give them there money back. Just wondering.
 
Hard drives are NOT a reliable long-term archive solution.

If you rely on them in this way, you are rolling the dice.

Look into LTO tape drives.
 
I only keep archives for the duration of a project which usually doesnt exceed 1-2 months at most. then I keep just a few clips I liked for a reel which isnt really important.
 
would you recommend 2 1tb internal satas instead? heat is a concern for me. The external hard drives heat my room up like an oven along with everything else I have running.
 
Hmm I have 4 mybook studios chained together and have never had a problem with data or the buttons getting stuck.

This is a $60 fix though for that hard drive where the button is stuck. Just buy an external enclosure with FW800 on newegg and drop it in there.

Fantom Drives are priced about the same as the studio books and you can get them on newegg too, have used a couple of them without issue.

But basically you just need all your storage / workspace doubled for the duration of the project. So whether it's mybooks or whatever you need two. One for backup.
 
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