C200: C200, storage solution for backup and workflow.

[Eksperiens]

Hi guys!

This is my first post but I’ve been lurking around the forum for a while now.
First of all, I’m really impressed with the engagement of everybody and the useful information y’all have given me over the years.

Now to my question. I make movies and I make music. I got a 2013 Mac Pro “trash can”, one Lacie 5big with 10tb in raid 5 (8tb in use) and one Lacie rugged raid 4tb in raid 0.

Currently everything is full, I got no backups and I’m freaking out. It’s not that I don’t care about redundancy but I really can’t figure out witch route to go here.

I’m thinking 8tb iron wolf pro disks in my lace 5big. That give me 32tb of storage. For backup I guess I can partion the raid in 10 / 10 / 10 / 2 and use bare 10tb drives.
I’ve been looking for the OWC thunderbolt toaster for the bare drives.

First I was thinking about a secondary Lacie 5big 40tb array for a total of 64tb of data in raid 5 but after reading in it seems stupid to have that much data in raid configuration since s*%t do happen 1 disc redundancy or not.

On the other hand, CRL should pile up on my sooner than later, I haven’t even started utilizing that yet but considering how much raw footage I have from my dslr days I know it’s gonna be a straight up pita.

But what I really is struggling with is how do you guys separate your data. Library’s, plug-ins, edits, archives, I also do music so I got vst plugins, big as sound library’s and so on and I just need to get an idea of the perfect solution to keep my things in order.

I primeraly use fcpx, Logic Pro, lightroom and photoshop.
Every time I try to be cleaver about my organization I end up whit multiple folders everywhere and it needs to stop.

So I guesse what I’m really asking is, how do you guys organize, edit and back your media along with programs, plug-ins and library’s you use between projects.

Sry for the novel guys 

 

[Dustin Svehlak]

You're liable to get a variety of answers here. I'll give you my high level overview-

For all my plug-ins, software, etc, I keep those on my main drive on my Mac Pro. If the project is small, I keep it on that drive as well but that's typically not the case these days with 4K etc.

For any jobs I'm currently working, I try to have no less than three copies of everything - main copy on my 2TB RAID drive backed up to a time machine backup 4TB drive and then cloned to a 2TB drive every morning (all automated).

When I finish a project, I move it onto a larger RAID array, which I then clone onto cheaper standalone drives for archival purposes.

This is just one way of doing things and I've found success with it. I'm sure others can provide their workflow but as someone who worked computer tech support for a decade, you absolutely should back all your data up. RAID 5 is not a backup - if the array fails, you'll lose your data. And with storage being so cheap these days, there's no excuse.

 

[puredrifting]

I edit on RAID 0. Risky. But always with two other media backups on cheap drives and on our documentary, we have three drives stored in two different locations. We had the Thomas Fire up where I live and I have lots of friends who had their computers and drives melted by 4,000 degree fire. Unless you have another copy stored off site, you are at risk. That's my lesson from last year. Fires, floods, earthquakes, they actually do happen and if you are geographically diverse, you're at risk. Or at least stick it up in the cloud.

 

[fhammond]

Where do you live? If you're in the US and you're in a location covered by AT&T 1 Gbps Internet service, backing up to the cloud is a viable option. I've don't have a huge amount of data - about 6 TB that I backup - but my Internet connection speed handles that easily and would handle a lot more without a problem. That, combined with an external RAID array, is a great setup.

 

[Eksperiens]

Hi guys. Thanks for the input. I just bit the bullet and ordered seven 8tb iron wolf pro drives, five of them to go in my Lacie 5BIG in raid 5 with 32tb of storage, witch btw is really fast with these drives, 780+ MB/s both write and read.
One of the drives will be a spare drive for the raid and one drive will be main backup for my FCPX libraries. No I also get five 2tb drives to back up my footage and I will use my 4tb Lacie rugged raid thunderbolt 2 as an "out in the field" back up solution in raid 1 giving me 2tb of pretty reliable storage.

It's been a straight up PITA to back up all my data, build the new raid and transfer all back but I'm getting close and will be up and running with my new setup in a couple of hours.

@fhammond I live in Sweden, I have 100 Mbps up and down in my building and I just felt that, if I'm gonna utilize my C200s raw capabilities it will be good to have som fast storage at my disposal.