Data and File Storage? Which is best?

B

Bigredf

Member
Hi Guys,

With a successful show running under our belts we are starting to deal with the issue of file storage of our previous seasons screened and data storage.

So my question was, what are people using these days going to store large amounts of data/footage/files for safe and secure storage? Currently, we are just backing up our old seasons on to external hardrives and safe securing them offsite - not practical at all.

I think a cloud method is probably the best approach. Microsoft's OneDrive Business model looks the be a good option?

I guess I was wondering what other producers have used to back up their projects and store them?

Cheers

Sam
 
You should probably be looking at DLT. Depending on your budget and needs, you can simply outfit a single computer with a DLT drive and use that to create backups, or you can setup an archiving server with a robotic DLT that will interact with your shared storage system to automatically archive & restore files.
 
Thanks for your reply arniepix. OK Ill have a look at what your suggesting here, how much data can DLT store? I don't quite know how it works. Currently we probably have about 10TB of project footage.
 
Honestly, I wouldn't trust the cloud. Relying on other people's servers is not a great bet. Arniepix gives good advice with DLT. It's not cheap but if you have the budget for it I hear it's very reliable. If you're on a lower budget you can back-up with 3.5" internal drives (the type you put in Mac Pros) or Blu-Rays...
 
LTO is industry standard, but what's your budget and do you plan on needing future backups? Does your backup need to sit on a shelf or can it be actively managed and powered?

LTO is great but frankly I don't totally trust one copy of anything unmanaged on a shelf in an aging technology. Also, if you go LTO-7, the tapes aren't too expensive in fact they are usually a bit less expensive per GB than HDD, but the tape drive will probably cost you $2000-5000 and you'll probably need backup software to catalog the archives and manage the tapes. You may also need to get some new computer hardware to hook up the drive. Tape seems to me really meant for long term storage for large facilities and large amounts of data. For 10TB I'd be tempted to say for the same price just go HDD since you could back up 10TB 3 times for <$1k on HDD...

Does your facility have centralized storage or are you just working off external drives for everything? I see people doing that sometimes and it really scares me. Remember to always treat single-drive external drives as disposable as they will die sitting on the shelf. They will also die connected to a computer but connected you might notice the failure early enough to be able to recover it before it gets really bad. Drives are so cheap nowadays its crazy not to have all your data on a centralized server/nas that has redundancies to protect against one or two drives failing, not to mention it can really improve workflows. Then add nearline or tape storage copies offsite to make it bulletproof.

I can't seem to find any info on Onedrive's pricing for >1TB of storage, but cloud storage for video files always seems a bit of a tough sell to me since I don't think I could live with it taking weeks to restore your 10TB project if you should need it. I guess it's another thing if you have an amazingly fast internet connection, but cloud archival storage will likely be the most expensive option as you'll likely be paying monthly to keep the data there and you might even have to pay to access it. I think a nearline cloud storage service from Google's Cloud costs about $100/mo for 10TB plus $120 to download it, so at least $1200/year.
 
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