Long term storage: use 2tb, 3tb or 4tb internal drives?

O

oxband

Well-known member
I'm moving towards a system of having data backed up on internal drives I'll use with a OWC Thunderbay and separate external drives as well.

I'm trying to decide what size internal drives to use. I'm choosing between drives that are 2tb, 3tb and 4tb's large. I imagine I get more bang for my buck with 4tb. I'm tempted to go that route. I'll have everything backed up so I don't worry about the fact that, if it fails, it's 4tbs.

That said......any other thoughts on this matter? Is there another way to think/approach it? Just brainstorming before buying stuff.

Thanks in advance!!
 
For me I always choose the biggest capacity. As of now, the most appealing is the 4-5 Tb range. 6 Tb hdd will be just right about 6 months away. I started this whole process since 2005 with 500 Gb hdd. I experienced about 14 hdd total lost of data out of the 250 I purchased for backup. So it's something you must take seriously and not waiting any longer. But long-term archival, I strongly recommend looking into LTO-6 over any hdd media. It works very well and actually quite cheaper than hdd if you do it in high volume. About $40/2.5 Tb and no need to two 2 tapes unless the data is super important. With hdd, you are likely will have to backup or archive to two hdds just to have a peace of mind on those important data.

oxband said:
I'm moving towards a system of having data backed up on internal drives I'll use with a OWC Thunderbay and separate external drives as well.

I'm trying to decide what size internal drives to use. I'm choosing between drives that are 2tb, 3tb and 4tb's large. I imagine I get more bang for my buck with 4tb. I'm tempted to go that route. I'll have everything backed up so I don't worry about the fact that, if it fails, it's 4tbs.

That said......any other thoughts on this matter? Is there another way to think/approach it? Just brainstorming before buying stuff.

Thanks in advance!!
Click to expand...
 
I'm looking into external hard drive cases capable of raid 5 with 4x 2-4TB drives. Should provide some peace of mind in that any 1 of the 4 can die with no data lossed, but yes you must still back it up elsewhere to have complete piece of mind.
 
I thought about LTO....but the initial investment is so much money. I'm just not sure, given how quickly technology changes, i want to drop that much on the deck for an LTO
 
oxband said:
I thought about LTO....but the initial investment is so much money. I'm just not sure, given how quickly technology changes, i want to drop that much on the deck for an LTO
Click to expand...

With 4K raw cam files and long-form content growing at a pace of 30-40 Tb per month, I have no choice but to choose LTO-6. The initial $2,800 investment (LTO-6 drive, HBA PCI-e card, software) is justified after you reach a certain volume of data need to be archived. Can't wait for LTO-7. Definitely not going to spend couple grand per month on SATA-3 hdds. It's 1/4 the cost with LTO-6 tape after the $2,800 initial investment. LTO in general is for long-term use and high amount of data.
 
You were right when you said, if you put everything on a multi-terabyte hard drive, then the failure of the drive would cause multi-terabyte data loss. So you would want to use RAID, a second back-up drive, or both.

Or what do you think of this simple system?

1. Don't reuse your cards. Treat them as write-once, like film rolls. Put them in a plastic sleeve.

sleeve.jpg

2. Save also any secondary media assets (stills, graphics, sound, etc.) to a card, along with your editor's project file and an export of the final movie.
3. Put the plastic sleeve in a three-ring binder and the three-ring binder on the shelf.
4. Make a second copy of any really important stuff to Google Drive ($10 / terabyte / month) or something else, as long as it's somewhere else, in case of fire, tornado, or burglary.
 
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