Tape Backup

K

kieran

Member
Dear Friends,

Hi there. I'm in the pre-production phase of a documentary to be shot this spring/summer. It will be, for the most part, talking heads - so I'm planning on shooting to P2 cards.

I've been trying to work out a cost-effective backup system for this project. In the process, I've read many threads on this forum about the different options. I was considering Iomega REV for a time, but my past experiences with Iomega products haven't been so great...

It seems like the best bet is some kind of tape drive. No way can I afford the Quantum MXF-aware drive (SDLT 600A - approximately $10,000 I think?) But I can just about cope with the Tandberg VXA 320 FireWire/USB Drive (http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1326524)

I like the idea of this unit because it's firewireDoes anyone have practical experience with this unit? And, for that matter, how does VXA differ from DLT and LTO? Is any one of these preferable?

And, while we're on the subject, has anyone ever tried this?

http://www.coolatoola.com/

Someone posted about this a while back. It's not particularly efficient, but if anyone can weigh in with some positive feedback, maybe it's worth considering?

Thanks, all!
 
I haven't worked with VXA, but depending on your budget, you can find a used SDLT/320 drive for probably under $500 on Ebay (that's really about 160gigs/tape since MXF files are already compressed), then add about $100 for a controller, and you can find used SDLT tapes for between $8-15 each, often very low use (the batch we got looked like it had never been used)

Even SDLT running on the fastest bus isn't super fast backing up -- it takes about 3-4 days to do a complete back up of our entire 6 TB array with verification -- but it's a solid backup using proven technology that doesn't cost thousands of dollars.
 
Kieran, I must be missing something. Why wouldn't you simply backup to an external drive?
I'm getting 500 gig Seagate drives for well under $200.00.
As soon as we transfer to the laptop, we copy to the Seagate drive. We have been doing this for some time and have never lost a pixel of footage. Nock On Wood.:)

We also use these drives to back up most projects. We copy the contents of the data drive, i.e. GFX and EDL's and the video drives for audio, video and annimations.

Tape backup is so slow and external drives are so cheap now. Plus they can be plugged into any computer quickly.
 
TedRR said:
Kieran, I must be missing something. Why wouldn't you simply backup to an external drive?
I'm getting 500 gig Seagate drives for well under $200.00.
As soon as we transfer to the laptop, we copy to the Seagate drive. We have been doing this for some time and have never lost a pixel of footage. Nock On Wood.:)

We also use these drives to back up most projects. We copy the contents of the data drive, i.e. GFX and EDL's and the video drives for audio, video and annimations.

Tape backup is so slow and external drives are so cheap now. Plus they can be plugged into any computer quickly.
Click to expand...

Because drives fail. Period.

Its kind of like riding a motorcycle, which I do.

"You never know WHEN you're gonna have to ditch or get hit, but it WILL happen."

If hard drives were so great, then why do ALL of the world's servers backup to tape?

Because it is reliable, and the tapes are good for 30 years.
 
TedRR said:
Kieran, I must be missing something. Why wouldn't you simply backup to an external drive?
I'm getting 500 gig Seagate drives for well under $200.00.
As soon as we transfer to the laptop, we copy to the Seagate drive. We have been doing this for some time and have never lost a pixel of footage. Nock On Wood.:)

We also use these drives to back up most projects. We copy the contents of the data drive, i.e. GFX and EDL's and the video drives for audio, video and annimations.

Tape backup is so slow and external drives are so cheap now. Plus they can be plugged into any computer quickly.
Click to expand...

mcgeedigital said:
Because drives fail. Period.

Its kind of like riding a motorcycle, which I do.

"You never know WHEN you're gonna have to ditch or get hit, but it WILL happen."

If hard drives were so great, then why do ALL of the world's servers backup to tape?

Because it is reliable, and the tapes are good for 30 years.
Click to expand...



I actually agree with both of you on this. Harddrives are cheaper and faster to access but are much more prone to failure than tape back-up. It's the exact reason I'm doing both for my feature. We're shooting Dalsa Origin/Evolution and Phantom 65, and we're ingesting into the Codex Digital Media Manager for the Dalsa Footage and a large harddrive for the Phantom Footage. Then we're pulling dups. of all of that over to a Raid Array and two non-raid harddrive stacks; And then to a tape back-up solution (LTO 3 or 4). Then we're making Avid DNxHD 220X 1080 x 1920 copies for the Down Res. offline-online (which would transcode to DNxHD 36 for offline). So in a worst case scenerio if all the original material goes (media manger, raid array, harddrives and the tapes fail; which would mean we have the worst luck in the world.) then we atleast have the 1080p copy.
 
I admire people more cautios then me about saving stuff. So many people "ASSume" nothing will happen.

We frequently need to re-edit stuff from years ago. So we keep those likely productions on our main edit system and usually have them on a backup edit system, as well as almost every production is backed up on it's own removable drive.

Until a production is delivered, the footage is stored on our laptop, edit system and back up drive, at least 3 ways protected.

At some point even I gotta give up on protection. :)
 
Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the responses.

TedRR - "Kieran, I must be missing something. Why wouldn't you simply backup to an external drive?"

Hi Ted - For the sake of redundancy, I've worked out a three-tier backup system. The first two tiers are external firewire drives. The third tier will be some other kind of data storage which to be housed in a different location. Obviously, you can do that with a third hard drive, too, but I'd rather use some form of removable media.

Actually, I've been doing experiments with spanning P2 data over three (I've got a 16GB card) DVD-Rs. I've been able to copy an entire card's contents to DVD-Rs and restore those same contents after deleting the original file. So far, so good. Strictly in terms of expense, I'm thinking that this might be the best option. But I welcome more thoughts on this. My mind is far from made up.
 
Kieran, We really liked the 8 gig cards because we could make a Dual Layer DVD copy with varification. For the first year this is what we did. But it takes a REALLY LONG TIME with verification. :(
I was charging $25 per DVD for the clients safety and none of my clients complained.

The downside was I was about breaking even for the time invested. We still do this sometimes, but have gone to removable drives for most projects.

Good point that you are never protected unless you have a copy off site. :)
 
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