Question For Content Producers - What Are You Using To Store Your Content?
 

The raw footage takes up a ton of space. I'm looking at around 12GB per scene for DV and around 30GB/scene for HD.

I'm about tired of running out and buying 1TB drives. Especially when I have a lot of stuff that I rarely touch anymore. And we're not even addressing back-up yet. It all adds up fast.

Anyone care to share their storage secrets? Is there a writable DVD greater than 4.7 GB?

I was going to save it all to VCR tapes but my mom gets pissed when they're all over the house with lables like "Teen Mandy Sucks and Swallows" :-)

Advice anyone?

I have stack of ext HD's. No secret formula.

I need the DV AVI's readily available for content deals, and being able to quickly find, and convert clips easily without having to dig through tapes, and pull video again.

I use DLT or buy HD for every production. There are 9 Giga DVD's double layer. But for me the cheapest way is external HD's for every scene. 250 Giga is about 90 Euro.

If I only need the editted version I use DLT.

Yep, what he said. and of course the original MiniDVs.

LTO4 Tape drives, never trust HD

Yep. I still have the original DV mini's. Most at the bank in a lock box. Just to be safe. Almost everything else is on ext. HD's. The most recent clips I typically have on 2nd and 3rd HD's on the computer.

Once full, I pull the clips and back up on ext.. I then disconnect the ext HD, and unplug.

I use hard drives and have about 60 TB. almost all full with video and images. As most do here i keep all the Mini DVs in a vault / fire proof safe but that is also full so im looking at tape as i have had some bad experiences using CDs and DVDs

If you have a Costco in your area you can pick up a 1TB drive for around $100, its good value per gig I just picked up another 30. 1TB Western Digital drives they hold 400 DVD quality videos each or 100 to 200,000 jpgs web ready size.

But put them in a controlled air condicion if not they will not start up after some time.

Nothing beats a mini-DV tape to archive raw footage. Same tape the footage was shot on. $3.35 apiece, stores 65 minutes of DV or HDV video, lasts a long time, takes up very little space. I use DVCam tapes for edited movie masters. Hard drives are really just temporary storage. I have some DV AVI files and encoded files that I need to access over and over again on HDD's. But for original footage, I capture it once, edit and encode it, do whatever else I need to do and store the tape in my closet. I have tapes from 1999 that are still as pristine as the day they were shot.

Yep. :thumbsup

when blu ray writers and the blanks come down in price. That would be a cool option with a single disc holding 25gig

I archive my tape. If you are wanting to store, external hd.

Hard drives and dvds.

network storage and a gigabit network

this is about 20 TB in Raid 5 storage:

http://www.amazingcontent.com/images/storage.jpg

I'm about to pick up eight 1.5TB HDDs to put in a RAID6 array. Will be 9TB online as a single volume. Cost will be ~$1600 including the Raid card.

Don't trust RAID5 for anything over a few TB.

ext hd and dvd and raw tapes

lookin at blueray though cause the vids take up a lot

Hmmmm, what are your thoughts on this? What if I go get a mess of 100GB ext HD's and just archive like A-E on one, F-I on one. Anyone have experience with aging external harddrives? Am I setting myself up for failure if I happen to need something off of that drive 2,3,4,10 years after then last time it's been plugged in?

I'd at least put them in RAID for some redundancy. I guess it depends on how valuable the data is to you.

Double 48TB Raid 6 filers that sync every day

http://www.adultcontent.nl/48TB.jpg

this is fucking sick! :thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

You really do not have a hell of a whole lot of options right now, but from what I have been seeing in the trade-shit, you will have a some really cool options in the next few months.

dayum!!!!

Wanna ballpark me on what that set up cost?

Wow, I almost don't want to know what the power bill is for that. OK, yes I do.

Here you can order them: http://www.s3s.be/portal/
Machines like this used to be really expensive but cost very little the lasts months.
(like under 10K instead of 40K around 2 years ago)

...asking for trouble
 

Unplugging an external HD and storing it for long periods of time is asking for trouble. Especially with newer drives. You have two things to consider, the physical moving parts, and the magnetic media.

The moving parts are designed to do just that, move. The are not designed to be unplugged and left stagnant. Also, there was a note about storing them at proper temperature and such...this is important too. For extended off-line storage, use media that are designed for it.

Stored Magnetic media will eventually fail, period. One of the things about a drive that is on-line and active; the data gets refreshed on occasions and the drives have built-in checks for data integrity. This is crucial. Being taken off-line cripples the drives ability to protect the data.

not as much as you would think

http://www.buffalo-technology.com/pr...e/terastation/

http://shopper.cnet.com/external-har...-32560428.html

starts at about $1700 for the 4 TB version. and with gigabit network its about as fast as a directly attached USB2 harddrive


we also have everything on DVD and the original tapes as an additional backup

Mine are not stored, and turned off, for long periods of time. Although your idea of 'long time' may be different then mine.

I am always work on the content in some way. So all the HD's are being accessed at least a time or more a month. Especially with more content deals.

I used to keep them plugged in all the time, and they would wear out quick just from running 24/7. So if I did not run out of space. The disks would start making noise after a period of time (less that 12-18 months) and I would have to replace before the drive took a shit.

Now I unplug to make sure I do not have to worry about viruses, electrical surges, and other controllable issues. Not to mention, I have TWO copies of all files anyways. Not including the original DV tape.

As a shooter for way to long and now program owner .. I have all content on minidv .. BUT tape does deteriorate over time .. every scene I have is backed up to DVD's after editing as a master containing all 2257 and opening and closing addendums .. DVDs won't deteriorate and take up no space at all .. as for HDs .. I have all content on HDs as well and got this simple little dock that you just drop 1TB HDs into with out an external enclosure and just file them when they are about 3/4 full ..

Sooo cool!