LTO tape drives for MacPro?

[Alexis Hanawalt]

What are the best options out there for LTO-3 drives for backing up 4K data with a MacPro? This seems like the best option for projects that have a lot of footage (I'd thought about Blu-Ray, but that just seems too risky...) - But I can find any vendors that specify any sort of functionality with Macs.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Most all LTO-3, etc... tape systems support Mac. You will need to equip your Mac Pro with a proper SCSI controller and then buy the drive system of choice. Some configurations come with backup software, some don't, but there's plenty out there for the Mac too.

I'm holding off until my RED is closer -- hopes that LTO-4 or other possible backup solutions emerge by then. BluRay I don't think will be a real possibility until they get capacities up, prices down and prove its reliability.

[Stuart English]

Not LTO, but Quantum's SDLT 600A is a roughly equivalent Mac OSX compatible product that connects to your computer network via GigaBit Ethernet. I have seen it working wth a MacBook Pro as well as tower style Macs.

www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

Although this site talks a lot about MXF, it works with any type of file....

[Chris Kenny]

LTO-4 products are supposed to be out in the first half of this year. 800 GB per tape, over 100 MB/s transfer rate. Not too shabby. Probably going to be pretty pricey at first, though.

[Alexis Hanawalt]

LTO-4 products are supposed to be out in the first half of this year. 800 GB per tape, over 100 MB/s transfer rate. Not too shabby. Probably going to be pretty pricey at first, though.

Yeah, I figure LTO-3 will still be the way to go price-wise for a while. Psychologically a little easier to deal with the concept of 400Gb on a tape than 800Gb too...

[Chris Kenny]

Yeah, I figure LTO-3 will still be the way to go price-wise for a while. Psychologically a little easier to deal with the concept of 400Gb on a tape than 800Gb too...

Heh. It's hard to deal with any of it. I've got an IT background (this time last year I was making most of my money doing network administration and web development), and I can barely wrap my head around what's happened with storage capacities in the last few years. I'll be in the middle of crunching numbers to figure out what kind of disk array to build, and I'll look up and realize I'm just casually considering how many thousands of gigabytes of storage I'll need, and that six months from now, I'm going to have over 10,000 times as much storage as on my first Mac, a Quadra 660AV.

It's sort of strange to be able to tell "back in the day" stories when you're 24, but that's the situation the pace of technology has put me in.

And then I think of how nuts things are going to be 10 years from now....

[Zach Hilton]

Heh. It's hard to deal with any of it. I've got an IT background (this time last year I was making most of my money doing network administration and web development), and I can barely wrap my head around what's happened with storage capacities in the last few years. I'll be in the middle of crunching numbers to figure out what kind of disk array to build, and I'll look up and realize I'm just casually considering how many thousands of gigabytes of storage I'll need, and that six months from now, I'm going to have over 10,000 times as much storage as on my first Mac, a Quadra 660AV.

It's sort of strange to be able to tell "back in the day" stories when you're 24, but that's the situation the pace of technology has put me in.

And then I think of how nuts things are going to be 10 years from now....

I hear ya man. Nothing like growing up and seeing all of the major technological advancements happen right before your eyes. Pretty amazing if you ask me!

I'm not as familiar with tape drive technology so maybe someone who is could shed some light. Is the LTO-3 different than Sony AIT drives? And what should one look into for a tape drive? I agree the bluray really isn't the best optimal archiving format and for me as of now, the tape drive seems like the best solution so far.

[Don Woods]

So I looked at quantum's site and the only thing that worrys me is they only have windows based drivers? anyone have a link for an LTO 3 drive with mac drivers. and card sugestions?

[Chris Kenny]

Might want to go at things from the other end. Pick backup software and then check the device compatibility list. Here's (http://www.emcinsignia.com/supportupdates/technical/retrospect/device/) the database for Retrospect.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

wow.. did i just stumble upon a chinese thread? cuz i cant understand anything you guys are talking about.. i know how to light a scene.. use lenses.. shoot.. move camera.. but wtf.... am i completely screwed?

[Tim Martin]

If it helps, we use an Exabyte LTO-3 autoloader with an Atto SCSI card and Retrospect. It's not running on a MacPro, but my suggestion (depending on how much footage you plan to be dealing with) is to buy a used G5 and a single SCSI card. We have a system here that pretty much spends all day backing up or reloading footage (4 hour+ per tape backup).

We've had the unit for 6-8 Months (might be longer not really sure, I'd have to find the bill) and our own productions have used 40+ tapes holding about 14 TB of raw footage. That doesn't include the 25+ tapes that have left the office on client projects (productions we only post).

Also, I highly recommend an autoloader. An IT friend of mine recommended it and I had a hard time biting the bullet on the extra cost at the time, but it's been completely worth every penny.

Data is a pain to deal with.

[Chris Kenny]

Data is a pain to deal with.

Yeah, anyone who doesn't have decent tech skills themselves should definitely hook up with someone who does, assuming they plan to keep copies of large amounts of footage. What you don't want to do is try to scale up the "data management" practices I see at small video production shops all the time, which basically consist of having a lot of external FireWire drives kicking around with no kind of centralized infrastructure or planning.

I've been posting a bunch about these issues on my blog (see sig).

[Finner]

Im tempted to just run hard-drives and back them up for the first 1-1 1/2 years. with the data storage sector changing so fast in size, format and cost I have a feeling it may be something to sit back and watch. I also mainly plan to shoot commercials and musicvids with my red so my footage amount will be a little less then others.

[Alexis Hanawalt]

What you don't want to do is try to scale up the "data management" practices I see at small video production shops all the time, which basically consist of having a lot of external FireWire drives kicking around with no kind of centralized infrastructure or planning.

You just described exactly where I'm coming from... just finishing editing a feature documentary with 600 hours of HDV footage spanning about 6 Lacie 500's, 6 G-RAID 500's and one 2Tb G-RAID Pro (bought in that order - so things have been getting better...) It's all daisy-chained FW800 into one mac which is just direct-networked to a 2nd editing station with Gigabit Ethernet. The calculated risk is that if a drive goes down, it's a week's worth of re-digitizing. Basically, it's all a result of producers in complete denial about the fact that footage requires storage.

But that all changes when there's nothing to redigitize...

[Nick Shaw]

My intended workflow is to back up to Firewire drives during shooting, then copy to my 1.6TB RAID-5 array on the editing machine, and keep the Firewire drives around during the course of the edit as a 'near-line' backup, hooked up to my old G4 which will be backing them up to LTO for long term storage.

I've asked my re-seller for a quote for an LTO-3 system, and am hoping that the arrival of LTO-4 will make the prices for LTO-3 drop. 400GB is actually quite a convenient size, as it would allow backup of one 320GB RED-DRIVE and (by my quick rough calculations) leave space for a DVCProHD copy of the footage which would be quicker to restore and possibly easier to offline with at a future time. My calculations may be off, and we don't know the exact capacity of a RED-DRIVE in terms of time, but worst case there would certainly be room for a DV copy of the rushes, and that would be universally useful.

[Clayton Harper]

Not LTO, but Quantum's SDLT 600A is a roughly equivalent Mac OSX compatible product that connects to your computer network via GigaBit Ethernet. I have seen it working wth a MacBook Pro as well as tower style Macs.

www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx

Although this site talks a lot about MXF, it works with any type of file....

I like the gigabit ethernet part a lot.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I like the gigabit ethernet part a lot.

Me too. I didn't know they had that.... What would really be handy is if they had GbitE connections on some of their larger autoloader units. This could be a good option for small operations with mixed environments or just those who don't need anything big and don't want to mess with SCSI issues.

[Steen Dongo]

If it helps, we use an Exabyte LTO-3 autoloader with an Atto SCSI card and Retrospect. It's not running on a MacPro, but my suggestion (depending on how much footage you plan to be dealing with) is to buy a used G5 and a single SCSI card. We have a system here that pretty much spends all day backing up or reloading footage (4 hour+ per tape backup).

We've had the unit for 6-8 Months (might be longer not really sure, I'd have to find the bill) and our own productions have used 40+ tapes holding about 14 TB of raw footage. That doesn't include the 25+ tapes that have left the office on client projects (productions we only post).

Also, I highly recommend an autoloader. An IT friend of mine recommended it and I had a hard time biting the bullet on the extra cost at the time, but it's been completely worth every penny.

Data is a pain to deal with.

We've opted for a similar strategy in preparation for the rather large storage requirements of featurefilm in 4K: We've setup a Disk to Disk to Tape backup system - comprising some 8 terrabytes of Raid 60 work disks - the same amount for mirroring the workdisks - and an IBM TS3100 LTO3 autoloader, handling 22 300 GB tapes.

The proces of mirroring from disk to disk works like a charm in the background.
But when we're done with a project, we first transfer the content of the mirror to the tapelibrary - then we erase the mirror and do a restore from tape to the mirror. We then compare the restore to the workdisks and if things are the same, we delete material from the workdisks and make a second tape backup to be stored in another physical location.
It's a bit cumbersome but gives you a nice warm feeling to know things are safe.

Steen Dongo
---------------
PICTUREWISE FILM & TV

[istvanttt]

So I looked at quantum's site and the only thing that worrys me is they only have windows based drivers? anyone have a link for an LTO 3 drive with mac drivers. and card sugestions?

Retrospect works with LTO 3 and Macintosh; SCSI shoiuld be one of the faster (320) ones. I'm now in Italy and don't remember which card I used, but I think all the faster ones should be fine.

BTW when you buy Retrospect buy also the service agreement. The program is a litle be strange in handling, but works very fine.
Have all a nice weekend
Istvan

[Jeff Kilgroe]

All these tape drives from Quantum, Exabyte, etc.. are standard SCSI-3 tape systems and will work with any system without specific drivers. You just need proper backup software. Buying a retail box version of one of these tape systems often gets you Windows backup software (sometimes Mac). However, as others have suggested, look into backup software and choose which software you would like to use to fit your workflow and then choose one of the tape systems. I think you'll find that most tape systems are supported with most decent software. Also don't just assume you're going to connect one of these tape systems directly to a Mac Pro workstation. You may find you're better served by a dedicated backup staging system that runs Windows or Linux and the tape drive interfaces to that.

[Alexis Hanawalt]

If LTO-3 is 400Gb Uncompressed / 800Gb Compressed, what does that mean for storage of video files? I can't find any information on what they mean by "compressed." Is the 2:1 compression an average, or do they litterally mean that every data tape is good for 800Gb?

[Chris Kenny]

If LTO-3 is 400Gb Uncompressed / 800Gb Compressed, what does that mean for storage of video files? I can't find any information on what they mean by "compressed." Is the 2:1 compression an average, or do they litterally mean that every data tape is good for 800Gb?

It's an average. Trying to compress compressed data a second time doesn't accomplish anything, so for backing up REDCODE footage the backup system's compression doesn't do anything of any use.

[Don Woods]

Ok so an interesting question I have. I have never worked with tape before and have alway done manual back ups. I guess my question would be if I just wanted to back up project by project for just that project not everything that is on my Raid. can I use LTO like a drive. Can I just drag files over and off. or do I have to use a back up program?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Ok so an interesting question I have. I have never worked with tape before and have alway done manual back ups. I guess my question would be if I just wanted to back up project by project for just that project not everything that is on my Raid. can I use LTO like a drive. Can I just drag files over and off. or do I have to use a back up program?

This depends on what software you use with your tape system, but yes you can do it this way. Ideally, when you run a tape library, you have an online backup or mirror of your data on a RAID or something. The tape does an automated back-up of that mirror or online backup at a scheduled interval or time. That way, it's mostly transparent.

With larger tape autoloader systems, which don't cost much more than a single slot, desktop tape unit, you can do incremental backups every evening automatically. And then swap out the set of tapes every several days/weeks/etc..

[Don Woods]

Thanks Jeff, So I guess the best idea for my situation would be to make a mirror of just the data for that project or client and have the tape drive back up that mirror only. What software do you recommend for this type of option. I think one day when we are doing more of our own data back up the autoloader would be a must and we would prob do a mirror of our whole raid. But for right now I am looking at more of a client by client back up that we would keep stored in a secure location for a period of time as a reassurance to our clients. and offer a more permanent storage solution for the clients that can't or don't want to do long term back ups of their raw negatives them selfs

[Stuart English]

Quantum do have a tape loader version -

www.quantum.com/Products/Autoloaders/Superloader3a/Index.aspx

I have not tried that specific version, but the desktop drive version works just fine with Mac OSX - its NOT a Windows specific thing. The drive appears as just another drive on your desktop, so yes its drag and drop......

[Jeff Brue]

Just thought I'd chime In as I'm averaging 100 LTO-3 tapes a month now while working with the Viper/Stwo. Really you do want to do a dual tape write out, I got a LTO-3 vendor to admit to me a .1 % chance failure rate, compared to hard drives thats pretty damned good but still you have such a better chance to recover those same missing frames off of a secondary by using standard linux tarmap block sizes. Instead of a mechanical hard drive factor.

Also the ASC archival commitee are evaluating systems like this for vaulting (still very preliminary stuff) but the general concensus is to stick away from closed source (retrospect) for long term archival of a digital negative. Quite the same argument can be used for/against compression but I'll stick out of that for now.

Also a couple other bits of info for uncompressed DPX's that need to be archived such as a final render we've been seeing around 600 GB fit onto an LTO-3 tape.

[Don Woods]

Thanks guys this is very informative I really think this is the best bet for me. And honestly the price for what your getting is not that bad.

Stuart I am really looking at your selection but my question would be would my client be able to find post house that would be able to use this or would they have more luck with LTO

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'd also like to echo what Jeff Brue brought up about closed source for long term backups. This is something that I've personally run into myself and it can be a real problem. 5 years from now if you're restoring an old backup and you suddenly don't have the software used to create it, you could be royally screwed. Always store your data in a standard format either as directly transferred files or use a conventional container format like ZIP that every major OS understands.

Beyond that Retrospect is a good software and I still would recommend it for some uses. In my current backup workflow, I just copy over to VXA2 tape. With larger tape systems I've run in the past, I would create the necessary scripts/macros for the OS to run at the desired times. A bit more setup, but no third-party software and oddball data formats that force you to keep using their software. And also keep hoping that they're still in business and you can still get a copy of the software to run on a current computer in 20 years... Then again, as reliable as tape is if a good backup practices are followed, I still would think that in 20 years the archives would have been re-checked and consolidated onto newer media at least once or twice.

[Damien Molineaux]

Just thought I'd chime In as I'm averaging 100 LTO-3 tapes a month now while working with the Viper/Stwo. Really you do want to do a dual tape write out, I got a LTO-3 vendor to admit to me a .1 % chance failure rate, compared to hard drives thats pretty damned good but still you have such a better chance to recover those same missing frames off of a secondary by using standard linux tarmap block sizes. Instead of a mechanical hard drive factor.

(cut)...

Thanks Jeff for this useful info, however I must admit I'm a bit lost here. Do you have two tape drives in parallel to do a dual tape write out? Do you do your backups off of a Linux system, or can you use linux tarmap blocks with a Mac or PC platform?

Cheers,
Damien

[Nick Shaw]

…for uncompressed DPX's that need to be archived such as a final render we've been seeing around 600 GB fit onto an LTO-3 tape.

But that is uncompressed media. REDCODE will be compressed, and probably fairly efficiently packaged already to keep the datarate down. That probably means that compression during archiving to LTO would have little impact on the data size. I would allow one 400GB LTO tape per RED-DRIVE, and use the remaining 80 odd GB (probably a bit less in reality) for eg an offline codec copy of the same media. A one to one RED-DRIVE to LTO relationship seems a good idea to me to keep things simple.

[Jeff Brue]

Earthling,
The scalar 24 has an automated dual tape backup. Also a couple programs can be used for archival in standard linux tarmaps. The tools themselves are built into most flavors of linux, and Totalus offers totalus tape tools for the mac. I'm sure there are windows softwares out there as well that offer this.

Nick,
As far as initial archival of content a tarmap with archive for redcode files will be fine. But the idea of adding a second layer of compression for archival of a final "digital negative" is really unnerving. That should be in a non company specific image wrapper (ie DPX) I believe in graeme for the initial pass but any additional compression passes and you will be losing quality (and believe me bonding agents once this gets in their ear arn't going to like the idea of that). In any case what you're ultimatly going to be doing is either a 2k or 4k conform and color grading to get it onto a quvis dci package for distribution.

Now here would be an interesting challenge for graeme and the scratch boys. A dci package is in XYZ color space using a similiar (to my knowledge) compression. To avoid the inherent loss of quality by converting to RGB for traditional grading and effects, how about a compression transform from the captured XYZ to a dci compatible projectable image XYZ jpeg 2000. I'd still say write out to 16 bit RGB for long term archival, but it would be interesting to see a shake difference map of two such transformed images.


Jeff Brue
Digital Film Company

[Thomas Mathai]

Thanks Jeff for this useful info, however I must admit I'm a bit lost here. Do you have two tape drives in parallel to do a dual tape write out? Do you do your backups off of a Linux system, or can you use linux tarmap blocks with a Mac or PC platform?

Cheers,
Damien

OS X is unix, so you can use tar, it's in the commandline.

In fact it would be better to tar the tapes you send out since tar is considered an industry standard for archiving.

If you use proprietary software like Retrospect, don't expect anyone else to support it.

If you only plan to do internal archives, then use what you feel works for you and provide media to whomever on firewire drives.

[Jeff Brue]

OSX is unix but it doesn't have the binaries for writing out to tape. So it can TAR but you can't write out.

[Thomas Mathai]

OSX is unix but it doesn't have the binaries for writing out to tape. So it can TAR but you can't write out.

Says who?

If you can mount the tape drive, you can write to it. You just need to know what the driver is called.

It's not hard for anyone who uses unix or linux systems.

There are even free apps like Xtar for those who aren't into using command line.

[Jeff Brue]

Hrm, I'd love to be wrong with this but I don't believe I am.

"Mac OS X includes tar, cpio, and pax utilities, but no native tape device
support mechanisms."

A direct line from Tolis's website, and I spent a couple hours bashing my head trying to get it to work. Again though If I'm wrong I'd love to be corrected.

[Chris Forbes]

Sony's press release on LTO-4

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/b2b/data_media/release/29422.html

No info on compatible hardware though

[gtfx]

You may want to consider using Amanda (Open Source, http://www.amanda.org/) as your backup automation software. Here are some notes on how to use it on OSX (both as a client and a server).

https://webserver.brandeis.edu/pages/view/Bio/AmandaMacOSXCompileNotes

Best,
S.

[Steen Dongo]

Another really cool softwarepackage for crossplatform archival strategy is Archiware from Germany. It is rather pricey but writes tarmap. Basically 3 parts: Backup, Synchronize & Archive.

It's browser based and takes a bit of getting used to but they've got great support. Check them out at http://www.archiware.com :greedy:


Cheers from

Steen Dongo

---------------
PICTUREWISE FILM & TV

[Júlio Taubkin]

Wow, there's quite more to this than I thought...

So assuming I've got a good fast RAID 2 or 3 TB setup for editing, and shoot around 5 Redrives per show. I can just copy them to my RAID after shooting, and Back them up to LTO using finder, or some simple application right? I mean, if I just want LTO to have a master tape somewhere of my raw material, probably never to use it, should I care about back up software, data management or hiring computer geniuses from oracle?

[Dustin Cross]

Aloha,

Has anyone used Tolis Tape Tools for OSX? They are suposed to allow you to use TAR or CPIO to a tape drive in OSX.

http://www.tolisgroup.com/products/macosx/ttt/

It is all command line, but you end up with a tar ball on the tape that any TAR enabled system in the would should be able to read. I would like to find someone who has used it before I buy.


Mahalo,
Dusty

[Jon McCoy]

Aloha,

Has anyone used Tolis Tape Tools for OSX? They are suposed to allow you to use TAR or CPIO to a tape drive in OSX.

http://www.tolisgroup.com/products/macosx/ttt/

It is all command line, but you end up with a tar ball on the tape that any TAR enabled system in the would should be able to read. I would like to find someone who has used it before I buy.


Mahalo,
Dusty

I've got a lot of experience with it's sister product; Tolis BruServer, which is basically a server-client version. I use Tape Tools on my MacBook Pro occasionally - all their products are accessible by the command line whichever edition. Check out their manuals - lots of tools and useful functions.

We've deployed BruServer in quite a few production suites and networks we've designed over the last few years, and found it trouble free, and straightforward. I normally combine it with Adic (now Quantum) Scalar 24 autoloaders, but Tolis' products are compatible with virtually all tape drives and autoloaders.

I'd advise a Disk-Disk-Tape strategy, with mirror RAIDs for working space, stripe RAIDs for archive space and an autoloader for tape backups.

If you've got the budget, look into fibre channel, take a look at Apple Xsan and consider stringing your storage and tape autoloader together with it.

Expensive to begin with, but long term it's robust, and won't let you down when you're up to your neck in it...

Ad.

[nobodySpecial]

Just a little math to remember guys. REDCODE RAW will be about 100GB/hr. ProRes 422 1080@30 will be about another 100GB/hr (if you use that). If you shoot 5hrs in a day, you are talking about 1TB/day... per camera. Two cameras would be three LTO-4 tapes per day. :wacko: And that's just for backup. If you want to actually use it, you will need a primo RAID system. Two cameras could fill up a 10TB Xserve RAID in under two weeks of only RAW or ProRes clips. An option like Xsan (http://www.apple.com/xsan/) is something people are going to have to take a look at.

I wouldn't doubt that, if you shoot and edit tens of hours of footage for each project, that the camera system will be the cheapest thing you have! :ohmy:

-Mark

[Stuart English]

[QUOTE=Stuart English;21506]Not LTO, but Quantum's SDLT 600A is a roughly equivalent Mac OSX compatible product that connects to your computer network via GigaBit Ethernet. I have seen it working wth a MacBook Pro as well as tower style Macs.

www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/DLT/SDLT600A/Index.aspx


I was told that at NAB Quantum announed that this product family would be available with an LTO-3 drive this Summer. Same Gigabit Ethernet interface and Mac / Win deskop compatability.

Details to be confirmed...

www.quantum.com/AboutUs/PressReleases/index.aspx?FullStory=1

[Jon McCoy]

Just a little math to remember guys. REDCODE RAW will be about 100GB/hr. ProRes 422 1080@30 will be about another 100GB/hr (if you use that). If you shoot 5hrs in a day, you are talking about 1TB/day... per camera. Two cameras would be three LTO-4 tapes per day. :wacko: And that's just for backup. If you want to actually use it, you will need a primo RAID system. Two cameras could fill up a 10TB Xserve RAID in under two weeks of only RAW or ProRes clips. An option like Xsan (http://www.apple.com/xsan/) is something people are going to have to take a look at.

I wouldn't doubt that, if you shoot and edit tens of hours of footage for each project, that the camera system will be the cheapest thing you have! :ohmy:

-Mark

The most simple solution to that, is a differential backup. If you backed up everything on a daily basis, your RAID drives will be constantly hammered by the tape drive.

Basically, backup your raw footage to tape once, and then backup your scratch/working space on a differential basis daily. Then, backup your finished project files.

I'm utterly paranoid, and hate deleting source files. This way, you get your cake and half penny - a stack of tapes for your source, a tape a day for working and when you're finished, a few tapes with your project, and for the paranoid, the original stack of source tapes.

[Alexander Black]

I talked with a Quantum guy about that thing - it has an FTP server, which is hilarious :sick: but I suppose makes sense. The whole gige thing is cute n' all but frankly I'd prefer some nice eSATA taps and FW800 with a "proxy volume" setup for OSX/Win/Linux.

Also it was $8k.

AIT5 is higher capacity (it would hold a red drive per tape) and cheaper for the drive:

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Sony_AIT_e1040s_AIT-5_External_Tape_Drive/AITE1040SLE/p/1489278

um, by a lot.

If you're archiving 16TB that's about $0.32/gb. Not bad.
If you're archiving 40TB that's about $0.22/gb.

etc.

[Chris Kenny]

AIT5 is higher capacity (it would hold a red drive per tape) and cheaper for the drive:

http://www.superwarehouse.com/Sony_AIT_e1040s_AIT-5_External_Tape_Drive/AITE1040SLE/p/1489278

um, by a lot.

Yes, but can you really stand the irony of your Red footage ending up on Sony tapes? :devil:

[nobodySpecial]

The most simple solution to that, is a differential backup. If you backed up everything on a daily basis, your RAID drives will be constantly hammered by the tape drive.

I agree that you wouldn't want to do full backups of everything every day. If you shoot only about 10hrs per project, then not a real problem. If you are a broadcaster that shoots 5-10hrs per day every day, then storage will be a real issue. That's all I was talking about. :biggrin:

[Ed Watkins]

I hate to be this guy.. but.. can we have a summary?
I read through the whole thread but I'm still not sure what the main viable options are, especially at what price points.

If someone who actually knows something about storage (rather than myself having a ham fisted stab at it) could do this I'd be in their debt for ever.