Building my own external What do you guys DO???

[BigLu]

So I am running threw Hard Drives like crazy. by the TB.
As a D.I.T.
I am backing up productions footage on my drives.
Chances are they will not call me for the backup ever.
But i want to be there for them incase there is an OH SHIT DAY.

Currently I have been buying the Maxtor 1.5 TB externals 3-400 Bucks and Seagate 1TB external drives $239.00 Costco.

Now
I just want to build my own.


My general thought is to buy a 1 TB seagate Sata drive from Antarescomputinginc
specs
Seagate ST31000340AS Seagate 1TB SATA II 3Gb/s Desktop Hard Drive 7200RPM 32MB Cache 7200.11 Series Bulk Pack. Part#: ST31000340AS 5 Years Warranty
for $156.00

And placing that into a nice Aluminum Enclose External case with fan, FW 800/400
cost est $60.00

Then i can just replace my Seagates as soon as i fill each of them up.
If i need something form then i plop it into my External case.
Ect.

Any good suggestions out there would be appreciated.

This is generally just backup and fast to move into an Intel Mac when necessary.

+
Can i put 2 or 3 TB of drives into an External.
I do not want to Raid it or anything I just want see what my options are.


Thanks.

[Sarah C.]

Hey BigLu,

Just buy yourself a RAID tower that supports hot-swapping and data rebuilding (RAID 1) and add drives as you go? Or invest in a BluRay burner and backup to 50gb discs?

Personally, I wouldn't want to get into being a data-archivist though! If you want to keep a recent production on your drives that's one thing.

~S

[Joel Kaye]

For safety backups I just use bare drives hooked to a Vantech USB2 to Sata adapter. I suppose you could make it more complicated but I don't see a reason to for my own purposes. But a fast enclosure that was very easy to pop drives in and out of would be better I guess.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

If I was going to step it up I think it would be a 2 drive mirrored enclosure that had no tool/no cable swappable ports.

[William Wedig]

I just got two RAID towers from MacGurus and they work great so far. They also clued me in on a program called Sync X Pro (I'm using Sync X Plus cause it was 30 bucks vs 100 bucks and I don't need the additional features of Sync X Pro) which will automatically back up footage or sync two arrays together.

The towers are Burly 6 Bay Dual PM and are hot swappable, meaning on every new production just buy a bunch of 1tb drives and you're set to pop (Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 come as low as $175 per terabyte).

Someone else on the board clued me into these guys and I was very impressed. Talk to Rick, he's a good dude.

Here's the links:
http://www.macgurus.com/
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=Seagate+7200.11&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&cid=4820642517865651889&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&resnum=3&ct=result#ps-sellers

PS: The dimensions of the towers are actually quite small compared to what I was expecting. Less than half the size of a MacPro tower. I bet the 4 bays would be perfect to set up two 2tb RAID 0 Arrays and use sync X Pro to back them up.

[BigLu]

Thank you LilRed.
I like the RAID 1 idea how ever its more for safety and just to have it.
Bare drive in and out of an external at the moment is what im feeling.

Joe I love your method but USB is too slow for the amount of DATA im moving.
If i can find a cable like that that pushes FW800 or 400 ill jump on it.

But thanks Joe i am buying one of these cables no matter what its just so affordable.
And serves my purposes.

[Paul Hazlett]

What I am doing is buying smaller drives in bulk and making them raid 1
in a firmtek sata drive enclosure I already had. if the drives are just going to sit on a shelf you don't need anymore space then what your archiving.

For 80 bucks you can get 2 WD satas and have 320 gigs backed up

[Joe Gill]

At some point you should look at a tape drive - they're SATA/SAS capable and also <$100 per 800GB tape, and are a lot easier to catalog than drives and less prone to failure. How are you tracking what is on what drive? Eventually you wil want to pull something, and may not have enough time to look on all the drives. It can be as simple as an excel sheet or as complicated as pilotware... It will be a loss when in 5 years, you no longer have a sata connector on your computer or usb2 and then find your data on the drives are gone after you updated your inerfaces... If you are going to keep drives, why not just build giant 0+1 raids and keep them live?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Take a look at LTO tape. Industry (as in IT / Data Archive industry) standard. Unlike hard drives, they are designed to be stored on shelves for long periods of time. You can buy individual LTO-4 800GB tapes for just under $75, even less if buying quantities of 20 or more at a time.

I recommend one or two good HDD RAID systems for redundant "live" storage and then archive to LTO tape. Tape works out cheaper than drives too when archiving massive amounts of data.

I'm in agreement with most of what Joe wrote above. The only thing I don't necessarily agree with is the connections and interfaces becoming outdated. That's not going to happen as readily as a lot of people like to claim. After all, I can still pick up a 20 year old IDE drive and connect it to most any current PC / Mac. The odds of that drive actually still operating properly are very slim, but the interface will connect and work.

Regardless of whether you're using HDDs or tape for backup, always make at least two copies and store them in different locations.