What is the best, quickest, easiest, cheepest way to archive the footage from the EX3?? Literally archiving 50 to 60 hours a week of EX3 footage, What would you do?? THX

That much footage has to be hard drive for archive.

Paul.

I agree with Paul...

Terabyte drives -- one set for main archive, another duplicate set for backup if you are feeling the need.

I can't do the math in my head this morning to tell you how many TB's to get, but I would think you're safe getting 2TB drives. My guess would be (2 x 2TB drives)

I won't name brands, because that will start a flame war against one or the other. Hell, just saying that may set someone off.

best.

Cheapest way is hard drives. There is no such thing as a 2 tb drive-- largest capacity drive is 1.5 tb. Buying a commercial drive raided to 2 tb raises your risk. Best bet is to buy 1 tb drives plus a removable enclosure such as one sold by Wiebetech. Pop in a raw drive, write to it, toss it back into its anti-static bag, save in a secure location and pray that it does not fail.

Most secure, bondable and durable archival solution-- LTO tape. Yes. Expensive. Piece of mind-- priceless.

I archive to a Drobo and so far is working pretty well.

Here is the link: Data Robotics, Inc. (http://drobo.com/)

i agree, hard drives is the way to go for now.

my plan (and I dont shoot any where NEAR 50 hours a week) is to archive to HD's then as the video gets older, and less relevant, start dumping tose to blu-ray. but all current files will stay accesible on HD's

I have been shooting on 8GB cards and, as well as backing up to HDDs, have been copying each card to dual-layer DVD+R. I'm sure these won't last for ever, but I'm certain that hard drives don't either.
<irony> When my next MacBook Pro arrives complete with Blu-Ray burner </irony> I'll be writing 16GB cards to Blu-Ray.

Which millenium a are you talking about? ;-)

I use a Windows Home Server (WHS), and it works great. You can connect it with Gigabit ethernet, and it will also back up any Windows PCs. You can store files redundantly without having to worry about configuring (or paying for) a RAID system... just specify that you want duplication for a particular folder, and WHS does the rest. Some folks have configured WHS with tens of terabytes. If you get a motherboard with eSATA ports, you could connect external drive enclosures.

In other words, you should back up to hard drives... but if you want to be sure you won't lose your files, you need to have redundancy (spare copies).

You can buy a WHS, or build one. Some companies like Nivius make systems for folks like us who need a lot of storage. If you build it, use a case that holds lots of hard drives, and a good quiet, energy efficient power supply. I built one with a 35 watt TDP Athlon X2 which was only about $50, and it's whisper quiet.

There are other advantages to a server... your files are online and immediately accessible, and you have a single place where multiple PCs can access the same files. The WHS also has a web server component, and you can access your files through the web.