RAID backup plan?

[Darryn Carroll]

Agree? Disagree? Thoughts....

Reading up on RAID for backup and storage and although my current workflow may be a bit clunky for some, it generally works for me,

1) Ingest tape to desktop after each wedding, resulting in about 30 gb.
2) Transfer via network cable to laptop
3) Edit and complete project
4) Backup/Store on external drive

If i setup a RAID device, it would change my step 4 to transfer to the RAID drive and if set to RAID1, I would now have 2 identical drives in case 1 fails. Unfortunately, nothing will really allow me to lose the network cable since transferring via wireless network would be too painful.

Am I thinking correctly?

[Edward Carlson]

Why are you not editing on the desktop? Network transfers are slow. Why not just plug the drive into your laptop?

Yes, RAID1 will give you drive failure redundancy.

[Adrian Tan]

Sounds like you currently have two copies of the data, one on desktop and one on laptop; and then you archive to an external drive.

I think you should have at least one offsite backup in case of theft/fire/flood; and if you were paranoid enough you'd also have an offsite backup of the finished product in case anyone asks for extra DVDs later.

[Jody Arnott]

My thoughts -

Personally I think RAID 10 is a better option. It basically combines RAID 0 and 1, so you get striping (for performance) and mirror (for redundancy).

With 4 hard drives in RAID 10, you can potentially lose 2 drives and still be able to recover the data.

That's how I do it. I also regularly copy data onto 2 separate external hard drives, and use 1 as an offsite backup. RAID should never be used as a primary backup, if the RAID controller fails it can often be impossible to recover the data without using an identical controller.

[Danny O'Neill]

Your backup/store/archive doesn't need to be RAID. Its a waste of space. Raid should be for your Tier 1 requirements, your live data.

Remember, RAID 1 is a mirror. So what if you make a mistake and delete something or overwrite it? That change is instantly made to the other copy. Same goes for data corruption, happens to one, happens to both.

Also, what if the unit fails? Fire, theft? Both copies gone.

Our strategy in short is.

1) capture to RAID5 network storage
2) Automatic backup runs that night to external drive
3) After each job we run an offsite backup to external drive, stored offsite

We have a full detailed write up here STORAGE AND BACKUPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES, PHOTOGRAPHERS AND FILMMAKERS | Minty Slippers

[Darryn Carroll]

Thanks for all the replies everyone!

First question, why am I editing on laptop and not desktop?
I like portability and mobility of the laptop, instead of being stuck in my dungeon office, i take over the kitchen and/or dining room table when editing and producing final projects :)

Second note, I actually forgot to mention a step, as I edit on laptop, i constantly backup to portable external drive #1. Once I believe client is satisfied and project is finished, I dump that drive onto my archive drive #2. So during the editing stages, I have files on laptop and drive #1 as backup.

What I think I am risking is this, I have 3 years of weddings on a single 2tb drive and if that drive fails everything is gone. I do however burn a DVD of the final DVD and store in a huge case logic storage binder.

I was not too worried when SD, since I had both the drive and a backup DVD, but now I just wonder if a bride asks me 6 months from now for a Blu ray.

I dont imply that I save backups of clients weddings, but naturally it would be quite convenient and professional if I was contacted years later I could provide dupes.

[Danny O'Neill]

Originally Posted by Darryn Carroll

I dont imply that I save backups of clients weddings, but naturally it would be quite convenient and professional if I was contacted years later I could provide dupes.

Does your pricing factor in lifetime storage?

[Darryn Carroll]

Originally Posted by Danny O'Neill

Does your pricing factor in lifetime storage?

Was just discussing this with my wife! No, not on website and not in contract. In fact, when I mail out package I always note that Blu rays are not available after 60 days. Perhaps I should just note that "backups and storage is not provided, copies and duplicates not available after 60 days". I could offer a portable drive with files as backup, sell, sell, sell....

[Darren Levine]

sharing my setup:

mediasonic 4 bay esata raid box in raid 10

that was the scratch drive but using green slow drives, so now have added the m500 960gb ssd as the scratch drive. new files are put onto both the raid and the ssd, once the edit is finished it gets deleted off the ssd

[Taky Cheung]

RAID is a harddirve redundancy scheme. It is not meant to be for backup purpose. For archiving, I would just store two copies to bare 3.5HDD and store offline in two different location. Then sign up a cloud storage like Crashplan to store a third copy.

[Jody Arnott]

Originally Posted by Taky Cheung

RAID is a harddirve redundancy scheme. It is not meant to be for backup purpose. For archiving, I would just store two copies to bare 3.5HDD and store offline in two different location. Then sign up a cloud storage like Crashplan to store a third copy.

No it's not meant for backup, but it's a good compromise.

I edit to an external RAID 10 array, so my projects are constantly being saved to multiple hard drives. The likelihood of two drives failing at once (ignoring external factors like power surges, theft, etc) is extremely slim, close to impossible.

I then do nightly backups to another external hard drive, plus my project files (not the media) get synced to Dropbox.

RAID is a good "on the fly" backup. It's impossible to constantly save data to multiple sources, so RAID helps in the mean time.

[Taky Cheung]

Yeah you can think of it that way for RAID-1. But RAID-0 is stripping for performance. RAID-5 is another way of protecting from harddrive failure. Thus, RAID in general is not meant to be for backup purpose.

By backup files, say like if one version is deleted, you can still retrieve a previous backup version from another source. For RAID-1 or RAID-10, if a file is deleted permanently (or overwritten), it is gone. There isn't another backup source you can get it back. So it is dangerous to think of RAID-1 or RAID-10 as backup.

[Dan Burnap]

As a side note I'd like to share my experience with cloud based backup

I have a backup off all my data which I keep onsite. I really liked the idea of a cloud backup and trying "JustCloud" what a nightmare that is.

First off, back ups super slow even though I purchased the 'high speed' backups extra. The time it would take to back up a 200GB wedding project, the client would have had their DVDs for weeks and the project no longer needed. So I quickly abandoned the the idea of backing up tier one live project data (the main reason for embarking on this solution) and just started backing up regular data.

Now after assuming I could backup as much as I like as my package is advertised as 'unlimited backup' they recently stopped me backing up new files (without telling me) and after enquiring (2 day wait from support) they are siting 'fair use' and I have delete a load of stuff. Massive waste of time.

It would be good but at the moment cloud is not a good solution.

[Nigel Barker]

My strategy is to offload cards to RAID5 storage on Synology DS1511+ NAS device which then synchronises across to another RAID5 array on another DS1511+ device. The NAS devices are accessed over GB Ethernet. All video files are then copied to a RAID5 box hooked up by eSATA on the Mac Pro edit machine. The working directory including all the video files & the project files are synched across to another RAID5 box on the same Mac Pro. So I have four copies of all the original video files & two copies of the project working files. The Premiere Pro project file is copied to the cloud (typically it's only a few MB).

Completed projects including all source files & Blu-ray & DVD images are copied to two different external disk drives.

[Taky Cheung]

I use Crashplan. Mu home upstream is slow. It takes about 2 weeks to have one wedding raw files uploaded. But I have a computer on 24x7. So just let it do slowly in the background.

I also have Synology 1511+. Love it :)