Best way to back up a JBOD off site?

[-eric-]

Hello - What is the consensus on the best way to keep a backup of a big drive box off-site? Does one keep an entire drive box and shuttle it back and forth? Or, if just drive caddies are moved back and forth, what is the best way to facilitate re-synching them?

Cheers,

Eric

[peterkrogh]

Eric,
a couple thoughts:

What I do is to drop the buckets onto backup drives that live off-site.  Only the most current backup drive comes back on-site on a weekly basis to get recent work added.  All drives come back on-site periodically for data validation.  I'll post some thoughts on that soon.

I generally do not re-sync the backups since it's not necessary for me.  All metadata gets backed up by backing up the iView catalogs.  As to RAW file adjustments, for me most of this work is done by the time the images get into the archive they have a pretty good adjustment.  The ones that get further adjustments are generally getting these because they are being turned into Master Files.  In these cases, the Master File (and its derivatives) become the most adjusted version of the file, so I am not so concerned with saving the second round of ACR tweaks.

Essentially, there is a risk/benefit assessment that I do.  I weigh the risk of losing this ACR work against the possibility of introducing corruption to the backups (by remounting and re-syncing), and I come down on the side of file integrity of the backups.  THis works for me becuase I do a pretty good job adjusting files before I make DNGs and archive the files.

I hope we are not too far off from being able to harvest and save adjustment metadata with DAM software, so that it can be saved out just like the informational metadata.

There are other strategies, but that is mine...
Peter

[-eric-]

Are these Image files?

Is most of it getting put away and then does not get adjusted again, or is material routinely getting changed after it has been archived?

I'd suggest that he's in the market for an 8-bay  Burly box or two, filled with 750's. 

I think a duplicate set of 750's would be the first backup.  I'd use something like Chronosync or SuperDuper to automatically back this stuff up as drives get filled.  I don't know the tape drive landscape, but I assume that this would be the best option for the third copy.  I guess Blu-ray is possible as well.

Yes, these are image files. His current workflow is to download his cards from a shoot to a folder on his "ingesting" G4. This is typically 15-20 GB of data, from multiple cameras. Then they get lined up according to date/time from the EXIF data and renamed with a new unique identifier. At this stage they get burned to write once media and copied to an external FW drive. The problem is where to put this ever-growing archive, and then how to back this up.

I'm currently pitching a 5 bay Sonnet Fusion enclosure (the port multiplier is attractive to me) filled with 500 GB drives, with the possibility of additional trays and drives for off-site backup. That will give him two drives for originals, two for derivatives, and another drive for working backup if necessary (the 1 TB internal RAID is already getting backed up regularly to an external 1 TB RAID). Not sure if this is going to be enough! But the price difference between 500 and 750 GB drives is significant. Thoughts?

I think tape is still a good cold storage solution, but for quick access nothing is faster than a HD. Steve says there is some new longevity data about drives that are shelved for extended periods of time? I'd be interested in seeing that.

Thanks!

-eric-

[peterkrogh]

Looks like a pretty good plan.  The only things I would say:

He should not need the same derivative space as original, probably.  Especially if you use DNG (and the "pretty good print" is wrapped into the DNG), the only derivative files to keep are master files, and it is generlly not possible to create these at the same rate as original files.

I would also be taking a look at 750 rather than 500.
Peter

[-eric-]

Thanks again Peter! We'll try for the 750's...

-eb-