That's interesting, JJK. Were those nearly new HD's? Would you consider your use of HD's or your setup particularly demanding with respect to the normal use a hard drive is subjected to?

How many hard drives do you use in your setup? How many computers?

Eleven assorted drive failures is more than double the number of hard drives in my system at any given time.

Given your dismal experience with hard drives, what method do you use to ensure preservation of your data?

Thanks for sharing.

Caruso

Sometimes I leave out important details. Have four computers, one is mom's,(2 ide)
Computer one has 2 scsi's and 2 ide's, computer two has 1 ata133 and 6 scsi's,
computer three has 2 ata's and 2 medea 26 gig scsi's one of which is in the factory
being repaired at this very moment with 5 video TS files that of course are
in the land of non-existance. Since I keep a DVD copy (no copy protection) of all
the movies I copy them back to another hard drive (copy-paste)(and/or Prassi) and I'm back in
business. The original footage is all backed up on mini dv tapes however the
in-between stuff (veg files) are all deleted. I usually copy everything via
s-video through the JVC JX S700 to the Panasonic DV-1000 in S-video position
then switch it to DV and capture to Vegas via firewire. What I am saying is
nothing much happens to the DVD discs (no labels)short of fire, heat, fingerprints,
etc. They are supposed to last 100 years so they say but the main problem is
there will be no software around to play them. I am not a pro yet and am still
learning VV-3 with V-4 on order. This is my retirement hobby and the shear
complexity of the software keeps me going knowing that it is very possible that
I will never know the full extent of the VV-3 let alone V-4.

JJK

Curiosity: Can't you just archive the project, graphics, audio clips and batch capture list on a CD-ROM? Once you have the batch capture file, you can recapture from originals in a identical way to the first edit.

Gilles

We use a DLT tape drive to archive Vegas projects. A Type IV DLT tape has 40-gig native capacity and the tapes are about $40 each. They are sufficient to archive one of our projects in its entirety, i.e. source footage, VO, music beds, graphics, the pertinent .veg files . . . everything.

I actually make two per project. One we keep on-site and the other we keep off-site. In addition to this, we output the finished "movie" to a couple of DVCPRO tapes (output via a IEEE-1394 to SDI converter box from PROMAX called a DA-MAX+) to a Panasonic AJ-D850 DVCPRO edit deck. We just feel this is prudent as a measure to ensure "something" can be retrieved in the event of failure of the data tapes (they have proven in the computer industry to be very, very safe - banks and such use them). Of course this would mean a generation loss if it came to occur, but internal tests have shown this loss to be extremely insignificant. The more serious problem would be loss of an editable version in which case we could (if there were sufficient need) resort to re-loading the source tapes. Again, one DVCPRO master is stored on-site and the other off-site. We also use two Type I 10-gig DLT tapes ($15 each) and output the DDP 2.0 Master (from the Sonic ReelDVD software) of the completed (authored) DVD itself; again, one is stored on-site and the other is shipped to the replicator (which they henceforth keep in their vault) as an off-site backup. There is, of course, also a duplicated DVD (created on our DVD burner as opposed to replicated) of the final authored program. Naturally, once the replicated disks enter inventory, we have many backups.

This is a workable system for us. However, whichever method of backup you implement, I feel it behooves you to evaluate your actual needs vs. perceived needs. I.e. if your business is making wedding videos, I (personally) wouldn't bother making as many backups as we do since the requirements for dubs of the program is both infrequent and not very lucrative. If, on the other hand, you replicate DVDs by the thousands (as we do) then the loss of a program would have a significant impact on the balance sheet. In this type of case, more rigerous backup measures needs be taken.

For what it's worth, tapes of my child growing up are extremely valuable to me and once digitized into Vegas have the exact same backup measures as those I've outlined above for our commercial work. As in all things, strive for balance and you'll be OK.

John Beech - GM (and janitor)
www.modelsport.com

Since 1978 I had the following number of drive failures:

NONE*.

* not counting several failures on the interface card of 3 Maxtor firewire drives, a total piece of junk, not the drive, the stupid cheesy interface card.

Also available is a small external device from WiebeTech. It has a firewire connection on one side and ATA Disk connection on the other side (110 volt power transformer optional). I bought one and plugged it to a spare Maxtor 40 gig that's lying loose on my desktop. Windows 2000 and XP both recognise the disk and assign it the next available drive letter. Then I can copy any files or folders as needed. Unplug that drive, plug to another and it's almost like using removable cartridges. Used successfully with 40, 60, and 80 gig Maxtors and Western Digitals. Watch the stores for cheap drives. Have had some problem formatting 1 drive. Had best success installing and formatting as normal internal slave drive and then hooking to the external adapter. (I don't have any connection to WiebeTech - it just seems to be a good product for extra storage.)At my company Maxtor has replaced any drive that's failed within the warranty period and has proper paperwork.

This may have promise and works on XP. Looks like version 1, but might be worth following
http://www.dvstreamer.com/

I like the DVStreamer solution, if at least for My Documents. My My Documents now contains about 6 gigs of data and it's a hassle to have to divide it up between two DVD disks. Because it's already mirrored on my firewire drive, this would be a great way to do the monthly My Documents backup. Looks like you can evaluate for 1 month, then download the release and use that for another month before buying.

I spent some time looking at it AFTER I opened my mouth. It looks like it has some serious problems. It will not save subsequent files after the first. (Edit: It will, but the trick is you have to close and open the application for each subsequent file)

Sorry I did not check it out properly before mentioning. A shame really as it seemed to be just what I was looking for. Maybe it is just my machine or future versions will correct problems.

The author seems responsive to any problem report, so this may be something to keep an eye in next versions.

Plmdhale--I recently purchased a Maxtor 100 gig drive to install in my Pyro 1394 enclosure. For the life of me, I could not get XPPro to recognize that drive so that I could properly prepare it. According to what I read in the XP help file, I should have been able to invoke Diskpart, then List Volume, select that disk to train XP's focus on it, and then partition/format the drive.

I went so far as to remove the drive and plug it into another computer so that I could use the supplied MaxBlast preparation disk to partition the drive. Still, no recognition from XP when I moved the drive back to the Pyro enclosure.

The only way I got that drive to work was to fully format it in the other computer before moving it to the Pyro. After that, XP saw it and it worked fine.

Did I miss something?

Just curious.

Caruso

You definitely "missed something", as I have formatted a half dozen drives in my Pyro firewire setup - but - duhhh - am at home and don't remember what the steps are. I'll pick up this thread tomorrow from office. It's easy to do, but definitely not intuitive. Just wanted to give you some hope... 'til tomorrow.

>>Did I miss something?

1 Control panel
2 Performance and Maintenance
3 Administrative tools
4 Computer Management
5 storage
6 Disk Management
7 Action
8 scan disks

From here you should be able to make an active partition on the drive in question. Sorry for the round about process, hope this helps. :-)

Thanks,

Shawn