What are you doing for additional storage ?

Stonefield wrote on 2/7/2006, 1:17 AM
Long question with a reward at the end...

Storage has become so cheap these days. For us video folks, this has been quite the blessing. My tech guru who does no video editing scoffed at my purchase of my 250 gig capture drive. "What on earth are you gonna put on that ?" Heh....little does he know how much space DV Video takes up. ( And I'm sure it's tenfold with HDV )

We've now got massive 300-500 gig drives both internal, external and networked. USB 2.0 connection, Firewire and sometimes even both. I'm sitting here with a Maxtor One Touch II 300 gig external drive. Not only does it have both USB and Firewire, but the thing just looks damn cool. It's not mine, a regular new client bought it to store what I shoot for him on it. ( smart guy)

I saw the 500 gig version now advertised for about $415 Cnd. My guru says to don't bother, just buy a external box that you can put whatever hardrive you want into it. He might have a point. Two 300 gig drives are cheaper than that one 500 gig. But I'm not sure if I can get that nice USB and Firewire duo connection.

What I'm looking for with external storage is a couple things, and this is maybe where you can help me. I want as many gigs as possible. Can't have enough. I'm looking for both USB and Firewire connection for compatibility. Ideally what I'd want to use this drive ( or THESE drives ) for are to store as much of my footage ( yes THAT footage! ) as possible. I also want to use this as a media source for all of my sound FX, Acid Loops, Songs, Stills, etc. A central place I can look at for when I want to edit something together. Some place where everything is localized to one or two drives so I don't have to keep recapturing or hunting down for whatever discs I've put them on.

So .....

How do you guys store stuff you keep using ? Internal drives ? External ? What connection ? What are the advantages of those NETWORKED drives ? Does your external drive wear your favorite color ? ( kidding )

Just thought I'd ask what you guys are doing for your storage....

.....thanks in advance.
And to make up for the long winded question......here's some bikinis -> -> ->

Swimsuit Fashion Show


Thanks....

Stan

...Man HTML is a pain in the arse.

Comments

farss wrote on 2/7/2006, 2:56 AM
We just put drives in cheap caddies. We also have an external USB / Firewire enclosure with a draw for the caddies in it so we hook the same drives in caddies upto laptops. Typically we have a drive for each client, very simple arrangement.
Bob.
Xander wrote on 2/7/2006, 4:19 AM
Currently I have a couple of internal drives and a firewire drive. However, what I am looking at now, is network attached storage. You can get 1TB for $800, which if you run as RAID 5, you get 750GB. Personally, as you store more and more data, some form of data protection is necessary. Losing a 250 or 500 GB drive full of data would make most people cry. Still doing a bit more research into this. Would rather get more than 1 TB, but do not want the cost of SCSI RAID.
LarryP wrote on 2/7/2006, 4:25 AM
Has anyone had luck with quiet and cool caddies? I have some with the fan in the bottom, cools well but noisy. After spending time and money to quiet down the PC, 2 of these are quite fatiguing after a couple of hours.

Larry
TeetimeNC wrote on 2/7/2006, 4:33 AM
Stan, re your comment about your friend and the 500Gb drive... I remember sitting with an IBM friend in my living room when the IBM PC XT was first announced and we were trying to figure out how you would ever use up 10 Mb of hard disk space ;-).

Today, I do pretty much the same as Farss. I have a Tb of storage in my editing PC. One of the is a removable in a caddie. I also have an external Firewire with a caddie mounted in it. I don't do nearly as much video as you, so I am able to keep all my resources on a single 250Gb with room to spare. It is one of the permanent drives.

Not sure about this but I believe when I was considering network drives that none of the affordable ones supported NTFS. I think NTFS Dynamic Volumes would be nice on a video editing network. As I understand it, Dynamic Volumes let you combine multiple drives into one logical drive.

-jerry
DavidMcKnight wrote on 2/7/2006, 4:35 AM
Around Jan 1 I rebuilt my editing PC and took the old motherboard, cpu, ram and put it in a full tower case along with 4 removeable drive bays as the heart of a networked file server. The idea is that every project gets its own drive. I currently have about 6-7 drives, from 200 - 300 GB each. Also in the tower are two dvd writers and two internal drives, the C system drive and another drive that holds reusable constant material, such as audio, loops, animations, etc. as well as business files, contracts, and whatnot.

So far it is working very well. The model is that each project gets its own drive, when the project has been delivered the drive comes out and goes on the shelf until all drives have been cycled. When the drive comes to the top of the stack (several months later, at our rate of production), if there's no reason to keep the material on the drive it is wiped and started fresh. (We always archive veg files and finished masters, as well as src minidv tapes). Were we doing HDV work I imagine we'd archive all footage onto a drive and store it offsite or at least not reuse it, and just factor the drive cost into the project price.

Hope that helps -
David


<edit> I'm still using all IDE drives, which means I have to reboot the fileserver to swap them out. I also use extra IDE controllers so each drive is on it's own channel. Newer SATA drives may allow for a simpler configuration and I think they are hot-swappable.
SonicClang wrote on 2/7/2006, 4:40 AM
First computer I owned didn't come with a hard drive, you had to boot the operating system off a disk every time you started it up.

The first pentium computer I had came with a 1 gig drive!!! I didn't know what I was going to do with all that space. haha.

Just last week I bought a 250 gig drive because I've got this really big video I'm making for a lady, and my other drive is just about filled up with my own stuff. If you're looking for performance, I wouldn't get a USB or Firewire or external drive. Obviously if you're only looking for performance and money isn't an object, get SCSI. But for most people a standard 7200 RPM parrallel hard drive will work just fine. One step up from the parrallel is the serial ATA, I believe it pushes a couple more MB for second, but it's not a HUGE difference, plus you need a pretty new computer with ATA on the motherboard.

I wish I could have gotten a bigger hard drive, but this was all I could afford for now. I'd love a terra drive, but for every gig of storage I need that same amount in backup media, and that would get expensive. As of right now I'm backing stuff up on DVD's.
Chienworks wrote on 2/7/2006, 5:04 AM
Back a few moons ago, i bought myself an Apple //gs. I actually wrote an NLE for it in Applesoft Basic and 65816 assembler ... but that's a long story that i won't go into. I had two (yes, count them, two!) 800KB 3.5" floppy drives and i loaded the thing with as many of the largest RAM chips i could stuff into it. Then people would look at the thing and say, "That's cool. How much memory do you have?" I'd respond "1.25MB". Invariably the next comment was, "Oh, you have a hard drive?"

I had that conversation verbatim with at least 50 people. *shrug* I guess to most folks that magic abbreviation "MB" was too big to be attached to mere RAM. But even back then, a 1.25MB hard drive would have been abysmally small. Apple was selling a 30MB drive at that time. I almost bought one too ... but it was $550, just a bit too rich to make it worthwhile. It's amazing that i can now buy a drive 10,000 times that size for 1/4 the price!
craftech wrote on 2/7/2006, 6:28 AM
Stan,
I archive Veg files and just recapture as needed. What isn't on DVD I store on a hard disk, but I buy the cheapest ones that are usually smaller and disconnect them when they are full. The 120-200GB drives are cheap, especially with a rebate. I paid $35 for my last two 120GB drives. I always buy the same brand (WD) so I don't have a problem just hooking it back into the computer if I need to. Currently I use a 3 HD setup. A 40GB drive for programs and two 120GB drives for the rest. Remove and replace as needed. Cheap and simple. As you keep buying the more expensive larger ones at a high price, the smaller ones get MUCH cheaper. Very cost effective.

Stan,
I sent you an e-mail asking you about actor's demo reels a month ago. I know you don't have samples up on your website yet so I asked you if you had any links to good ones or any pointers. You never answered. Did you not get the e-mail? For ME anyway, an answer to that question would be better than a bikini video. Wink!

Regards,
John
Stonefield wrote on 2/7/2006, 8:29 AM
Sorry bout that.....re-send the email and I'll answer any questions I can....

Stan
johnmeyer wrote on 2/7/2006, 9:34 AM
I too buy drives with rebates. Usually about $40. Then I get an el-cheapo USB enclosure, usually about $30, including shipping.

On the enclosure noise, if you don't mind the size, get the 5.25 (big) enclosures. The fans are quieter, and it's a lot easier to mount the drive. You can also much more quickly remove the drive and put another one in, if you want to put the drives on the shelf when they're full.
Dach wrote on 2/8/2006, 7:18 AM
First I always like to reflect on technology that I have used. My fist computer was a 286 / 40 MB hard drive / 1 MB RAM and that was in 1989. I had this program from a unknown company called AutoDesk... for animation. Didn't know what I was doing at the time, but always ask the question "What if I stuck with it". Anyway...

I have not gone with external storage yet but foresee that as a future option. My goal when building my editing system was to get a server size case... that would support a number of internal drives.

I like to use Seagate drives, have had good luck with them and they offer a 5 year warranty. I must share, I have had very positive experience with Maxtor customer service. Right now I am running 6 hard drives... combination of ATA and SATA formats. Going on 4 years with this confirguration and have had no serious problems. (yes the system is loud... but I am used to it.)

The future looks interesting for storage. The manufactures of course has been converting to SATA drives which has led to great deals for ATA drives. My understanding is that ATA drive limitations have been reached with the 400 and 500 GB drives. This is introducing a new technology where we will see the method of storing data will go vertically on platters instead of horizontally. This will allow them to get "X" amount more perhaps creating the 600 GB etc drives.

Until Holographic Storage becomes more practical... we're stuck with the tried and true.
craftech wrote on 2/12/2006, 3:48 PM
Sorry bout that.....re-send the email and I'll answer any questions I can....

Stan
==========
It's been 5-6 days since I sent the second e-mail Stan. You haven't provided a link in your profile so I went to your website and e-mailed you from there just like I did last time.
Seems like you aren't receiveing them or I am sure you would have taken the time to answer.

Regards,
John
craftech wrote on 2/13/2006, 8:20 PM
Thanks Stan........will do

John

PS: Please delete the address you posted and maybe put it up in your profile before the spam robots find it here and target you.
Stonefield wrote on 2/14/2006, 10:22 PM
Good point here....thanks....
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 2/15/2006, 2:54 AM
Internal Drives in External encolsures.

Also - I usually say Firewire over USB if you have the option and then there's always the External Tower Bay of SATA RAID arrays that can connect via a PCMCIA laptop card for my laptop :)

Dave