Archiving great masses of data

A couple of days ago I mentioned in passing a deal that Amazon had on a 2TB external drive. Chris, who blogs at _mxr blog, added a pointer to a post he'd written on his blog about how he handles archiving video data: My 7D/5D backup workflow.

Chris uses a SATA docking station - which lets you plug in bare internal drives - to archive material. He also bought an eSATA card for his MacPro as it's about 7 times faster than the USB connection (his unit has both eSATA and USB connections.) He then keeps the units in a draw in his desk.

It's actually a method of archiving that I've considered, and I may still get one to manage archiving work files. One thing that held me back was that I am concerned about using external units for day to day work; I figured that being more exposed to dust (and hands), they may be more likely to fail.

I also like being able to move drives around from location to location easily.

Frankly, I'm also concerned about the long term viability of hard drives, whether internal or external. I really wonder how long a drive can be expected to remain operational: I wouldn't be surprised if ten years later the drives didn't spin up. I've even heard some people say that drives need to be spun up every few months or they die prematurely.

And I'm even more concerned about optical media; or I'd rush out and buy a Blu-ray drive.

So as you can see, I don't really know what I'm doing. At the moment, I'm keeping two copies (on two separate drives) of all the originals (photos, AVCHD files.)


LINKS





HDSLR travel gear
While you're checking out Chris's blog, check out the entry: My HDSLR travel gear. He has a great picture of a nice set of gear...

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