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Photo Forum / Digital Photography / DSLR Cameras / August 2005Please Share Your MultiMedia Storage Strategies?
I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a desire to host my own website. I want to de-couple the storage and backup of this increasingly priceless library from the PCs where's it currently stored (currently a deskside and a laptop, on a home LAN). I'm looking for suggestions/strategies for designing a home multimedia storage solution that will be comfortably scalable over the next 10+ years. Specifically, I'd like to be able to: 1. Add a SATA or IDE "big" drive (200+G) or 2 a year. 2. Implement automated back up of all the content to a redundant drive subsystem. I would like to avoid backing up the content to DVDs if I can, in part because I have vague concerns about the compatibility over time of DVD+/-Rs and the reliability/compatibility over time of DVD+/-RWs. I currently generate most of my content using a 6MP DSLR and a MiniDV camcorder. I anticipate moving to a 12+MP DSLR and a HDV camcorder within a couple of years, greatly increasing the growth rate of my storage needs. I currently use only WinXP/NTFS but I can envision adding a Mac to the LAN at some point, and I'm not opposed to rolling my own, say, Linux server (although I'm concerned about the increased maintainance efforts of a mixed-mode environment) Any suggestions? What are *your* strategies? Bill >I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it >on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >can, in part because I have vague concerns about the compatibility over >time of DVD+/-Rs and the reliability/compatibility over time of DVD+/-RWs. Not unless it's a raid 5 system. Have you considered a Network Appliance? ******************************************************** "A nice man is a man of nasty ideas." _Introductions to History of the Reformation_ Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 > Not unless it's a raid 5 system. > > Have you considered a Network Appliance? David H. Lipman wrote: > With the content you describe you should look into to USB v2.0/FireWire or SCSI tape backup > solutions such as DLT or AIT-II. > > I personally use a combination of DVD and SCSI tape. Thanks for the suggestions. I checked out Network Appliance, and it seems to be enterprise-class h/w & solns. I couldn't even find a price or a home lan configuration I'll investigate SCSI DLT. Bill >> Not unless it's a raid 5 system. >> [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] >I checked out Network Appliance, and it seems to be enterprise-class h/w >& solns. I couldn't even find a price or a home lan configuration Look at the FAS200 it's small office solution. ******************************************************** "A nice man is a man of nasty ideas." _Introductions to History of the Reformation_ Jonathan Swift 1667-1745 I suppose I am old fashioned, I backup to DAT72 tape. I use a rotating system and store 2 or 3 backups off site. Hope this helps. ss >>I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it >>on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Not unless it's a raid 5 system. RAID 5 is not really appropriate for this application. You'd need to archive your drives in sets of at least three. Then if you ever wanted to retrieve the data from an archived set of RAID 5 drives, you'd need to install all the drives back into the server. RAID 1 (mirroring), is fine. Many newer motherboards have built in RAID 1 controllers. If you get a tower case such as the Antec SX1040 ("http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81046") you'll have room for the mirrored drives in removeable bays (i.e. "http://svc.com/mrk102fd-blk.html"), in addition to the regular system drives. From: "Bill" <billmuy@comcast.net> | I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it | on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a [quoted text clipped - 27 lines] | | Bill With the content you describe you should look into to USB v2.0/FireWire or SCSI tape backup solutions such as DLT or AIT-II. I personally use a combination of DVD and SCSI tape.  SignatureDave http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm > I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame > it on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As > well as a desire to host my own website. > I want to de-couple the storage and backup of this increasingly > priceless library from the PCs where's it currently stored > (currently a deskside and a laptop, on a home LAN). > I'm looking for suggestions/strategies for designing a home > multimedia storage solution that will be comfortably scalable over > the next 10+ years. Specifically, I'd like to be able to: > 1. Add a SATA or IDE "big" drive (200+G) or 2 a year. > 2. Implement automated back up of all the content to a redundant > drive subsystem. I would like to avoid backing up the content to > DVDs if I can, in part because I have vague concerns about the > compatibility over time of DVD+/-Rs and the > reliability/compatibility over time of DVD+/-RWs. > I currently generate most of my content using a 6MP DSLR and a > MiniDV camcorder. I anticipate moving to a 12+MP DSLR and a HDV > camcorder within a couple of years, greatly increasing the growth > rate of my storage needs. > I currently use only WinXP/NTFS but I can envision adding a Mac to > the LAN at some point, and I'm not opposed to rolling my own, say, > Linux server (although I'm concerned about the increased > maintainance efforts of a mixed-mode environment) At the present time I use a 0.3 Tbyte server: it's pretty much a stock Red Hat Linux system with a stack of disk drives configured as RAID 5. Linux systems come with SAMBA, a server for Windows boxes. I keep all live data on the server, never on the desktop box. I use exchangeable disk drives for off-site storage; backing up the whole array takes an hour or two. I'm soon going to upgrade the whole thing to hot-swap SATA storage, and this will increase capacity to 1.0 Tbyte. Should be OK for a while. I'm also considering off-site daily backups over the internet. Andrew. From: "Andrew Haley" <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> | At the present time I use a 0.3 Tbyte server: it's pretty much a stock | Red Hat Linux system with a stack of disk drives configured as RAID 5. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] | | Andrew. Are you kidding ? Backup 1024 Gigabytes over the Internet ? Even if you had a T3 have you considered how long this would take ? Even 300MB would take a very long time. SignatureDave http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm > From: "Andrew Haley" <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> > | > | I'm soon going to upgrade the whole thing to hot-swap SATA > | storage, and this will increase capacity to 1.0 Tbyte. Should be > | OK for a while. I'm also considering off-site daily backups over > | the internet. > Are you kidding ? > Backup 1024 Gigabytes over the Internet ? Sure, why not? It's only the incremental backups that need to go over the net. Level 0 backups can still be done by sneakernet, and sneakernet has huge bandwidth. Andrew. > At the present time I use a 0.3 Tbyte server: Oooh, wow, look, he said Tbyte. 300 GB wasn't 133t enough for you? Greg > I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it > on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > 1. Add a SATA or IDE "big" drive (200+G) or 2 a year. I back-up onto an external USB 2.0/Firewire hard drive. A 250GB drive is around $60, and the enclosure is $30 (USB 2.0) or $45 (USB 2.0/Firewire). The redundancy thus far is that the pictures are also on the computer's mirrored RAID drive. The Firewire enclosures can be daisy-chained, and I do have two of them, but I haven't daisy-chained them as of yet. The issue with doing a RAID1 solution is that you need to have the same size drives. So you're committed to always replaceing drives in pairs, but you probably want to do that anyway, and store the drives separately. Also, I'm not sure about the compatibility between different RAID controllers. There are some devices that let you use external SATA or IDE hard drives without the USB/Firewire conversion, though this limits your flexibility. >> I estimate my digital content to be growing at about 100GB/yr. Blame it >> on a growing collection of RAW, MP3, MPEG-2, and AVI files. As well as a [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >> >> 1. Add a SATA or IDE "big" drive (200+G) or 2 a year. > I back-up onto an external USB 2.0/Firewire hard drive. A 250GB drive is > around $60, and the enclosure is $30 (USB 2.0) or $45 (USB 2.0/Firewire). > The redundancy thus far is that the pictures are also on the computer's > mirrored RAID drive. The Firewire enclosures can be daisy-chained, and I > do have two of them, but I haven't daisy-chained them as of yet. > The issue with doing a RAID1 solution is that you need to have the same > size drives. No, that isn't true: the drives definitely don't have to be the same size, but the partitions do. Andrew. I'm using a similar strategy, except that the external USB/FW hard drive is of the type with removable chasis. As such, it was $80 for the original drive, and the trays are around $15 per drive (and ~5 minutes to assemble), plus the cost of the IDE drive. At present, IDE 250GB drives are around $100, so the initial setup cost would be a bit over $400, and it would allow a 3-tier rolling backup strategy. At your estimated fill rate of 100GB per year, this will hold you for the next two years. Whenever you run out of capacity, you can just add another triplet of trays and drives and go from there. -hh I suppose I am old fashioned but I backup to tape, dds5. I rotate media, storing 2 or 3 off site. Hope this helps. sonny |
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