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Author Topic: Lets see more cinema pictures!! -> OT Computer data backup jabber Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 01-05-2008 02:52 AM                     would "laser rot" be the main culprit then?  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 01-05-2008 12:08 PM                     Update - ok so there is a program Get Data Back that I got and I am reporting for everyone's future benefit that although it took 3 DAYS to do it's thing, I got about 3/4 of the data off of that drive back. I would have gotten it all, but the drive started making horrible noises and flat out physically died about halfway through the recovery. (I got everything of importance anyway , including the picture submissions.) This program is highly recommended for anyone stuck in this situation. I also invested in a couple of Netgear RND4000 ReadyNAS NV+ units. These are a hardware based raid system, of which I loaded up 4 Seagate 750GB drives each and set them to a Raid 1 array. (Note the manual for this is crap, but just ignore the "setup wizard" and click on the "advanced setup" option and it is pretty straightforward.) It is a network drive and you can set up different volumes (don't forget to do this or you won't be able to write any data to it) that are "public" within your network or "private" with password protection. The unit will email you when the drives are getting full, overheating, or one is developing read/write errors. When using a Raid 1 array, so long as I install a new drive before all 4 die, it will automatically re-write the data to the new drive and put it into the raid. The drives are hot-swappable too. The best part of it all is the USB jack on the front coupled to a backup button. I can simply plug in a 750GB external USB drive, press the backup button and it will sync the files to the external drive. Then that drive is taken to the safety deposit box off-site however often I like. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this unit to anyone with a need to get some solid data backup protection.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-05-2008 12:56 PM                     Yea... I know another photographer using a similar storage system and he loves it. I think there are some of those available for down around even 500 bucks... but at any rate thats a very good route to go. Mark  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 01-05-2008 03:04 PM                     What symptoms of failure did that drive exhibit, Brad? I recently had a 500 GB Seagate fail (physically) after only 6 months of use.  |  IP: Logged Phil Hill I love my cootie bug Posts: 7595 From: Hollywood, CA USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 01-05-2008 06:04 PM                  In the last 20 years, I've had more Seagate drives fail than any other brand. IMHO they are CRAP! I have avoided them like STDs.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 01-05-2008 06:19 PM                     quote: Brad Miller Update - ok so there is a program Get Data Back that I got and I am reporting for everyone's future benefit that although it took 3 DAYS to do it's thing, I got about 3/4 of the data off of that drive back. I would have gotten it all, but the drive started making horrible noises and flat out physically died about halfway through the recovery. (I got everything of importance anyway , including the picture submissions.) This program is highly recommended for anyone stuck in this situation. A similar sounding product is called "Spinrite" available at linky It'll also recover data "in place" on a drive meaning that it'll detect your bad sectors, recover the data from them, then tell the drive to no longer use those. Highly recommended.  |  IP: Logged Scott Jentsch Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1061 From: New Berlin, WI, USA Registered: Apr 2003 posted 01-05-2008 06:44 PM                        Another interesting device that I've read about is the Drobo system. http://www.drobo.com/ It takes up to four regular drives and makes them into redundant storage, connected to a USB port. In that respect, it's more like an external hard drive with redundancy than a pure NAS product. I just finished spec'ing a machine that is going to use two 500GB SATA drives in a RAID 1 configuration inside the box. Everything that happens to drive 1 is mirrored to drive 2. While that doesn't protect against fire or file system corruption, it protects against hard drive failure on a second-by-second basis. This aspect was important for the tax preparation client. Offsite backups are still important. External hard drives are the fastest and most convenient. Optical is less expensive (depending on the backup set size), but more cumbersome and there are some worries about longevity, but I am not all that concerned about that (just don't use the cheapest off-brand media to be found).  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 01-06-2008 09:50 AM                     quote: Phil Hill In the last 20 years, I've had more Seagate drives fail than any other brand. IMHO they are CRAP! I have avoided them like STDs. Back when I went to Dolby D-Cinema Training they talked about how manufacturers grade the hard drives they manufacture. With Server manufacturers being offered the best drives and the rest being sold to DIY places like Fry's and the remainder to places like Target and Wal-Mart. Now I have bought drives at Wal-MArt to replace bad drives in DTS XD_10's and haven't had one fail.... so makes me wonder if thats true or not. I can certainly see manufacturers doing something like though. I have had alot of ALL manufacturers IDE drives fail over the last 15 years more Western Digital then others, an almost equal amount of Seagates and a few Maxtors and IBM's... a large box full of em in the garage to show for it. After the last IDE drive started making more and more noise I went to SCSI drives.... this was alomst 4 years ago now. Haven't had even a hiccup out of them.... and they were NOS Seagates when I bought em... ST150176LC to be exact... these are the two inch thick variety... not the sleeker 1" SCSI type drives. These were never used pulls from servers that were bought but never installed... later scrapped out and the parts sold off. I think you're going to find that the best reliability still lies in SCSI drives, most IT guys would agree and my experience certainly leans that way. Its obvious alot of folks are still using them and much research is still going into them in terms of size and speed. I don't think SATA is really going to offer any more reliability over IDE... things went SATA because they are cheaper to make... they also do offer better performance as hopefully any new product would... but I haven't noticed any higher reliability out of them over IDE. Mark  |  IP: Logged Paul Gordon Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 580 From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Registered: Aug 2005 posted 02-06-2008 08:24 AM                        Pictures for the Mayfair Theatre re-uploaded/emailed.  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 02-06-2008 11:05 AM                        I currently buy mostly Seagate 7200.11 SATA2 and Western Digital Raptors for the office. The Raptors are basically SCSI drives with a SATA interface. Very reliable. The Seagates seem no better and no worse than their competitors among regular SATA(2) drives. I've had the worst luck with WD Caviars. Our oldest server is 5 1/2 years old now. The Quantum SCSI drives have been spinning that entire time. Have had 1 drive failure in 5 years, RAID-5 with hot-swap so no downtime.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 02-06-2008 10:16 PM                        FWIW, the guys who maintain Amazon's EC2 and S3 clusters (thousands of nodes and even more drives) report that around 30% of all new drives they install from all manufacturers fail within 3 months. That said, drive manufactures seem to rotate on who gets to make good drives and who gets to make pieces of junk. I wouldn't go out and buy a WD Caviar to put in production these days (then again most of the 50+ low-end Dell's I put into service this year came with them). Before two years ago (and for a few years preceeding then) they were pretty good. Before that Maxtor was making decent drives for a short period (just after Fujitsu, who were previously make decent drives, screwed up royally), around the same time that IBM was producing the Deathstar series of drives (bad firmware). Currently (for about the last two years), Seagate 7200.9,10,11 drives have been good performers in their price range. Bottom line, it doesn't really matter. Some of the drives you buy will fail, some won't. Depends on if you're lucky enough to fall in the far end of the bathtub curve or not.  |  IP: Logged David Stambaugh Film God Posts: 4021 From: Eugene, Oregon Registered: Jan 2002 posted 02-07-2008 11:05 AM                        I mostly agree with you Daryl. For run-of-the-mill desktop drives, the drive manufacturer probably makes little difference. Drives fail, a simple fact of computer life. I do think the WD Raptors are in a class of their own, have never had one fail. They're very expensive on a per gigabyte basis compared to "regular" drives but sometimes you get what you pay for. I think the 150GB Raptor has a street price of about $175 now. Compare that to a Seagate 7200.11 500GB for around $120. Lately I've been using a Raptor for the boot drive and a Seagate 7200.11 as the 2nd drive in new XP deployments. Occasionally I'll stripe a couple of the Seagates in RAID-0, gives a modest boost in performance. We have a few Samsung 500GB drives deployed, haven't had one fail yet. Scary thought: About 3 years ago, when the company I work for was a lot poorer, I deployed 3 Hitachi Deskstar 400GB drives in a RAID-5 array in a low-end server. Haven't had a single problem with it. I do have a spare drive sitting on the shelf though.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 02-08-2008 03:21 AM                        3 year old Deskstars are fine (they probably don't even "click" every couple of hours to re-adjust themselves). I can't think of any major issues Hitachi has had since taking over IBM's storage business. Raptors are fine drives... like you said a SCSI or SAS drive attached to a SATA controller. Something that should have really always been available in parallel formats, too, at the higher price point. I've just not had much use for Raptors (especially at nearly 5 times the price/GB, although that's offset by most business user's machines not needing more than 20GB anyway)... I'm usually either deploying normally idle office workstations where any drive will do or, oppositely, clusters to process 10's of millions of tiny files an hour in which case I use pre-fetch algorithms to maintain streaming like random read throughput.  |  IP: Logged Peter David Bruce Expert Film Handler Posts: 187 From: East Anglia -England Registered: Aug 2007 posted 02-10-2008 06:03 AM                    i emailed my cinema pictures and info to Brad back in jan. Looking forward to seeing them up. quite keen for you all to see where i work.  |  IP: Logged

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