Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: CRU Consumer Products

This is topic CRU Consumer Products in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 03-05-2012, 12:55 PM:

Are any of the CRU consumer products compatible with DCinema CRU drives? It would be nice to be able to write advertising DCPs to a mounted drive and then use the same for ingest without having to use the USB interface.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-05-2012, 01:00 PM:

Yes.

You want this thing. This is CRU part #6607-7100-0500. It is the "drive carrier" into which you can install a normal 3.5" SATA hard disk. Actually, SAS disks work, too, but not in D-cinema equipment.

If you want it, the "movedock" USB adapter is also available. CRU part #6603-5701-0900.

To really make things easy, you can buy the "receiving frame" for a desktop computer, which will make it easy to swap the disks between your desktop and the cinema server.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-22-2012, 01:47 PM:

It's time for a larger BACKUP hard drive for my DSS200. 1TB minimum. Any recommendations?

(Somehow this reminds me of the "what kind of oil are you using" threads -- remember those?)

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 06-23-2012, 02:54 AM:

quote: Manny Knowles
Somehow this reminds me of the "what kind of oil are you using" threads -- remember those?)

...and sparkplugs, oil filters and the like. Never ends.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-23-2012, 06:31 AM:

Just what are you backing up that is so large? If you have a computer...just FTP the content there (or to one of its HDD).

As for SATA drives. I'm partial to WD and Hitachi, 7200RPM. Since it is a back up and not a RAID...most anything that will hold the information will do. You can even get a 2TB drive.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-23-2012, 11:18 AM:

Thanks for the advice, Steve - we have accumulated many samples of student work -- a lot of it in 3D -- as well as our own promotional shorts and test materials that we want to keep.

I don't have enough room on any of my hard drives to keep all of this stuff -- so I'd still have to buy a hard drive, in which case, I'd prefer to just put it in a CRU enclosure and call it a day.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 06-23-2012, 12:43 PM:

If you want to keep it, you don't want it on 'a' hard drive. What happens when (not if) that hard drive fails?

I archive everything that's important to me onto between three and five separate drives located in different places.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-23-2012, 01:18 PM:

What Frank said. If you actually care about long-term storage, then you want multiple storage formats (including something like LTO tape, which is likely to last longer than any hard disk) in multiple locations and copied to new media on a regular schedule (every five years or so is probably adequate). Make MD5 checksums of everything and store hard copies of the checksums with the files; that way, you will be able to detect data corruption.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 06-23-2012, 02:15 PM:

Tape is pretty much outdated as a storage medium, and a good high speed and reliable tape backup will cost a fortune for the machine and the tapes for it. Large hard drives are very cheap and easy to replicate.

I have a couple of RAID-enabled NAS fileservers, as well as a number of computers. I back stuff up between them and whenever I replace a machine (or a hard drive) then everything gets onto the new unit from another machine. As machines get "refreshed" regularly when they die off, the backups are always current and tested.

I actually do automatic backups of my important data, like the /home directory on my main desktop computer. Every night at 4am a cron job automatically fires up a couple of instances of rsync and backs up everything that was changed today to the fileservers.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-23-2012, 02:44 PM:

Thanks. I understand backup logic but, in this case, it's not that deep.

I suppose the term "backup" is inappropriate here -- it's really just for a short-term "layover" while I update the software on the DSS200 -- which will erase the RAID -- this material is going back to the DSS after the update is done.

It "would be nice" to have this stuff forever, but it's not the end of the world if they "go away."

BTW is there a way to save the playlists, or am I going to have to rebuild those from scratch?

Posted by Kris Verhanneman (Member # 5562) on 06-24-2012, 01:54 AM:

quote: Manny Knowles
BTW is there a way to save the playlists, or am I going to have to rebuild those from scratch?

Simpel answer: no

If I'm wrong I will something also [thumbsup]

Posted by Marnix Koster (Member # 6755) on 06-24-2012, 03:39 AM:

i would simple buy one or two qnap/synology/etc kind of nas device and make a 'backup' on there. The cheap nasses can function as ftp/http/smb etc for a very low price.

If you buy two you can make sync them to each other do you have a backup of you backup.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-24-2012, 06:29 AM:

DSS200 software upgrades do NOT erase anything. It is only if you run the INSTALL disc that you lose your content.

Again, an FTP transfer or CRU will work for bumping the content off and back...it is all a matter of where you have the storage.

Posted by Kris Verhanneman (Member # 5562) on 06-24-2012, 08:38 AM:

Steve,

isn't it better to run a full install?
Okay you loose everything but all the 'junk' is removed also (including local databases, corrupted files, . . .).

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-24-2012, 09:26 AM:

I have not found full installs to be inherently better than upgrades. They ONLY times I run full installs is if there is a problem I'm trying to clear (very rarely) or if I'm changing drives from say 500GB to 1TB and have to create the RAID.

Honestly, most of my updates now are via remote and those are always "upgrades."

-Steve

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-24-2012, 11:58 AM:

I'm pretty sure I have an install disk.

We're taking a "clean slate" approach in light of the recent subtitle issues we started having this year.

(Summary from the other thread: Changing the Ethernet cable to shielded has made a drastic improvement in connectivity between projector and server, but we are also bringing all software up to date in both projector and server.)

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-24-2012, 12:44 PM:

Suit yourself. Note...if you have any serial commands in there...they will be lost too...it is REALLY a clean slate.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 06-24-2012, 12:45 PM:

Scott, Newegg shows them out of stock and probably not being restocked.

Manny, PM me I have a source locally and can get you at least one.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-24-2012, 05:54 PM:

Hmmm New EGG shows them in stock at just over $100 a pop. That said there are less expensive alternatives. Note too, I don't know what the difference between the DCinema versions are and the normal PC versions but there are different part numbers.

The DC version is 6601-7100-0500 and is not likely to be stocked by any PC vendor. The normal version that Scott posted is available at typical PC vendors (Manny I can get it for you too...probably either the official DC version or the standard version).

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-25-2012, 12:46 PM:

The $100 item includes the receiving frame, I believe.

Odd that the $50 (-ish) carrier is OOS. I ordered one a few months ago from Newegg and it was in stock then. Anyway, you can google the part number and find lots of other places that sell them. What you want is the CRU DX115 drive carrier.

The non-D-cinema receiving frame has a button to spin up the disk, whereas the D-cinema version does not (disk spins up when inserted; I guess that they assumed that projectionists are stupid). I don't know the difference between the carrier versions.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 06-27-2012, 08:25 AM:

For what it's worth, the drive carrier is back in stock at Newegg as of this morning.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 06-27-2012, 08:34 AM:

Thanks, everybody!

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-18-2012, 06:47 PM:

Today, I inherited a (free!) Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB Hard Drive. I have a few questions about using this as a backup drive.

1. It's one of WD's "Green" drives which (I think) means it can turn itself off to save power. Is that true? Will it be a problem for a DSS200?
2. It is a 5400RPM drive. Is that a problem?
3. Does it need to be specially-formatted for my Dolby DSS200?
4. Can the DSS200 do the formatting, or do I have to use a computer to format it prior to using in the DSS200?

What say ye? Should I buy a CRU carrier for this little fella?

Posted by John Thomas (Member # 6509) on 10-19-2012, 02:11 AM:

I recall hearing/reading about the the WD green drives having a high failure rate. The fact that it is 5400 RPM just means it will read/write slowly compared to faster spinning drives.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-19-2012, 03:48 AM:

If you are using it exclusively with Dolby servers, it will work fine as NTFS. Otherwise you can format it to ext3 for best compatibility between servers. You can't format on the server though.

And yes it will work fine, but at a slight decrease in speed.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 10-19-2012, 04:22 AM:

Can the Dolby server write to an NTFS volume?