Raid solution.
 

I'd like to purchase some kind of external Raid solution to store video. I shoot a lot of weddings and like to keep the original files saved for several weeks after the bride receives her DVD. I have some 750's in the Mac Pro for capturing/working on weddings, but I need something else for storage.
I really like the Drobo, but its USB 2.0 only. I don't know how well that will work if I ever need to edit something on it. I've looked at G-Raid and Cal Digit, as well as several other brands. They all seem rather pricey for the 1.5 TB or higher stuff. Has anyone ever purchased an empty drive bay that came with a controller card? I'd like to add the drives of my choice and not what they sell me. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Chad,

RAID arrays are not designed for long-term storage, their primary purpose is to give high-capacity, high-speed HDD access during editing to that end they are "working" drives that are always powered-on and spinning. What you're looking for is an archival solution instead, something that will remain in a disconnected and powered-off state for most of it's life to be accessed only when required.

A hot-swap external drive solution is the best bet or, if your finished files are small enough you could use Blu-Ray discs (this is good only if your finished and project files are small enough to fit on a single disc, otherwise spanning an entire project over multiple discs is technically difficult).

Here's just a few of many possible solutions:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Raidon/I3021SSB2/

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Raidon/SR76104SWBS1/