Copying MiniDV's to CD-R as backups?

Jeff Donald · August 22nd, 2003, 05:25 AM

Gints, you might want to take notice that you're posting in the Apple/Mac section. I can honestly say I've never lost a HD because of Windows 2000 or XP. But let's not confuse the issue with facts.

Boyd Ostroff · August 22nd, 2003, 07:24 PM

Wow, my idea seems to have spawned a lively discussion :-) Personally I have not been swapping the mechanisms out of firewire enclosures, but that would certainly be more cost effective. I don't shoot all that much video, but I also do 3d animation which generates a lot of data between different versions. I have a total of 6 external firewire drives, 3 from Maxtor, 2 Western Digital and one ACOM. Total capacity is around 600GB. Have not had any problems whatsoever during the past two years.

I used to do Mac IT support at my company until about a year ago. During an 8 year period I saw only 3 hard drive failures between maybe 30 or 40 machines in everyday use. Of these 3, two of them were repairable with utility programs to the point that we were able to extract almost all of the data. Only one of these drives, the original internal drive on a blue/white Mac G3/400 (I think that was a 4 GB drive, typical in its time), failed castastrophically to the point of making an ugly mechanical sound. We were unable to read any data from this drive, and of course the user had very little backed up. We sent the drive to "DriveSavers" IIRC. They were able to recover pretty much everything and burn it onto a DVD. Can't remember the cost, but it's based on how many MB they recover... might be cost prohibitive on a big drive full of video. In this case I think it was around $150. That drive was about 4 years old when it failed.

On my personal Mac systems going back as far as the Apple "Hard Disk 20" in 1985, I've never lost a single byte on a hard drive, never had a failure. Your mileage may vary....

So I know this is all just anecdotal, but you asked for my opinion ;-) Personally I'm comfortable with hard drive failure rates, and there are lots of advantages to having everything centralized in one place with random access. If you want to be extra safe, store the master tapes offsite in a vault. But I think it has a lot to do with your usage patterns and personal preferences. The original question centered on what to do with 36 tapes...

August 22nd, 2003, 05:25 AM	#16
Jeff Donald Warden Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Clearwater, FL Posts: 8,287	Gints, you might want to take notice that you're posting in the Apple/Mac section. I can honestly say I've never lost a HD because of Windows 2000 or XP. But let's not confuse the issue with facts. __________________ Jeff Donald Carpe Diem Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Where to Buy? From the best in the business: DVinfo.net sponsors

August 22nd, 2003, 07:24 PM	#17
Boyd Ostroff Wrangler Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mays Landing, NJ Posts: 11,787	Wow, my idea seems to have spawned a lively discussion :-) Personally I have not been swapping the mechanisms out of firewire enclosures, but that would certainly be more cost effective. I don't shoot all that much video, but I also do 3d animation which generates a lot of data between different versions. I have a total of 6 external firewire drives, 3 from Maxtor, 2 Western Digital and one ACOM. Total capacity is around 600GB. Have not had any problems whatsoever during the past two years. I used to do Mac IT support at my company until about a year ago. During an 8 year period I saw only 3 hard drive failures between maybe 30 or 40 machines in everyday use. Of these 3, two of them were repairable with utility programs to the point that we were able to extract almost all of the data. Only one of these drives, the original internal drive on a blue/white Mac G3/400 (I think that was a 4 GB drive, typical in its time), failed castastrophically to the point of making an ugly mechanical sound. We were unable to read any data from this drive, and of course the user had very little backed up. We sent the drive to "DriveSavers" IIRC. They were able to recover pretty much everything and burn it onto a DVD. Can't remember the cost, but it's based on how many MB they recover... might be cost prohibitive on a big drive full of video. In this case I think it was around $150. That drive was about 4 years old when it failed. On my personal Mac systems going back as far as the Apple "Hard Disk 20" in 1985, I've never lost a single byte on a hard drive, never had a failure. Your mileage may vary.... So I know this is all just anecdotal, but you asked for my opinion ;-) Personally I'm comfortable with hard drive failure rates, and there are lots of advantages to having everything centralized in one place with random access. If you want to be extra safe, store the master tapes offsite in a vault. But I think it has a lot to do with your usage patterns and personal preferences. The original question centered on what to do with 36 tapes...