Mac Backup and Archiving
 

Hello..

Im working on an iMac, and Macbook. Editing in Adobe Premiere cs4, Doing a lot of multi cam edits, so project files are pretty large!

I need a reliable and large backup device. I have been Looking at the Drobo, and also some of the raid drives from apple.

Can anyone recommend a backup device that you find reliable. I need 2tb or more. Maybe even 4tb.

My workflow is to load everything to the iMac internal drive. Finish project and then archive it onto this drive i need to find!

Thanks

Re: Mac Backup and Archiving
 

My setup is an 8TB ProRaid partitioned into 4 2TB "Drives" and hooked up to my imac through ESata. I have another external dock so that I can quickly swap internal drives in and out. I mirror the partition I'm working on every night to a standard 2TB internal drive in the dock. When the drive I'm working on fills up, I make 2 more mirrors of the oldest partition, send one of the 3 drives to a friend's house, and keep the other two drives in two separate fireproof safes. It's a weird kind of shuffle, but it works well for me and it ends up being pretty cheap.

Re: Mac Backup and Archiving
 

I just use plain 2 TB hard drives in a trayless SATA enclosure. The drives are in pairs, but not RAID'ed. They are synced nightly and then once they are full, they are retired(no new files) and one of the drives goes to a different location. I realize I'm giving up a little speed, but I'm gaining simplicity.

I think one has to be careful about thinking of a RAID 5 as a backup. (Drobo is really a form of RAID 5) Yes, if one drive goes bad, you don't loose your data. And it is the perfect solution if 100% uptime is important. But, that's more critical for servers than it is for video editing. RAID systems don't protect against file system failures, file corruption or accidental deletion. Secondly, what happens if your RAID 5 tower goes bad. You'd have to find an identical one because another type of RAID tower can't read anothers data.