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[TheBoy]

External HDDs by nature aren't a good long term storage medium.

I'll assume you are talking single drives?

Portable disks are inherently unreliable, so even using likes of ADG/R6, its still a probability, moreso if disks are left unused for long periods.

[KillerWatt]

Portable disks are inherently unreliable, so even using likes of ADG/R6, its still a probability, moreso if disks are left unused for long periods.

A single drive is inherently unreliable, regardless of whether it's portable or not.
Although, as you rightly say, portable is even more susceptible to failure.

For an equal balance of capacity, redundancy, speed, reliability, and features...I'd be looking at RAID 5 minimum....although the OP may not have that much money.

[TheBoy]

Portable disks are inherently unreliable, so even using likes of ADG/R6, its still a probability, moreso if disks are left unused for long periods.

A single drive is inherently unreliable, regardless of whether it's portable or not.
Although, as you rightly say, portable is even more susceptible to failure.

For an equal balance of capacity, redundancy, speed, reliability, and features...I'd be looking at RAID 5 minimum....although the OP may not have that much money.

If I was forced down the portable HDD route, I'd be looking at a system that as a minimum could cope with 2 simultaneous drive failures.  I've never seen such a 'portable' device, and if made from seperate cheapo disks, would lack any kind of central controller, probably relying on OS level software fault tolerance.  The built in ftdisk.sys in Windows is a hugely, cut-down, limited version of Veritas Volume Manager. VxVM is around £3.5k iirc, so 'cheap' disk solutions end up expensive.

[KillerWatt]

Portable disks are inherently unreliable, so even using likes of ADG/R6, its still a probability, moreso if disks are left unused for long periods.

A single drive is inherently unreliable, regardless of whether it's portable or not.
Although, as you rightly say, portable is even more susceptible to failure.

For an equal balance of capacity, redundancy, speed, reliability, and features...I'd be looking at RAID 5 minimum....although the OP may not have that much money.

If I was forced down the portable HDD route, I'd be looking at a system that as a minimum could cope with 2 simultaneous drive failures.  I've never seen such a 'portable' device, and if made from seperate cheapo disks, would lack any kind of central controller, probably relying on OS level software fault tolerance.  The built in ftdisk.sys in Windows is a hugely, cut-down, limited version of Veritas Volume Manager. VxVM is around £3.5k iirc, so 'cheap' disk solutions end up expensive.

So if £800 bought you 6TB of storage, with hot-swap disks, guaranteed 100% redundancy, Web server, FTP server, Print server, 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1GB of onboard RAM, and only consumed 55W in use (among other things), while measuring 8" high, by 5" wide, by 9" deep...you'd be interested then? 

[eddie]

Storing a video file as one big lump is Dodgy. Any part of it gets corrupted etc then its knackered.

By using .Rar and splitting it up you can use 'par' files to rebuild the broken bits if the recombining complains.
http://www.techsono.com/faq/par.html

In all fairness its main use is for transmitting large files over the net.

I should warn though,using an external usb drive is not foolproof-I recently lost a couple of films this way.

I didn't check to see if the transfer was fully intact before deleting the original!

eddie

[Martin_1962]

Raw is 5 times bigger than AVI - I have handled it in the past but DV is good enough, and easier to handle, all edit packages and also encoders drop it down anyway.

Virtualdub (I think does raw)

For now sitting on drive D of my PC, as long as I am not doing any editing I will be OK.

Now thinking that archiving is a nightmare and perhaps making sure I still have a working SLF1 is more important.

Perhaps short term on D drive, when work is better buy a couple of SATA 1TB one external and one internal

[Martin_1962]

On my 5th tape now, 130GB already on HDD.

The F1 is enjoying its long run of playback, not bad for video recorder of the year 1982.

Some nice shots of a GWR Pannier tank on screen while typing this

[TheBoy]

Portable disks are inherently unreliable, so even using likes of ADG/R6, its still a probability, moreso if disks are left unused for long periods.

A single drive is inherently unreliable, regardless of whether it's portable or not.
Although, as you rightly say, portable is even more susceptible to failure.

For an equal balance of capacity, redundancy, speed, reliability, and features...I'd be looking at RAID 5 minimum....although the OP may not have that much money.

If I was forced down the portable HDD route, I'd be looking at a system that as a minimum could cope with 2 simultaneous drive failures.  I've never seen such a 'portable' device, and if made from seperate cheapo disks, would lack any kind of central controller, probably relying on OS level software fault tolerance.  The built in ftdisk.sys in Windows is a hugely, cut-down, limited version of Veritas Volume Manager. VxVM is around £3.5k iirc, so 'cheap' disk solutions end up expensive.

So if £800 bought you 6TB of storage, with hot-swap disks, guaranteed 100% redundancy, Web server, FTP server, Print server, 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1GB of onboard RAM, and only consumed 55W in use (among other things), while measuring 8" high, by 5" wide, by 9" deep...you'd be interested then? 

Personally, no. Others may be though.

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

[KillerWatt]

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

It's not that large J, and while we both know that 100% isn't possible in real life no matter what,......what do you think the chances are of 4 independant hard drives failing all at once?

[TheBoy]

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

It's not that large J, and while we both know that 100% isn't possible in real life no matter what,......what do you think the chances are of 4 independant hard drives failing all at once?

Seen 2 simultaneously fail in a 5 disk Raid 5 when a 3rd disk was being replaced. They don't believe it was electrical issue during hot withdrawal, but flex in the drive bay as the old drive was stiff.

Believe it or not, the server stayed up, and due to Netware caching, we copied off all virtually all of the data .


Not had too much luck with hot plug - I once changed a 500Mb disk in a Proliant, and HOT plug was apt - bloody thing started smoking, and the NetWare server promptly abended.  Couldn't recover diddly squat off that one 

Went through a patch in the early part of millenium when temps were more critical that any glitch on environment control would wipe out 30 odd disks a day, sometimes on same array.

So, yes, it does happen .  But I agree, very rare


But in Martin Imber's case, I was under impression he wanted a long term archive, and in that case, I simply wouldn't use disks - if you leave on, there is significant risk of corruption, if you switch off, you run high risk of drive sticking.



As an aside, it is most definately possible for 2 disks in a 2 disk mirror to break 

[TheBoy]

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

It's not that large J, and while we both know that 100% isn't possible in real life no matter what,......what do you think the chances are of 4 independant hard drives failing all at once?

As an aside, I thought the Netgear stuff could only do R0,1 and 5, and max of 1 online spare?  Must admit, not looked for a while (pay little attention to Netgear, as don't have much faith in their firmware writers)

[Martin_1962]

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

It's not that large J, and while we both know that 100% isn't possible in real life no matter what,......what do you think the chances are of 4 independant hard drives failing all at once?

Seen 2 simultaneously fail in a 5 disk Raid 5 when a 3rd disk was being replaced. They don't believe it was electrical issue during hot withdrawal, but flex in the drive bay as the old drive was stiff.

Believe it or not, the server stayed up, and due to Netware caching, we copied off all virtually all of the data .


Not had too much luck with hot plug - I once changed a 500Mb disk in a Proliant, and HOT plug was apt - bloody thing started smoking, and the NetWare server promptly abended.  Couldn't recover diddly squat off that one 

Went through a patch in the early part of millenium when temps were more critical that any glitch on environment control would wipe out 30 odd disks a day, sometimes on same array.

So, yes, it does happen .  But I agree, very rare


But in Martin Imber's case, I was under impression he wanted a long term archive, and in that case, I simply wouldn't use disks - if you leave on, there is significant risk of corruption, if you switch off, you run high risk of drive sticking.



As an aside, it is most definately possible for 2 disks in a 2 disk mirror to break 

Hmm so what is the answer then?

[KillerWatt]

As for the 100% redundancy claim, we both know that is rubbish, particularly if used as a portable device (though getting a bit large to be portable)

It's not that large J, and while we both know that 100% isn't possible in real life no matter what,......what do you think the chances are of 4 independant hard drives failing all at once?

As an aside, I thought the Netgear stuff could only do R0,1 and 5, and max of 1 online spare?  Must admit, not looked for a while (pay little attention to Netgear, as don't have much faith in their firmware writers)

I bought my NV10's BEFORE Netgear got involved 

[KillerWatt]

Hmm so what is the answer then?

Given the amount of physical data you want to store, hard disk really is the only viable option if you are like most of us (average man, average wage, average family, etc).

However, I'd be using a second disk as a sole backup to the first one as an absolute minimum.

[Martin_1962]

Hmm so what is the answer then?

Given the amount of physical data you want to store, hard disk really is the only viable option if you are like most of us (average man, average wage, average family, etc).

However, I'd be using a second disk as a sole backup to the first one as an absolute minimum.

Another Samsung drive when funds permit then.

Half tempted to spread it over a large number of DVDs - but would that kill my burner?