Backup Philosophy: DVD's & HDD's?

[xenigo]

So here's my deal. I'm backing up some super important content I'm shooting that needs to exist no matter what. Here's the question; Should I use both DVD's and HDD's to back it up? Or should I use only HDD's. Keep in mind, there will be redundancy either way - multiple locations.

My thought is that the time involved in both burning and restoring from DVD is a pain in the fucking ass. But HDD's are both fast, and will pretty much live forever - as long as you don't keep them plugged in.

[DannyCox]

I have everything I've ever done backed up on remote storage servers. I also back up to DVD and make 2 copies of everything. One stays with me and the other goes into remote storage. All my miniDV tapes have also been duplicated with one copy in remote storage. My paranoia has always been having a fire and losing everything. This way, even if one place burns, I have a complete backup elsewhere. The storage facility I use is less than a mile away, and I've had the same unit since 1996 when I started proper backups.

[softball]

I use terabyte hard drives for both raw tapes and edited masters. They live in bank vaults. I keep both versions on terabyte hard drives in house for daily use. My originals are all on tape and cut versions and flash and wmv files are both on my hard drives and servers. So if the entire North American continent sinks into the Pacific Ocean, I am fucked. Otherwise I am quite confident that any act of God, terrorism, or cataclysm would only be a slight interruption.

[Gerco]

I have 3 external terabyte drives currently... 2 of which are mirrored, the 3rd is a backup for my other 3 computers., I also have an external drive that equals the size of the drive in any one of my machines, which is mirrored to the parent computer and bootable. (Just in case the internal drive fails, I'm still ready to go with a reboot).

I currently have about 400 Mini DV tapes of original content, and I'm working on duping them all. I would love to get a huge SANS.. but still out of my price range.

Pictures are saved on one of the mirrored external drives, and also dumped to dual layer DVD's.

I'm totally paranoid when it comes to backup..

[Hell Puppy]

You're on the right path already, multiple copies of everything in different locations. Myself, I usually have a live copy (hard drive) and archival copy (CD or DVD) on site, plus backups on remote server, at business partner's house and for important stuff in a safety deposit box.

The question I guess here is format. DVD's are good for archival where speed doesn't really matter. But hard drives are very very cheap at this point. Mirror the hard drive to another hard drive and use the drive itself as a backup.

For keeping your live storage safe, I love the Drobo. Gives you all of the protection of a true SAN without the admin hassles. What it doesn't protect you against is losing the location due to fire, theft, etc, so you still need an offsite solution. With prices falling, the drobo itself can actually be transplanted periodically.

[xenigo]

Sounds like you guys already do what I'm doing. I'm just thinking DVD backups are rather pointless considering the cost of HDDs these days. And then throw in the fact that DVD's don't last forever... but HDDs do.

[Gerco]

One thing to remember about HDDs they don't last forever.. Plus they can be easily damaged. If your stuff is an absolute must keep, you can always invest in the archival versions of DVDs. They use 24k gold as the reflective layer and can give you 100+years of safety. Also, you might want to keep a DVD reader archived with them, just to make sure you have it around 25+ years from now...

[xenigo]

One thing to remember about HDDs they don't last forever.. Plus they can be easily damaged. If your stuff is an absolute must keep, you can always invest in the archival versions of DVDs. They use 24k gold as the reflective layer and can give you 100+years of safety. Also, you might want to keep a DVD reader archived with them, just to make sure you have it around 25+ years from now...

Yeah I had thought about that too. Except I thought I was just being paranoid with the whole "Hmm, maybe I should archive the drive - and the computer - hmm - and maybe the monitor, too!"

But maybe that's a little too extreme.

I am thinking of wrapping the HDD in a couple layers of foam for earthquake resistance though. I guess I should have elaborated on my whole "HDD last forever" comment... I was referring to the MTBF rating on HDDs being 1,000,000+ hours. I'm only going to have this thing plugged in while I'm actually doing the backups. You get what I'm saying ;)

[Gerco]

Yeah I had thought about that too. Except I thought I was just being paranoid with the whole "Hmm, maybe I should archive the drive - and the computer - hmm - and maybe the monitor, too!"

But maybe that's a little too extreme.

I am thinking of wrapping the HDD in a couple layers of foam for earthquake resistance though. I guess I should have elaborated on my whole "HDD last forever" comment... I was referring to the MTBF rating on HDDs being 1,000,000+ hours. I'm only going to have this thing plugged in while I'm actually doing the backups. You get what I'm saying ;)

I still have backups on Tape, and the scsi tape drive with them. You cant be to careful.