r/editors • u/Grouchy-Emotion3485 • 5d ago

Technical Backup Drives

I am looking for advice on backup/archival drives and methods. I am running out of space and looking for drives that are trustworthy. I do not want to get another Lacie/Seagate after having my RAID drive fail on me. I edit off SSD's so the backup drive does not have to be fast.

Drives I have:

-16 TB 2Big Dock Raid (RAID 0)

-20 TB 2Big Dock Raid (RAID 0) - Failed

-WD Elements 20 TB

-Seagate 16 TB Expansion Desktop

-A bunch of 2-4 TB drives

-Sata Drive docking station

Are G-Drives any good?

Currently trying to decide between getting an 18 TB thunderbolt 3 G-drive or another WD element. I am open to suggestions.

Any recommendations on cloud storage?

2 Upvotes

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u/SD5150 5d ago

I was lucky to get a synology NAS a while ago, and it’s only been great!

1

u/SyristSMD 1d ago

Us too! We put in 6x 18TB drives back when they only cost $160 each (lol, I miss those days)

3

u/cameranerd 5d ago

RAID 0 is not good for backups, because if one drive fails, you lose everything. Use RAID 1 for backups, so all the data is mirrored.

1

u/wrosecrans 5d ago

Yeah, RAID0 is intended to be ephemeral. It's faster than a single drive, so it's useful as a fast cache of real storage. But the expected failure rate is at least the number of drives multiplied by the failure rate of one drive. Even if the raid controller and software are all perfect and flawless.

Expecting to use a RAID0 as permanent archival storage is like making a long term investment in a head of lettuce. Drives fail as surely as lettuce wilts, which is why other RAID modes with built in redundancy exist in the first place.

3

u/avidresolver 5d ago

Not buying a brand because you had a disk failure isn't a sensible move. Every drive manufacturer has a roughly similar fail rate, I would instead base purchasing decisions on the quality of their support and service.

I won't buy from SanDisk/G-Drive because of my experience of their anti-consumer practices, but I've only ever had a single drive of theirs fail: https://www.reddit.com/r/editors/comments/1uvnv24/a_rant_about_sandisk/

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u/ConsequenceNo8153 3d ago

This. Every single drive will fail. Not if, but when. A $1,000 drive can fail before a $300 one

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u/ajcadoo 5d ago

My cold archive are Toshiba Performance X300 8TB HDDs. Throw it in an enclosure when I need and I am off to the races.

1

u/jMeister6 3d ago

Same. Bunch of 4TB WD in a nice secure hardcase, QR codes to onedrive excel spreadsheets for content. Plugged in to a dock when needed.

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u/leppell 5d ago

A 2 bay Raid 1 housing from OWC is pretty affordable, and just plug in the biggest pair of drives you can afford. If/when one goes down, swap with another identical drive and carry on. If you're not cutting off that drive, you don't even need to worry about thunderbolt, USB3 would be fine.

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u/yossi12344321 5d ago

Best ones I had for the price was always Samsung, but for me I also cared about speed, As I was editing footage from drives

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u/JoshuaJohnsonWords 4d ago

For archive, honestly, the brand matters way less than having that second copy. Keep two copies of every archive on two cheap drives from different brands, plus one copy offsite. Speed doesn't matter much for archive, but redundancy does. And after a RAID 0 dying on you, you already know why.

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u/Rachel_OrangeLogic 12h ago

For this one you should avoid using RAID 0 for backups since if one drive breaks then you lose all of your files. Try to use a 3-copy system. Since you edit off fast SSDs you don't need a lot of other gear, just regular external HDDs would be good if it's solely for extra copies. Just pair them with an automatic cloud backup program in the background.