what is the storage solution for me?

[clamnectar]

I need large, fast storage for video files AND I want redundancy. Here's what I THINK I want: to make an 8 TB RAID 0 out of two 4 TB drives, and a concatenation of two 4 TB drives as a backup volume. What do I really want? Suppose price isn't a consideration. Also, suppose price IS a consideration. What do I need?

I don't have a machine with thunderbolt yet but I'll probably buy this newfangled Mac Pro, so that may suggest certain future options. Currently on a Mac Pro 3,1 with 4 filled drive bays and a lot of external firewire crap.

 

[Bear]

Depending on how much speed you want, I would suggest RAID 5 for your data disk so a single disk failure doesn't cause you to have to restore all your data. Or if you want even faster data access, go with mirroring (RAID 1) combined with striping (RAID 0).

As for your backup volume, remember you might want more space on it that your data drive to allow for some backup history. Also, do you want a single disk failure to wipe out your backups? I would recommend a 4 or 5 disk raid 5 for your backups.

You do want your data and your backup to be in 2 separate enclosures. And once you have 8 or more identical disks, under the cost isn't an issue option, buy a matching spare disk so you can replace a failed disk right away. Also, you may want the enclosures to be the same model so you can swap parts between them in case your data enclosure has a hardware failure other than a disk.

Also, if cost is not a consideration, buy the enterprise class disks with 5 year warranties. These disks are designed for continuous operation.

All my suggestions fall under the question of what is the cost to you of a disk failure? Especially one that takes you out of action for the time it takes to do a data restoration.

And if the cost to you is really not a consideration, you want to make 2 backups of your data just in case.

 

[Gav2k]

I would say drobo.

Some wont but I love mine

 

[deconstruct60]

I need large, fast storage for video files AND I want redundancy. Here's what I THINK I want: to make an 8 TB RAID 0 out of two 4 TB drives, and a concatenation of two 4 TB drives as a backup volume. What do I really want? Suppose price isn't a consideration. Also, suppose price IS a consideration. What do I need?

You probably don't want to concatenate two volumes for your backup. Two independent volumes would be better.

You need to classify your video files. If these are mostly static ( non changing, read only ) video files you just need to make copies. If that is majorit of your ~7TB of data just put copies onto one volume until mostly full and onto another volume . Time machine or automated back-up isn't a big deal since there are hardly any changes to made to the files. ( you could set up smart disk cloners to automate moving over the files to individual volumes/folders )

If you loose one of these split volumes then you loose half of your data. If concatenate then largely have toasted all of it. Back drives fail also. They don't stop failing any more than other drives just because you have externally labelled them as "back up". If you backing up RAID-0 because it might fail your concatenation is in the exact same boat.


Even if a subset of this stuff is dynamically edited/mutated it is still better to peel off the bulk stuff that is just primarily archival.

I don't have a machine with thunderbolt yet but I'll probably buy this newfangled Mac Pro, so that may suggest certain future options. Currently on a Mac Pro 3,1 with 4 filled drive bays and a lot of external firewire crap.

You may just want to switch those external FW drives over to larger USB 3.0 drives and do some consolidation if that is mostly just archival data (old projects likely not going to touch. ). That is a better "back-up" than trying to keep that data actively spun-up 100% of the time while almost never accessing it.