Digital Video - October 2007 - (Page 43)

STORAGE PRINCIPLE NO. 1: It’s not if a hard drive will fail, it’s when. STORAGE PRINCIPLE NO. 2: Live every day as if it’s your hard drive’s last. S torage is short-term in concept, so there’s an additional, significant factor in storage considerations for video editors: archiving. Particularly with the move to various flavors of HD, a single project can quickly range from hundreds of megabytes into dozens of gigabytes. What do you do with all of that data over the long term? The best answer to this modern dilemma requires that we look at each process and examine their unique, as well as shared, needs. Let’s first consider our machine’s system drive. While generally just about all that should be found on a system drive is the OS and applications, most of us store various amounts of data on it—from word processing files and spreadsheets to assorted media. One simple backup strategy is to copy critical data files immediately to secondary media such as CDs, networked hard drives or even USB thumb drives. Then, if the system drive fails, you can restore the drive by reinstalling the OS and applications. But reinstallation is no small or quickly-completed task. Downloading and installing all of the system and application updates can stretch over an entire day—or longer. I back up by cloning my system drive periodically, while copying important documents to other media—usually USB thumb drives, DVDs or even a second hard drive—on a much more frequent basis. For both backup and archiving purposes, I find one small piece of gear indispensable: the Wiebetech Combo Dock. I have an ear- lier version (which was then called the Drive Dock) that allows the connection of any virtually any bare hard-disk drive (ATA or SATA; 3.5” or 2.5”) to a PC or Mac via USB or FireWire. (Check it out at www.wiebetech.com.) Whenever my local big-box electronics retailer runs a lossleader sale on hard drives, I stock up. (Seagate 750GB drives, for example, are often on sale for $199.) I connect the drive to my computer via the Wiebetech dock, perform my backup or archive operation, and put the drive back in its anti-static bag, which then goes into a fireproof box. The use of the dock eliminates the need for purchasing multiple drives in external enclosures or even the time needed to install and remove a drive from an enclosure. I prefer to clone my system drive. Using Mac OS, as I do, this is a simple task with the shareware apps Carbon Copy Cloner (for my G5 machine) and SuperDuper (for my Intel Macs). These apps easily create external drives that can be used to restore a system or even to boot the computer. As an example, I once installed a software update that proved incompatible with a specific operation I was attempting to perform. I still had a clone of the prior version, so I was able to boot from that start-up drive and complete the operation. Cloning Windows XP and Vista systems is somewhat more involved, since it demands software that can boot the computer from a CD and then clone through the creation of a disk image. One such product is HD Clone from Miray Software http://www.wiebetech.com http://www.focalpress.com http://www.focalpress.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - October 2007

Cover Contents Letters DV Update R&D Fest Circuit Light Brigade Follow Focus Shootout Image Conscious Instant Expert Close-Ups Eastern Europe Exploit Call of the Wild Four Principles of Storage Storage Media Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2007

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