looking for a good reliable hdd for archiving film/video

[gamedudex2]

some friends and I are starting our own production company. we will do work for other people and our own short and potentially feature length productions.

we are planning on archiving movies on individual hard drives, as well as tape

for short films, we will prob be backing up on 250-500 GB drives, and eventually 1TB drives, depending on amount of footage shot. right now these would be on dv. plans to eventually shoot 35mm though so that would be multilple drives per film since 35 would be over 323MB per sec. but we will be shooting like 23-30 per sec i think for now. we might shoot some in hd as well, til we get a 35 digital camera.

which brand drives would everyone recommend to be the best.

[AgentGreen]

some friends and I are starting our own production company. we will do work for other people and our own short and potentially feature length productions.

we are planning on archiving movies on individual hard drives, as well as tape

for short films, we will prob be backing up on 250-500 GB drives, and eventually 1TB drives, depending on amount of footage shot. right now these would be on dv. plans to eventually shoot 35mm though so that would be multilple drives per film since 35 would be over 323MB per sec. but we will be shooting like 23-30 per sec i think for now. we might shoot some in hd as well, til we get a 35 digital camera.

which brand drives would everyone recommend to be the best.

Western Digital's Caviar line has been nothing but dependable for me throughout the years. I have two 8GB ones that were in computers built 10 years ago and they're still running alongside a 160GB SATA drive I bought last year.

Seagates are decent, though I've only had limited experience with them.

Stay away from Fujitsus and Samsungs, they die on me a lot.

[Ex-Cyber]

If the data is really important to you, redundancy is a must. This means:

- Copies in multiple locations (think fire, natural disasters, etc)

- Redundancy on each server (via RAID, ZFS, or some other method) - expect individual drives to fail, because if you use enough of them long enough, you will experience failures, regardless of which brand you go with.

- Copies on multiple servers and/or media, because a software or hardware failure on an individual server could cause unrecoverable data loss even with a redundancy scheme (I've seen some horror stories about faulty RAID controllers corrupting entire arrays)

- Actually verifying your backups once in a while. You don't want to have a copy trashed only to find that your backup got trashed too when you weren't looking.

That said, Maxtor sucks.

[butters]

You don't want to be carrying around hard drives. What you really need is something like this.

[|darc|]

Maxtor and Seagate have been nothing but dependable for me throughout the years. I have a Maxtor that was in a computer built 10 years ago and it's still running alongside 3 other drives in a computer I built 2 years ago.

Samsungs are decent, though I've only had limited experience with them.

Stay away from Western Digital, they die on me a lot.

[melancholy]

I always use either Seagate or Western Digital. The only brand I have ever had die on me was Maxtor.

Still, I assume you will be getting about a billion different answers on here mainly because hard drives seem to be more dependent on luck than anything. A really good company will still produce a dud or two. Your best option is to get two or three different drives and keep copies on all of them.

[gamedudex2]

ya, the plan is to have at least 2 copies for now in different locations, and we will keep a tape/film stock copy.

[butters]

I really hope you are best friends with a banker, because it sounds to me like this operation is going to cost $10k+ just to get off the ground.

[gRiMgRaVy014]

I've used Western Digital hard drives for as long as I can remember, very reliable.

[APE]

I've got 2 Maxtors that were on their way out but were revived but using them in a PS2 and XBox.

My box currently has 3 WD drives and I've yet to have a problem with any of them, the oldest being close to 4 years old.

[CupNoodle]

Maxtors are great. I'm clumsy when it comes to computers and my 40GB Maxtor has survived a couple drops onto concrete floors. Samsungs are shite.

[gamedudex2]

well these wouldn't ever be in a position to be dropped anyways, but its great to know that some can take a small drop.

[curt_grymala]

Ex-cyber pretty much hit the nail on the head. You've got to have redundancy, as, no matter how reliable a brand is, you've always got a chance you'll get a bad drive.

I've had Maxtor drives last for years and years. I've had other Maxtor drives die on me after only a few years. I've had the same experience with Western Digital. I've had a Seagate internal drive die on me after only a few months. I've had other Seagate drives last for as long as I continued using them.

I can tell you that the Seagate external drives are very nice. I've got a 750 gig one on my desk right now. However, Maxtor and Seagate drives are pretty bulky.

At work, we just picked up a case of little drives called "Dragon II" or something like that. They seem to be manufactured by various manufacturers, as mine gets picked up as a Toshiba, while some others get picked up as Samsung. I think they're sold as a US Modular product. They're nice, and they are extremely compact.

[gamedudex2]

I really hope you are best friends with a banker, because it sounds to me like this operation is going to cost $10k+ just to get off the ground.

thats not so much of a problem, we can get grants, and for small projects we are paid to do, we usually get around $150-200+ an hour