Anyone else shopping for larger hard drives lately?

[halley]

Okay, I am an avid photographer, and I don't delete anything except for the unsalvageable mistakes (Exposure all black, all white, accidental shutter in the camera bag, etc.). I have automation scripts that make it easy for me to import, catalogue, back up, tag, and organize all my photos from the past 15 years. I rarely capture video with my DSLR but when I do, it gets managed by the same process.

In addition, I am well-versed in data backups. I suggest anyone who cares about their data (of any digital kind) to keep four levels of backup: ONLINE, NEARLINE, OFFLINE and OFFSITE. At a minimum, I recommend NEARLINE and OFFSITE.

• ONLINE: available all the time, such as a folder on your computer
• NEARLINE: available in minutes, such as a USB drive you can reach at any time and plug in
• OFFLINE: available with some effort, such as closed in a fire safe in the basement
• OFFSITE: available if your house burns down, such as at your Mom's house or a bank box

Hoo boy, I just saw how much data I am creating when I save screen recordings and Mavic Pro flight recordings.

I just casually visited Amazon for the current pricing on 8TB hard drives. I looked at the specs of my disk array cabinets to see what they can handle, too.

Anyone else suddenly shopping for new and larger drives?

 

[Kilrah]

Yup - they're really expensive right now, production shortages last year I believe...

I morphed my current setup recently, 2 PCs in different locations, both had a 6TB drive that holds everything I have and was getting full, plus 2 externals (6TB again) that serve as backup and transport to update one site to the other's level. Also switched to one site only, so it means I had 4 6TB drives that given the prices I figured I'd reuse. Bought 2 more, and grouped the 6 of them as 3 12TB RAID0s, one obviously in the now single main PC, and 2 in external hardware RAID boxes serving as backup, one of which stored offsite. Should be OK for a couple of years.

 

[F6Rider]

I am with you all the way. Only 2 kinds of computer users, those who HAVE had a HD crash, and those who WILL. I use three levels as opposed to your 4, local incremental backup on a 'grab-N-go portable drive (timemachine) for my OS, a 16TB RAID 3 server, and a set of 8TB offsite drives that are backed up once a week via secure connection (part of the RAID array). I don't do cloud storage as even with a 100Mbs connection it takes a long time and uses a lot of bandwidth to keep it current. I also do have a daily bootable OS backup on a 3TB drive kept in my home fire-safe, in a fireproof bag. My photos and movies only go back 10 years but I do not want to lose them.

 

[HeliFreak]

I'm more interested in these automation scripts you have. Any way you can share?

 

[Jordan]

Yeh I really need some big drives for my movies. I've filled up 5tb, 2x2tb, 5x1tb and 4x500gb but 4 5 6tb drives seem so expensive per gb. I think as normal consumers only need around 1tb the production of 4+tb drives have been low and costs high.

Sent from my SM-G935F using MavicPilots mobile app

 

[F6Rider]

Yeh I really need some big drives for my movies. I've filled up 5tb, 2x2tb, 5x1tb and 4x500gb but 4 5 6tb drives seem so expensive per gb. I think as normal consumers only need around 1tb the production of 4+tb drives have been low and costs high.

Sent from my SM-G935F using MavicPilots mobile app

Not sure what you mean by 'expensive'. A 4TB WD Blue drive is about $120, and a 5TB expansion drive is less than $130, so 2 4TB drives in a RAID 1 config will give you 6TB of space for less than $250 with redundancy.

 

[F6Rider]

I'm more interested in these automation scripts you have. Any way you can share?

Scripts are not hard to write, if you're on a MAC use the script editor in the utilities directory to automate functions. Not sure about Windows as I gave them up as old tech years ago.

 

[Jordan]

I guess $120 is a lot when you have an unlimited supply of 1tb drives from work for free... it's very hard to justify a hard drive purchase unless it's a super deal

 

[F6Rider]

I guess $120 is a lot when you have an unlimited supply of 1tb drives from work for free... it's very hard to justify a hard drive purchase unless it's a super deal

Well, you could either build or buy a RAID enclosure and use some of those free drives to build a server.

 

[Joe Cosentino]

Still looking at and trashing most of my footage, I have a 4 TB. WD Passport drive I download to, I look over the footage pull some small segments out and trash the rest
I am sure that will change as I fly these more.