Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

[Chuck Guzis]

On 09/15/2015 12:32 PM, ethan at 757.org wrote:
>> Pictures and movies can be original work - perhaps not for you,
>> certainly mostly not for me (I have a few original pictures, but
>> only a few), but I know graphic designers and photographers who
>> have probably produced at least a gigabyte of original pictures
>> each by now.  And people into video production....
>
>
> I have a HD video production rig that goes out to some geek events
> and I've used it in the past at stuff. The data generated is around
> 5GB per hour (H264 1080i)

I tend to think of pictures and movies as sui generis--they were 
perfectly well done in non-digital form, so I don't include them as 
"data" needing backup, but rather a special case of digital data 
masquerading as a simulacrum of analog information.

Anyone remember the IBM "Photostore"  setup at Lawrence Livermore? 
Enterprising programmers wrote tools to go through their files and 
"touch" them, lest they be "Photostored".  In many cases, that meant 
"gone forever".
--------------
In the case of spinning rust, what brand is most reliable?  I've seen 
dreadful reports of DOA drives from Western Digital, fewer from Seagate, 
but I don't know about Hitachi, Samsung, etc.

Up until now, I've confined my purchasing to 500GB drives on the hope 
that they're more reliable than the 3-5TB monsters.  Is this a mistake?

FWIW, my SA-4004 still works...

--Chuck