Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 01:02:03PM -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> 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.

Google for the Blackblaze reports. IIRC HGST and WD had the lowest failure
rates, Seagate just plain sucked.

> 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?

IMHO, you want to buy at one generation below the current max capacity
on the assumption that they ironed out the bugs on that one.

Kind regards,
           Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison