If “digital” is the new word for the 21st century, then the new phrase for the 21st century should be “back up, back up, back up”.

You would be thinking, hardisk are quite hardy stuff, well, they are. But shit happens.

In the past year alone, we have encountered 2 hard drive failures, 5 Raid system failures, 6 solid state card issues and a whole lot of data-recovery. We’ve even come to the conclusion that there is simply no other situation possible for data to be lost that we have not encountered. Having said that, we have in place a backup system that is quite full proof, so thankfully, throughout all the failures, we have not lost any crucial data.

Backing up should not be a “if I have the time, I’ll do it” kinda thing. It should be integrated into your workflow, especially for those whose work involves massive data storage. I think with our experience, I can share with you our backup system for those who would like to emulate it.

First, we have a copy of everything on the working scratch disk, this is the disk that is used to edit. Then, there is another copy of the data on a RAID 0 system, for those who are not familiar with RAID 0, it just means that data is being cloned to 2 separate hard disks. Then, the cards are not formatted until the next job arrives. So, if you’re counting, we have 4 copies of the exact same data lying in separate mediums. Then, when everything is all done and edited and outputted. The end product files are duplicated onto a dedicated hard disk for storing end product files and another copy goes into our mini-server. Then, when one of the RAID hard disks is full, it goes off site, meaning, out of the office. This is a precautionary step, so that in the unfortunate event that a fire or theft happens in the office, we still have a copy of our data elsewhere.

So, as you can see, we are KIASU. But, we are proud of our KIASU-ism. Digital has made life alot easier for all of us, but with it also comes inevitable dangers, hard disks will encounter bad sectors, RAID systems do crash, solid state gets corrupted. Part and parcel of going digital, so backup, backup, backup.

DT

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