Technical help (External hard drives)

Technical issues are always common. They’re the biggest time waster. I spend most of my days on Google, searching for solutions for various problems I encounter. Usually this goes on quietly behind-the-scenes, but this time I’d like to open it up, at the expense of sounding desperate. Maybe someone in the Cinemassacre community has some helpful suggestions. And if not, don’t worry, I am still always researching. I doubt this relates to most people, unless you work in media. Also, I use Mac. It seems everybody else uses PC’s. Long ago, I was told to get a Mac, and I’ve been stuck to my ways ever since. I can try to adapt to new software, but when it’s a whole different operating system, no.

The topic I wanted to ask about is external hard drives. A big part of making videos is data management. How do you store your files? As the years go on, making videos, I accumulate more data. Currently, I am working on a giant 30TB Lacie drive. That is correct. I said 30 Terabytes! Currently, it’s about 25TB full, and I nervously anticipate the day when I need to find something larger.

In the old days, after a drive became full, I would just buy another, but here’s where it gets complicated. In my new projects, I am constantly referencing old projects. It saves me a lot of time to be able to go back and recycle an old image, a video clip, a sound effect, or anything, whenever needed. I need instant access to all my data at all times. The only exception is the AVGN Movie which is too huge, it takes up about 20TB on it’s own, which is why it’s on a separate drive. Before I’ve had a stack of hard drives sitting next to my computer, all daisy chained together, each with their own power supply, and it became a total mess.

My current drive is 30TB, though technically, it is an enclosure housing 5 separate hard drives that are formatted as “Raid 0” so they all operate together, and appear on the computer as one drive. They came pre-formated as Raid 5, meaning it doesn’t use the full capacity, and instead duplicates data for protection, showing up at 23TB capacity. The Mac Disk Utility wouldn’t let me reformat. I remember this confused me for a week, and drove me completely nuts. I eventually found out that Lacie uses it’s own Raid Manager software. Even then, it was very confusing to use. I’d rather never go through that again.

I’ve been fine for a while, but lately I’ve had a few scary power outages. Some were regular power outages, but one time something else strange was going on. When I tried to export a certain project in Adobe Premiere, believe it or not, it actually shut down the computer instantly. It would happen halfway through the same project, over and over again. I’ve never seen anything like that, in all my years of editing video. Everyone says Premiere is better than Final Cut, but I have yet to believe it. Been using it for a year now and it’s been a disaster (That’s a whole other story). Before anyone says to update my shit, I am using the latest version of Premiere, and it’s a new Mac Pro. Even my battery backup failed to prevent the computer (and drive) from shutting down instantly. And after you’ve worked for so long on a video, there’s nothing more aggravating.

Let’s say a power outage or whatever kills my hard drive. It hasn’t happened yet, but let’s say IF it does. My data would not be lost, because I backup constantly. I have many smaller hard drives, that I often copy to, and they are sent outside the home, stored elsewhere. But they are very disorganized. If my 30TB drive fails me, it would take months to copy it all again onto one single large drive, so that I could access it all conveniently and efficiently again.

I tried buying the same drive as before, just for another large backup, and I tried figuring out the Raid Manager for the last time, which seems to be outdated since the last time I bought one of those drives. I wasted an entire day on it. I couldn’t figure it out. I’m sick of hunting down drivers and firmware, and shit. I want a drive that you can plug in, and start up, without a problem.

To sum it up, the question is, any hard drive recommendations?

-Must work on Mac

-Must be easy to format

-Preferably Thunderbolt 2 AND USB 3.0 (So I have the options) OR just one or the other I guess.

-30TB or more! I know it’s crazy.

Links to products would be helpful. That’s all. Or anyone in the same situation to relate, would be nice to hear any thoughts.

Regardless, I’ve been working on new videos/projects which I hope you’ll get to see sooner or later. One project in particular, I’m very happy about. It’s definitely something different.