Which Hard Drive do you recommend for this production?

Have you ever worked with RAIDs from Areca? Heard that they should be pretty good – some say even the best (at least here in Austria/Europe). I’m just curious because I’m about to get a big RAID in 2018 for my colorgrading suite and maybe also some DIT jobs.

A great article which may have just come at the right time.

A shoot I have coming up is in the middle of nowhere with very limited power, as described in your article. I’ve been looking for a solution and a guess lots of 4TB Lacie rugged drives will be the answer. I’m worried about speeds, but I guess it’ll just have to be. I’m estimating about 60TB needed overall for Master and 1 (Yes, I know, not good enough), back up.

For context, it’s happening over 13 days. A 2 camera shoot (Red One RAW 4K 2:1. Redcode 36 (1:8), and an updated FS5 with Atoms Inferno to get 4K. There’s maybe enough power available to keep some heaters and a laptop juiced for transfer. I’ll be in a barn which is also the actor’s green room.

Hi Nico,
I myself have never worked with the Areca brand. However I was DIT on set for a Japanese commercial being shot here in Florida. The editor from the Tokyo agency was using an Areca raid that he brought with him. Through a translator he told me that he loves the drive and takes it with him everywhere. What amazed me was that it was Thunderbolt 3 long before they were available here in the US.
Thanks for your question. Good luck with your purchase.

Hi Mark,
If I were in your shoes I’d ask production if the grip department can provide you with a Honda 2000i generator. They are very quiet and can run all day on about a gallon and a half of fuel. It would open you to many options that right now are unavailable to you. Including larger faster hard drives. And if they need extra convincing just tell them the Director and DoP will have a place to charge their phones.

Good luck on your shoot. Let us know how it turns out.
Rich

I have a question that is somewhat related. More centered on post production and active working storage for high-res media. I have a project with 8K R3D footage (shot in raw and proxy). Looking for recommended storage for working with the footage. My question isn’t related to on-set DIT backup, but more about editorial post and finishing storage advice.

I recently switched from an iMac workstation to a new PC workstation. I have two GTX 1080 Ti GPUs, Gigabyte Z270x motherboard which touts USB 3.1 Gen 2 connections. That USB 3 Gen 2 sounds like something that could help with performance.

I was wondering should I place multiple SATA 3 hard drives into the PC (ex, 10TB 7200 RPM Baracuda drives)? Or, would I get better performance with an external USB 3.1 RAID (ex. the LaCie 16 TB 2big Dock 2-Bay RAID Array)?

Thanks for any advice or links to articles that may thoroughly give workflow advice for R3D storage while in post.

Thanks for your answer, Rich!
And I hope to read more helpful DIT related articles from you in the future. They’re really helpful and provide a great insight. Thanks!

In my opinion USB3.1 is the better option. But I think everyone has it’s own opinion on that topic.
BUT with a Lacie 2big you won’t have enough speed for 8K R3D RAW. That’s for sure. As for speed the number one rule is: the more drives the better/faster. I think for 8K RAW you need a RAID0 with at least 6 or even 8 drives. And always keep in mind that RAID0 is suicide for backing up data. You should only have your raw-footage for your current project on the RAID0 (no project-files and whatsoever) and also have at least 2 to 3 backups of the footage on other drives to be safe.

Thank you for the info. We do have the footage backed up on a pair of external HDDs.

You bring up a good point about building a RAID with at least 6 drives. That’s what another person recommended to me. What class hard drive in the RAID? I suppose if budget is not a hindrance then a series of SSDs. But if limited on budget, would a setup with 7,200 RPM hard drives suffice?

I would go for 7,200 RPM enterprise-class harddrives from Seagate. But I think any enterprise-class harddrive should do the job reliable.

Thank you, nico. Appreciate the insights

Hey Rich,

I’m back from the film shoot now. I tried pushing for something better drive-wise, and the generator, but the price of anything above ~£500 was out of the question for both unfortunately. Ended up having to use several 4TB lacie rugged drives. And to be honest, I’d probably have had even bigger problems if I were working with something that needed plugging in because this barn I was in didn’t have any power for some parts of some of the days. At least when that happened all I was losing was my charger power, and not having a drive switching off mid transfer.

The RED actually didn’t take too long as far as transfer times go. It was our B cam that was spitting out DNG sequences which was chewing through storage. It was taking a long time to transfer even the shortest clips. Luckily we didn’t use it too much actually. Just for pick ups or when the RED kept crashing (….) It all stopped me from doing other DIT duties. No time to properly talk colour or properly view rushes with the DOP/Director.

The real neck ache was making the back ups each evening between two lacie drives. I’d start it before bed and a couple of times i was sitting in the car the next morning about to drive to set as it was finishing! Nightmare fuel.

Never actually suffered any backlogs though, so that’s great and the camera guys stayed happy and the rushes are looking very nice. I’m definitely not going to take on another job like this again unless a few things are in place first. So I’ll be coming back to your DIT articles in the future for sure.

Thank you for the follow up. I’m glad it was a successful shoot for you. Yes, as DITs we have all stared at the drive sitting there wondering why it is taking forever to just copy. People tend to forget that format’s that shoot in still sequences such as DNG or TIFF often take twice as long to transfer as apposed to a MOV or R3D file. It’s the opening and closing for each file that takes time in the process. Good luck on your next shoot.
Rich-

Ah I didn’t know that about why image sequences took so much longer. I’ll remember that one for next time I have to explain it. Thank you.