There is a decrease in write speed due to calculations that
have to be made before data is written to the drives. If you want to
increase read/write speed and have the benefits of RAID 5, you need to
implement RAID 10. With 3 drives, there is a 33% loss of disk space. With 5
drives, there is a 20% loss of disk space. You will need the additional
drives and a RAID controller which increases cost.
'Package' feature of InDesign is used to create a new folder
'Pi_JunJul09_CfO' and this is backed up into the system (CfO stands for
Collect for Output, a throwback to our Quark days). This also reduces the
total size by about 75% and this allows DVDs to be made as well. It does
not, however, contain any unused images, diagrams or calculations we may
have employed.
7. PDF files are made ready and transmitted to the printing company via ftp.
Copies of the completed pdf files are made to DVD, transmitted
electronically to the Head Office along with lowresolution versions for the
website.
8. As soon as the magazine proofs have been approved and we have 'gone to
press' without any issues we do some housekeeping, shuffle the oldest
magazine file-set off the C drive of the work station, and create a new
folder for the next issue. Backups are finalised to two hard drives and
these presently stretch back to 2004.
Although this is not a totally secure protocol it is strong enough to ensure
that we reach the member's door-mats on time and have all files available
for reference and re-use of some design material. The methodology could
equally apply to weddings or important shoots.
Storage Options
Fundamental to more reliable systems is the use of RAID (Redundant Array of
Inexpensive Discs). Depending upon how the RAID array is arranged you
achieve improved data-throughput speed, more reliability or both. With the
best systems they can withstand failure of a drive without any interruption
of the service, some can withstand two, simultaneous drive failures.
Such a system was built recently for another organisation. Eighteen 1TB
drives were purchased and stress-tested prior to installation, to seek out
any weaklings the so-called infant mortality), one failed. The accepted
drives were built into RAID arrays in two discrete server housings
accommodated at two secure hosting sites. Access to the server rooms at
these sites is very restricted, needing facial recognition, fingerprint
recognition, a password and an appointment – just to get to reception. The
building is devoid of windows and armoured against attack by ram-raiders
(the motor vehicle type not random access memory!). This is what you call a
secure hosting site!
As part of the definition of the system requirements all options were
considered including off-the-shelf solutions, the Drobo and other
proprietary storage devices. Options, included: Drobo, Netgear ReadyNAS Pro,
Thecus NAS devices, a Dell server optimised for storage, an HP StorageWorks,
a Sun storage server and a few others The costs of these ranged from
£500–£1,500, without disks, for the appliances, and from around £4,000
(discounted) for a full-blown server. The Drobo would cost around £740 with
four 1TB drives. However, we are hearing too many issues on reliability and
would not commit to this solution at present. There are also particular
issues reported when Drobo is used with 64-bit Vista (tell us something that
surprises us, please!)
Given that we have now fallen out with Drobo and LaCie were are back to
building machines ourselves, at quite a cost saving but admittedly with the
in-house expertise which is available to very few. The fundamental
principles (and flaws), though are worthy of note: 1. We are using a
computer not a detachable hard drive.
2. The connection is through a network, not USB.
3. The use of Linux- or Solaris-based operating systems means we are playing
with a real operating system not a Mickey Mouse ones such as Vista, for our
RAID arrays. We know from experience that when it fails, we can recover
data. Even if the motherboard fails we can mount drives in another machine
and get the data out. Drobo has proprietary data handling and you cannot
work around a system board failure – were they to go out of business (or
change the model) you might come unstuck. We are routinely opening files
from magazines made almost 10 years ago – that is a long time in computing
and a long time for a start-up venture to survive.
4. Our system requires expertise to use, unlike the Drobo (when it is
actually working).
5. We have not had to invest much more for a computer-based storage.
6. We are paying a premium on desk space, office noise and heat generation –
each new machine adds to this issue.
Overall
To summarise then, the outlook for increased storage requirements is quite
complex or risky, or both! We still favour a computer above a detachable
hard drive; DVDs remain problematic in that you do need a lot of them. You
may care to think about this when you are using a motor drive at a wedding!
You might also give your house-keeping schedule a long hard look and be a
little more ruthless, the problem is only going to get worse and you will
one day be called to account!
For the average photographer the external, detachable hard drive and a bit
of care are probably the best options for security and expandability. In a
recent PCPro review of 15 external hard drives, the cost per GB ranged from
8p to 39.4p (the Drobo works out at about 22p/GB, the bespoke 8TB system we
built at 26p/GB). Taking the median value external drive cost (20p/GB)
suggests that your average wedding backup (two external drives with 36GB
each) is going to cost about £15 to £20 to store. The actual sizes range
from 160GB to 1TB (1024GB). The write speeds to backup our average wedding
means that it would take between 2.4 minutes and 48 minutes, so you had
better read the specifications carefully! If you have eSATA connections on
your computer you are going to be three or four times faster (eSATA is the
newest connection method for external drives and is only found on the later
computers). For the external drives, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus pushed all
the right buttons (1TB; £88; 1.7s to write a 50MB file). So you are up and
running for less than £250 if you include a copy of Beyond Compare. The
OneTouch, by the way, stands for the backup system software that is included
with the drives.
" One thing we encountered was the unstableness of the Drobo.
While it must be difficult attempting to maintain multiple drives of
different speeds and capacities, this is what Drobo is supposed to do.
However, multiple times during our tests our computers would claim that our
Drobo was unreadable and that the only options were to eject or reformat.
This simply cannot happen to your storage on a regular basis which we found
out the hard way, as our Drobo video review was wiped out."
Gizmodo.com 2007
" Where does this leave me? Totally at the mercy of Drobo technical support.
I appreciate that Drobo tries to make things simple for people, I really do.
We’ve all seen how successful that Apple is at enabling the layperson with
power they never had before. The difference is I can still get under the
hood with Apple products, whereas with the Drobo, nada. Nothing."
technicalalex.com November 2008
