- Hey guys, Brian Hunt here with you again
and this is our 4th video in this series
on project workflow, project management,
and project backup.
And in this video we're talking to you
about how we backup to our NAS server,
why we use our NAS to back up our projects on to,
and how we use and why we use LTO tapes
as one of our major ways
to back up our projects and our files.
So in the last video we showed you
how we used Project Manager
to make our finished projects much smaller
and to consolidate all our media into one place.
And when we do that we save that media managed project
onto our NAS server.
There was actually a great video
that was done by NewShooters.com
about this particular NAS that we're using.
You can click to watch that.
There's also a link up in the corner.
We have it set up for right now for 60 terabytes.
We have it set as a RAID five
so we can have up to one drive die on it.
And we have two more spaces on the NAS
to fit another two 10 terabyte drives.
We project manage our projects, put them into the NAS.
We can very easily click on that project file,
reinstall that project, bring it up.
All the information's gonna be there.
It doesn't take up very much space on our NAS
so we can fit loads and loads of projects on it.
We have stuff cataloged from 2015 down to this year.
Every project we've done is all has been media managed out
and is on there so we can quickly get to them.
But if there is a case where we need to get the full project
that we've originally worked on,
all the files that's not in the media managed project,
we have saved those all onto LTO tapes.
We have an LTO drive behind me and an old Mac tower.
The reason we use LTO tapes
is LTO tapes are one of the most cost efficient ways
to backup a lot of data,
and one of the safest ways to backup a lot of data.
We're saving from ourselves having to buy
tons and tons of hard drives.
So if I want to come back to an LTO tape five years from now
the LTO tape will boot up,
then I can get all the footage back off of it
and I have it in a very safe place.
We never delete our project files until they're on the NAS
and they're backed up on an LTO tape.
So you guys might be wondering what the hell is an LTO tape.
Well basically LTO tape is a magnetic tape.
It is tape, it is linear.
It's not writing to it like a hard drive
or it can skip back and forth between places.
It has to write the information as a linear tape around.
So if we want to restore a project off the LTO tape
and say that project is 200 gigs
and we want to transfer that folder off the LTO tape
onto a hard drive so us to be able
to start working on it again,
it'll take a couple of hours to transfer over.
So not ridiculous.
It's just you can't work off an LTO.
You can't actually edit from an LTO,
or be writing directly to an LTO.
You have to use an LTO software to write to it
and you have to be using an LTO deck.
The initial startup costs with an LTO system
is a little bit more expensive.
An LTO tape deck, the one that we have,
costs us about 3,500.
We use it on our old Mac tower
'cause it has the slots in there.
We can change them out, we can have the direct line
to the LTO.
You can get Thunderbolt connections.
They're a little bit more expensive.
They're about $5,000.
So the other cost with the LTO tape setup is the software.
And there's a few different softwares out there,
but the software's gonna cost you around $1,000 Canadian.
But you start to recoup the cost
of the LTO deck quite quickly
because of the cheap cost on how much space you get
on an LTO tape.
So for $50 you're getting
almost two and 1/2 terabytes of storage.
That's very cheap storage.
And I can keep using this LTO deck for the next five years,
or the next 10 years.
This is something you can charge to a client
for storing it for them
and you can charge them for restoring it
and they're gonna be very happy with you
that you still have their project file and all the footage.
So I want to show you how we use LTO
and how we backup with our LTO systems.
We have a OWC external hard drive on our computer
where we have our LTO deck and we transfer it to there.
We have in a folder called LTO.
And then we make a numbered sequence
that is the name of our tape.
So we use BHV and then I'll put zero
and then the number of the tape.
So right now this is BHV018.
So this tape then has a folder.
We keep adding our projects to that
until we get to just a bit over two terabytes.
And then when we're finished we'll print out a little piece
that will show us what we have,
what projects we have on this LTO tape.
Now one of the things to know
when you're also writing to an LTO tape,
it is a tape deck and it makes a lot of noise.
But put on a set of earphones and you're fine.
And you might want to look at having your LTO tape deck
set up to a dedicated machine, like our old Mac tower,
so we don't have to worry about doing work on the system
when we're writing to an LTO tape.
I'm gonna have a lot of links in the description
to this video to show different places
where you can buy LTO tapes.
I got mine from the DVshop in Toronto.
They're a great place if you've never been there
to buy stuff if you're in the GT area.
There's Southern Ontario area.
I get a lot of my products there.
The guys are great.
They can show you different options
of the things you can buy
and giving you pricings, et cetera.
In the U.S. I have some links to B&H Photo Video
and you can see some different options
of an LTO tape deck that might meet your needs
or fit to your system configurations.
And another further step you can go
for another even more peace of mind
is making two copies of each LTO tape
and having one of those LTO tapes off-site
in case there was ever a break in or a fire,
so you have your files in two different
actual physical places in case there was an issue to happen
in your main work area.
So in the next video we're gonna show you the ins and outs
and we use the LTO software that we use
to back up to our LTO tape.
We're gonna give you all that information
that's gonna help you make decisions
if you feel like LTO backups are something
that would work well for yourself.
Thanks so much, guys,
for taking the time to watch this video.
If you liked it, please give us a like.
Please think of subscribing to our channel
and we'll see you on the next one.
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