My Backup Strategy – From Drives to LTO Tape

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And so it starts – the LTO 2018 set… from G-Technology Shuttle XLs to LTO tape the never-ending data backup continues. Hits 8K RED Digital Cinemausers and anyone shooting 4K RAW as well I’m sure.

Been lazy going to cold storage for almost a year but with close to 250 Terabytes of drives online in my office w only 20TB of the critical files on the cloud via Dropbox you gotta be safe.

I have my drives organized as:
ONLINE – In Progress (Fast SSDs)
ONLINE – Projects less than 1 year old
OFFLINE – actually online but 1+ year old and can be deleted at will
ARCHIVED – for my most common stock request and also deletable. But not worth going to tape for a commonly requested asset…

Obviously everything is backed up to LTO-6 Tape ASAP in the initial phase (so it’s actually ALL archived – but this naming convention has worked for me to know where to put things in relative levels of priority.)

Critical in progress files are on DropBox

Trimmed R3Ds and Proxies SELECTS are shipped toNimiaa for stock sales and backed up there too. (And backed up to tape here too eventually.)

And ALL project files are on DropBox – I currently have 22TB on the cloud w their business plan and am super happy to have access to them on any computer or iOS device instantly from anywhere (easily downloadable or shareable.).DaVinci ResolveeFinal Cut Pro XAdobe Photoshop Lightroom Adobe Premiere Proo

My DropBox copies files to the cloud, a computer w Studio XL (64TB) in LA and a third copy in NYC on another Studio XL (64TB)

I already have 100+ LTO drives and am starting my 2018 set this week – my version of “spring cleaning.” Used to have a server w 14-tape LTO drive back in the day but now things have gotten so much simpler and more compact (and affordable!)

This is the least fun part of the gig but one of the most critical. And it feels good when it’s done right – one should NEVER delete a file … Just in case ONE request comes in for a sale it usually pays for the drive …

Wonder if anyone knows of a service that will economically make dupes of the LTO tapes …

What’s your workflow? We don’t all have Full Time DITs …