Quicksand Fans

With few exceptions, I have stuck with ordering DVDs rather than downloading individual clips due to the issue of storing files long-term. Some of these downloads can be quite large. This raises the issue of how to store them for future use. Hard drives crash and CDs only hold so much. I could use data DVDs but then I may as well just order the DVDs in the first place.

What do folks here do?

Some people I know have turned to online backup services such as this one:
http://www.backblaze.com/

Or if you prefer to keep your files at home, I can recommend RAID-1 or RAID-5. But this will not protect your data if any harm comes to your PC as a whole or from accidental deletion/overwriting. And you should still check your hard drives regularly.

..

I have an External HDD that I keep in my fire safe. Anything important I leave on my internal HDD and also back up to the external. Figure with two copies on two seperate drives one of them's bound to survive anything.

External HDD's have become so huge and relatively inexpensive that I have more than one. The biggest problem for me is keeping the volume of stuff that I have organized. I have footlockers full of tapes, DVD's, and negatives that I'll never find time to transfer or even get out. I won't even begin to describe Dave's situation except to say that it's as organized as the library of Congress. He's made it clear to me that it's as much about organization as anything and that's not really my forte.

Depending on the volume to be stored, there are also services such as Google Docs, Onlinefilefolder, and others. It costs more than an external hard drive and the storage capacity is less, but its safe even from a fire that destroys everything in your whole computer. Assuming you have a fast connection (which I do at home but not at the Studio) its a fairly safe way to store files and have them accessible from almost anywhere. With both of the services mentioned the largest file you can store is 1G, which is enough for nearly any scene though not for a DVD image. I thnk the file size limit on Microsoft's version of this is quite a bit less.

I do not know about those other services, but I do use http://www.filesanywhere.com to store and share large personal files. I pay $3.95 per month for 1 GB. I have a free Photobucket account for the same purpose. I had placed a couple of "naked women" pictures on the latter site assuming it would be a "safe" place to store them (without sharing them) but the service deleted them for "violating terms of service"! Humph!

I avoid storing material related to our interest at those sites for reasons already articulated. I appreciate other posters taking the time to share how they handle the logistics. It may prove too much work for some of us. But now I have more knowledge with which to work.

Keep in mind that if you have an active Club MPV account, all the pay-per-scene videos you paid for and downloaded (and perhaps lost due to a hd crash) can be re-downloaded at no cost, since you already paid for them.

Boggy Man wrote:Keep in mind that if you have an active Club MPV account, all the pay-per-scene videos you paid for and downloaded (and perhaps lost due to a hd crash) can be re-downloaded at no cost, since you already paid for them.

I did not know that. I will have to re-think my reluctance to participate for that reason. Thank you for clarifying this aspect of the service.

[nevermind, delete plx!]