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In no time at all you will start to see your megabytes (MB) turn into Gigabytes(GB) and your Gigabytes into Terabytes (TB). Suddenly the idea of storing all your media on your trusty Mac or PC suddenly is no longer viable. Now is the time to starting thinking about your Backups. Let's talk about a Local Backup - a Large, Multi Hard Drive (HDD) or Solid State Drive (SSD) Enclosure with RAID for protection from Hard Disk Failure. For those with home or low demand archive needs, we recommend a compact 2 drive archive in a RAID 1 (Mirror or Clone) setup. Take a look: |
LaCie Rugged Triple USB3,USB2 &Firewire 800 |
StarTech 2-Bay eSATA, USB3.0 and UASP |
Western Digital MyBook 2-Bay Thunderbolt 8TB Included |
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£79.00 | £77.00 | 0.0p |
However for those in need of semi-professional capacity levels or those who just made the move from Hobby to Career, two bays of storage in a RAID 1 will feel quite constricting early on. You should consider a 4/5 Bay storage option, with a RAID 5 storage environment. It will give you a larger capacity overall and more peace of mind. We would recommend the following: |
Akitio 4-Bay Thunderbolt 2 Mini Case (External RAID required) |
Drobo 4-Bay Gen 3 USB 3.0 DDR3A31 |
Akitio /InXtron 4-Bay 19" Rack, eSATA & USB3.0 |
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If you are in the Professional or Enterprise level of Photography and Videography, then you should really be thinking much, much bigger. Many Companies and people take this moment to make the leap from a more familiar Desktop Storage environment and into Rackmount Storage devices. Suddenly eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty-four and yes, even forty-eight bays of storage is up for consideration. And with the dawn of 4K cinema (4096×2160) and 16K Digital Cinema (15360x8640) popping up, suddenly hundreds of Terabytes of Storage doesn't sound so vast! |
Infortrend Eonstar ESDA 1012G 12-Bay Single Controller |
Promise VTrack VTE630fS 24-Bay FCAL-8GBIT, 7K SAS |
Netstor 48-Bay Enclosure Built in latest 12Gb/s SAS Expander |
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0.0p | £6,194.00 | £5,618.00 |
Don't forget your Hard Drives! When it comes to selecting your drives, you should always be mindful of your Storage environment. The majority of modern hard drives are now tailor made for specific storage tasks. So, dependant on whether you intend to access them often, have them on for days at a time, or just to sync too sporadically (not recommended) then here is our breakdown of the best drives available. Each was selected to not only cover a specific Storage Environment, but also as the best balance of Capacity vs Speed vs Price in their field. |
DataCenter & Enterprise WD SE 4TB - WD4000F9YZ |
NAS - upto 7-Bays WD 6TB Red - WD60EFRX |
NAS - upto 8-Bays+ Seagate 6TB - Enterprise HDD |
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0.0p | £155.00 | 0.0p |
Low Power Consumption WD Green 6TB - WD60EZRX |
SAS Enterprise Hitachi-HGST 8TB - UltraStar He8 |
Large Capacity Archive Segate Archive 8TB v2 |
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Last but not least, don't forget that we at SPAN.COM can physically build your RAID storage, install the latest available firmware, setup your RAID before shipping and perform numerous diagnostic tests in advance before shipping your order at no additional cost. Our "SpanStor Build & Test" service comes highly recommended and is the perfect way to ensure you recieve your order, ready to go out of the box! |
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Top Tip - RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. It works as a means spreading your data across several drives yet still maintaining the ability to recover data if 1 drive fails. There are many kinds of RAID, Ranging from RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and many more variations. Each weighs up the Pros and Cons of Capacity vs Redundancy (safety). Click Here for more options on Drive Enclosures and RAID options |