The best types of hard drives for all stages of production
One of the most significant risks in the world of video content is Great Fear: Losing all the work you've done. If it's not backed up properly, an entire shoot could be lost. The good thing is, we have a wealth of tech options and practices that can duplicate and save precious time and effort. We reached out to Larry O'Connor, Founder and CEO of Storage solutions powered by OWC OWC We need to gather the appropriate equipment for each kind of video scenario. Check out Larry's top techniques for storage, and his recommendations for keeping your project safe each step of the way.
A brief glossary of hard drives
Hard disk drives (HDD) HDDs are the most widely-used and well-known storage devices used by the computer industry and other drives for the past few years. Solid state drives (SSD) (SSD) are like that of the HDD, but use flash memory without moving parts within. NVM Express for Non-Volatile Memory (NVMe ) is a communications standard that has been specifically built to optimize SSD technology's performance. It can provide faster SSD performance using PCIe.
Okay, now onto the gear
Pre-pro
In all the important details that can decide the fate of a production including casting, location scouting, equipment, and crew members needed It is essential to ensure you ensure that your "pre-pro" job is accessible but also secure. Start saving early and frequently, and choose storage devices that have high capacity and less costly.
Envoy Pro EX with USB-C
$119.00 -- $479.00 Best for: Off-site or location scouting visits with clients
This sleek dust-proof, waterproof design fits into your pocket, making it both durable and versatile.
Mercury Elite Pro Dock - $430 -- $1,430
Best to use for: Studio, desktop devices The dual drive, PC-friendly device allows for speed, flexibility, as well as up to 32TB of storage and backup capacity.
Production
Just like location is key in real estate, storage speeds are crucial in the production phase. The footage you're working on is massive and may not be in the comfort of your workplace or in a your pre-production location. Wherever you are, you need to make sure that footage doesn't take a lot of time to sort through.
The Accelsior PCIe 4M2
$529.75 -- $1,999.75 The best to use for: Controlled studio environments, on-set backups
Whether you're using the newest Mac Pro, a legacy Mac, or a PC tower on set, you'll want the Accelsior card SSD. It's the fastest SSD OWC offers (over 6,000MB/s) which is perfect for streaming and editing large format graphics and video data without hassles.
ThunderBay Line - $710 -- $2,800
The best for: Large-scale projects
If your project requires both speed and massive capacity, look no further than OWC's ThunderBay line. Need something compact to fit into a set that is crowded or a DIT cart? Think about ThunderBay Miniature HTML0 .
Transport from your where you are to the studio
You may need to get your work to your editors or coworkers before you actually make your way back home. Here are the hard drives that are durable to ship with.
Mercury Helios 3S - $229.99
Ideal to use for: The durability, as well as the ability to back an entire shooting day The Mercury Helios and the U.2 NVMe Interchange System were created to connect workflows between posts and manufacturing. It offers quick U.2 NVMe SSDs with ease of swapping drives in an incredibly safe, portable carrier. This light, durable SSD lets you quickly Transfer a whole day's worth of filming and forward it to be edited, all while cutting down on the cost of shipping with the lightweight design.
ThunderBlade The cost is $729. $2,299
The best to use for: T ravel Productions, outdoor shooting
It is designed to be tough reliable, dependable, and lightning fast The ThunderBlade is at ease on the road, on stage, or at the editing bay. It has a robust hardshell case that makes it transportable and shippable. The device is compact but powerful offering as much as 8TB of storage (with speeds of up to 2800MB/s read speed and 2450MB/s writing speeds).
Post-production
The majority of drives under production are able to be used to edit post. In fact, this is where the ThunderBlade, Mercury Helios, and ThunderBay mini shine as they're able to edit.
Jupiter mini NAS
The best for: Real-time collaborative editing
The desktop with 5-Bay Jupiter mini is the ideal solution for team projects that are large in scope. It's small enough for a carry-on, yet offers huge storage (up up to 70TB). Additionally, it's capable of working with most major video editing software.
Archiving
Mercury Pro LTO
Best to use for: Saving and forgetting it for 30 years
After all the creativity and editing has been done, there's one more stage to finish the work. If you're archiving your work you'll want to choose gear which can be stored on shelves and won't wipe your files after several months. The Mercury Pro LTO will be available in June 2020 for purchase. You can save your work now for three decades.
A word of caution on the terabytes
A majority of these drives are referring to Terabytes of storage therefore, for a human-based reference 1TB of capacity of a hard drive =