Key Factors To Consider When Creating A Media Storage System (page 2)

SSDs

We've been bandying the term SSD around a lot lately. SSD stands for Solid State Disk. Since Flash memory has gotten fast enough to be used like a hard drive, someone decided to try doing just that, and the result is the SSD. Think of it as a faster version of the ubiquitous USB Flash drive that is attached to your computer in a more permanent way.

Some advantages are the aforementioned resistance to stray magnetism, generally high read speeds, very minimal (if any) heat generation and generally lower power consumption (particularly compared to the power consumption of high-performance desktop hard drives).

However, SSD-land is not a paradise world. Writes tend to be slower, because there is frequently an erase cycle involved before data can be written to an SSD. SSDs, therefore, aren't well-suited for video capture that's much more advanced than the most popular consumer formats.

Also, don't try to defragment an SSD. Because everything on an SSD is accessible at the same speed (unlike on a hard drive), fragmented files will not take any longer to be accessed. In fact, you will shorten the life of any Flash memory device that you attempt to defragment. However, don't forget to defrag your regular hard drives and disk arrays.

Enterprise-Class Drives

We would recommend enterprise-class hard drives to anyone who doesn't mind paying a small premium for a better-engineered hard drive that will generally have higher performance than a desktop counterpart. A typical enterprise-class hard drive has a spindle that is anchored on the top and bottom of the drive, instead of just the bottom of the drive. This makes the platters significantly more stable. These drives also include more-robust error correction and are designed to be operated 24 hours a day. (Most desktop drives are designed to run for a 40-hour week.)

It is important to note that many RAID controllers are designed to work best with enterprise-class hard drives, mainly because of the way they handle read errors. Left to its own devices, a desktop drive will keep trying to read the bad spot forever (and causes other things to freeze, by extension), but an enterprise drive knows the show must go on. It reports the error to the operating system and proceeds to the next operation.

Entry-level enterprise (3-1/2", SATA, 7200 RPM) drives run from 16 to 26 cents/GB; desktop drives run from 9 to 18 cents/GB. Other interfaces, such as SAS and Fiber Channel are also available, at a premium (of course). Enterprise-class drives are generally where you find drives that have faster spindle speeds, and there are some smaller form factor drives (e.g., notebook-sized drives) available as well. All told, no matter how you slice it, hard drives still deliver the most reasonable cost per gigabyte.

Optical Storage

We've heard numbers that range from two years to 50 years, so we honestly don't know who to believe. For serious projects, it seems wise to use archival-grade media, as opposed to the el-cheapo media that you'd be using for test discs. So both the archival-grade and el-cheapo media have their places.

It depends upon whom you ask. Gold in general sounds like a wise idea, as it is more resistant to oxidation over time.

We aren't sure about how the different dyes that are available will last over time. Each manufacturer claims that theirs is the best, of course. If it's an important project, consider using discs from two different manufacturers (e.g. make sure your disc-burning program reports two different brands of discs, since the companies that market blank discs often simply buy discs from manufacturers and brand them however they please).

Theoretically, yes. The argument is that, if the disc is spinning more slowly during the burning process, the write laser can be modulated more carefully by your computer's disc burner, leading to a disc that will be more stable over time. If you have time to write a disc at a low speed, it might be time well-spent.

Nathan Beaman is an Apple Certified Final Cut and Motion Graphics Trainer.