Looking for advice on storage, archiving and back up

[tacos3]

I'm looking for some advice....

I'm need to setup a server for about 50,000 images. I'm looking for advice on image management/archiving tools like Photoshop Album 2.0, Picture it! or Photobase. I'm not so concerned about the image manipulation features of these tools but the locate, find and categorization features. I also want to setup Raid discs and a decent backup mechnism using a DAT or DLT drive. Looks like I'll need about 500 Gb for growth mirrored for ~1Tb of total storage.

My folders by date with DVD+R archiving just isn't going to work for this.

Thanks,

Darren

[Scottes]

I highly doubt you'll like the speed of any of those products for 50,000 images. You're really looking at more of a pro package. Take a look at iMatch for a good, not-so-expensive package. $50 I think, and should be able to handle 50K images, as well as cataloging CDs or DVDs (which most inexpensive ones don't do).

[advdesigns]

iView Media Pro is what I use. Handles RAW files. Very quick jpeg preview of RAW files. It's indexing capabilities are second to none. $199. or you can get the standard version for $99 (iView Media) if you dont need RAW support.

www.iview-multimedia.com

[TVSET]

Software-wise, I'd put everything on some Linux box and write a couple of scripts with ImageMagick and jhead to manage it. But that's maybe just me. :)

Hardware-wise, I would go for IDE raid setup. The price different with SCSI will make a lot of difference. As for the read/write speads, unless you'll be having some very busy website with all these images, you'll be OK.

As for the backup hardware, backing up 1TByte on either DAT or DLT will be painful. Check the Ultrium technology. Surely it will come out more expensive, but will save you a lot of time, effort, and tapes.

[redbutt]

As far as storage goes. I use a firewire chain of drive enclosures. The enclosures are Pyro kits. they work great, and you can stick any drive you want in there. Drives are getting really cheap now and you can get 250 Gig drive for ~$0.50/gig at places like Frys (just look for the sales and deals). Since firewire lets you put something like 30 devices on a chain, you can have boat loads of storage growth capacity.

As for software...dunno. I'm using BreezeBrowser to manage ~50gigs of images, and it's working for my needs.

[kellylipp]

I'd suggest using SATA drives behind a RAID Controller. We've had good success (in professional backup solutions we design and sell) using the Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 controller. Up to four SATA drives in a RAID5. Most cost effective SATA drive now is 250 GB at about $190 each. Four drives gives you 750 GB of effective, reasonably protected storage.

Backup is another story. Complicated, especially at the price most of us are willing to pay. Somebody mentioned Ultrium and this is by far and away the best but expensive. The nice thing about it is at 200 GB/cartridge without compression, you will only need a few tapes to do your backup. The bad news is an LTO2 Drive is going to cost around $5000. LTO1 drive is about $2200 at half the capacity but still a good solution for you. I found this one:

http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=344838&store=ecost&source=ECOSTCJ& adcampaign=email,ECOSTCJ

Software is somewhat trickier (not the image management software, but the backup software. I don't know anything about image management). You want a tool that will allow you to easily backup only those files that have changed without ever requiring another full backup. Tivoli Storage Manager is what we use in our systems and their pricing at the low end is not bad. Less than $100 but can be complicated to set up and use. Probably stick with the software provided in Windows and take your lumps. It's good enough.

Another option is the DDS tape stuff. I don't know anything about that, but have competed against it so it is probably pretty good. I found one from Sony:

http://www.storagebysony.com/products/productmain.asp?id=124

Looks pretty good and a lot cheaper than LTO.

The good news is is your problem is easily solvable. The bad news is it costs so damn much. I would suggest using the most reliable at the lowest price knowing you probably won't ever need it. Rarely do you find yourself needing a restore unless the storage subsystem is a mess to begin with. My first paragraph describes how to avoid that problem.

Good luck.

Kelly

[tacos3]

Thanks everyone for the info. Going to talk to one of the photographers at one of the local newspapers to see what they use.

Since I'm doing this for my church, I'm sure that cost will be an issue so I'll have to trade off storage for backup. A large DVD archive might be the way to go....5gb at a time...

[TVSET]

Thanks everyone for the info. Going to talk to one of the photographers at one of the local newspapers to see what they use.

Since I'm doing this for my church, I'm sure that cost will be an issue so I'll have to trade off storage for backup. A large DVD archive might be the way to go....5gb at a time...

Optical media has its shortcomings too. Here are a couple of links for you about the problems:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/22/1658251&mode=thread&tid=137&tid=198
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/06/2242238.shtml?tid=137&tid=188&tid=198