Need for Storage
Technology has advanced at a phenomenal rate in the last twenty years. From hand held video cameras to record your videos in those days to smartphones and digital cameras and tablets to make videos of unimaginable quality and resolution. With capturing videos so simple, every moment is worth reliving over and over. The video technology landscape is continuously evolving, creating a greater need for higher performing and higher capacity storage to support it. Videos take up a lot of space on your hard drive and it is important that they have a storage space that’s not only safe but also allows scalability and flexibility. There can be nothing worse than seeing your precious videos corrupted.
Video editing and video processing requires working with very large files. With emerging new technologies, every single video file contains an immense amount of information in it; audios, visuals and much more. During processing, files need to be accessed and edited at fast transfer speeds and also require large capacities. The amount of storage your video requires will depend on the bit rate at which your video is recorded. The higher the bit rate, the more storage space your video data will require.
The bit rate of your video also determines how fast you need your drive to be. As a rule solid state drives (SSD) are faster that hard disk drives (HDD) but also cost a lot more.
Sometimes storage gets divided into two categories; storage that is faster but smaller in capacity and storage products that are much larger in capacity but also much slower.
Key Factors while Choosing a Storage Product
There are many key factors that would determine what kind of a storage product would be ideal for you.
First and foremost is the budget that you can afford. It can clearly define the range of products that you can consider for use.
Secondly, your storage needs are specified by what kind of files you are using as well as what you intend to do with them.
Thirdly and most obviously, how much storage you really require will determine what storage product you ultimately choose.
Storage Options
There are many available storage solutions that can meet the various storage needs in terms of volume and workflow. Some of the options are:
- Portable hard drive—As workflows become less centralized, you may want to work from your home or at the office or even want a solution for travel. In such situations, portable hard drives are one of the most favored options for storage. They are cheap, portable, and very spacious. The hard drives can be solid state drive (SSD) or a physical spinning disk hard drive.
There are no moving parts in a portable hard drive and hence there is no chance of mechanical failures that would crash a spinning disk hard drive.
But the hard drives require constant backing up and may need synching software to work with it. As such, portable hard drives do not give long term reliability.
- RAID—RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disks is basically one logical unit of several connected disks which usually look like a tower or rack mounted system. It provides a massive storage capacity and data protection through redundancy. The benefit of using multiple drives is that you can configure your system to duplicate the data across drives. It also provides very fast read and write speeds. Hence, they are better improved in both performance and reliability. As with the price, larger capacities also come with a larger price tag. RAID can also process information faster than single drives as they can access multiple drives simultaneously.
The only downside of the RAID system is that only the drives have backup and not the whole system. In case of a power failure or if a hardware on the unit fails, the whole system may become non- functional.
- Server—Servers are generally used for advanced storage needs .It is basically the concept of RAID on a much larger scale. Servers are used where remote accessibility is required.
- LTO—LTO or Linear Tape Open is a high capacity storage solution using a single reel tape. It is highly scalable and can accommodate the storage need as it grows. It is also backwards compatible.
- Network Attached Storage—Network Attached Storage (NAS) is often a required solution when you work on multiple computers. NAS consists of several units of storage which can be accessed directly through the network. The units can be joined together for massive amounts of storage.
NAS provides a good back up or recovery and can be configured to have internet connectivity. It is a good option when multiple computers and users are in action.
- Budget Drives—Budget drives are an option when affordability is the most important factor to consider. Budget drives do not come with any quality assurances but still provide adequate capacities and speeds for video editing.
- Cloud Storage—Cloud storage is the future in storage solutions. As the storage size gets larger, the prices are getting cheaper and cheaper. Even in cloud storage, the transfer speeds are limited by the speed of your internet connection. Cloud storage is thought to be better suited for archival purposes rather than using as a working drive while editing. While using cloud storage, it is important to clarify with the provider with data security and redundancy.
Conclusion
An ideal storage solution is one that can easily fit into your workflow data. Mediakindprovides you cost effective, dependable, and fast storage solution to get your data through post production, distribution, and archiving.