Hard Drive Management for Creative Pros

Introduction

• Welcome

1. Understanding Hard Drives and Why They Fail

• What is in a hard drive?
• Factors that can hurt a drive
• The dangers of hard drives on a shelf
• Obsolescence

2. Formats for Hard Drives

• Mac
• Windows
• Cross-platform formats

3. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives (RAID)

• What is a RAID?
• RAID 0 is for speed, not storage
• RAID 1: Mirror, mirror
• RAID 5: Protected storage
• Proprietary RAIDs (Synology and Drobo)

4. Organizing Data Workflow Strategies

• Metadata vs. folders
• Folder structure approaches
• Keeping it simple
• Letting the computer sort it all out

5. Digital Asset Management Tools

• What is a digital asset manager (DAM)?
• Catalogs are databases
• Using a file browser
• Naming conventions

6. Connecting Hard Drives

• Megabits vs. megabytes
• Current connections
• Legacy connections

7. Backups Are Mandatory

• What is a backup?
• Backup vs. protected storage
• How many copies of a backup?
• How often to backup
• Local storage
• Offsite storage
• 3-2-1 backup
• Long-term backups
• Migration

Conclusion

• Next steps