As creative professionals, most of us consider it part of our everyday duties to manage large amounts of data in the form of graphic, image, video, audio, logo and database computer files. And not only do we have lots of files but those files are big. This means we use lots of hard drive space. And, unless you’re the type who likes to live on the edge, this also means backing up all that hard drive space.

It’s been said that there are basically two types of hard drives - those that have failed and those that are going to fail. I can attest that this is a fact. While I’m pretty careful with my hard drives and practice sound hard drive maintenance routines, I’ve had my share of hard drive troubles. Some hard drives fail simply because of faulty power supplies while others have become unstable because of data corruption. Hard drive failures never come at a good time and most of them take days to recover from.

If you’ve never encountered a hard drive failure, consider yourself both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because you’ve steered clear of catastrophe; unlucky because you’re becoming closer and closer to having your first hard drive failure experience.

So what can we do to prevent or recover from hard drive failures? Well, quite a lot, actually. First, always have a backup of any file you can’t risk losing. For individual workstation users, this can be accomplished simply by purchasing an inexpensive external USB hard drive and using your Mac’s built-in Time Machine function. It’s simple to use and provides reliable access to any file you’ve accidentally trashed or lost due to hard drive failure. Windows 7 offers a Backup and Restore feature.

July 2010 Newsletter

Project of the Month

SS American Victory video

Tech Tip

Hard drive fun!

All original imagery and written content copyright © 2010 by Digital Media Services & Consulting LLC. All rights reserved.

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Other cool DMS projects

Marketing Tip

Getting the most out of networking events

I’m guessing that many of you have similar thoughts on the whole “social media expert” thing; that for every individual who can truly provide expert guidance on social media marketing, there are 4 or 5 others (or perhaps even more) who have simply jumped on the social media bandwagon and rarely offer anything beyond what a week’s worth of  evening research can provide. This not only makes it more difficult to find the true experts but also negatively impacts the profession as a whole of the social media expert. Well, we’ve discovered a similar phenomenon involving networking events.

Face-to-face networking has long been a valuable tool for meeting potential clients, discovering new resources and getting to know other business professionals in your area. Lately, though, it seems that with the increase in popularity of online groups from resources such as Linkedin, Facebook, business organizations and even professional networking groups, those quality face-to-face meet-ups have become more difficult to identify. Digital Media Services staffers have attended a few of these free networking events where it’s so crowded that it’s difficult to move around and too loud to hold a meaningful conversation. We’ve also paid fees  for booths at networking expos where so few people attended that all of the sponsors shut down and left half-way through the event. So how do you find the ones worth attending?

The first step is to ask around. Plenty of your colleagues have attended networking events so find out which ones they like and dislike. Secondly, get in touch with the event organizer and ask them to give you an overview of who will be attending, how the event will benefit you, etc. If you’re not confident with the answer they provide, attending their event might not be a good use of your time. Thirdly, investigate who is sponsoring the event. We’ve found that reputable sponsors can indicate reputable events. Out-of-town organizers who have little understanding of local business communities may only be there to collect an attendance fee and can’t ensure a successful event.

Finally, once you’ve decided to attend a particular networking event, have a plan of action. Whether your goal is to hand out 50 business cards or have dinner with a new business partner, having a goal in mind will help you get the most out of the event and not leave you with the feeling that you wasted your time and gas money.

A cruise ship of a different color? Well, yes, in fact! The SS American Victory is a WWII-era merchant ship that has been refurbished and modified to serve as a tourist attraction, museum, event location and working passenger ship. First commissioned in 1945, the 445-foot ship is now docked at the Port of Tampa near the Florida Aquarium.

Digital Media Services was first introduced to the staff of the AmVic, as it’s referred to internally, while shooting video footage of the Carnival, Holland America and Royal Caribbean cruise ships that dock at the Channelside Terminals near downtown Tampa. The marketing staff of the American Victory was putting the finishing touches on their new Website and felt a teaser video showcasing the unique features of the ship would be the perfect addition to their home page. Based on some of the exceedingly positive feedback we’ve received thus far, the video is serving its purpose quite well.

So, with no more ado, we present the American Victory in all her glory! Click the image above to view the video. Alternatively, watch a 1080p version of the video on the Digital Media Services YouTube Channel.

July found photographer and photo assistant Robert Kildoo working on projects for House of Wu and Palm Beach Media Group. Photographer Sean Deren has spent most of July on a traveling photo shoot that began in South Carolina and will end in California; we look forward to seeing some of his work upon his return. Lance Robson continued his work for legendary photographer Bud Lee and for  House Trends Magazine while Brian Satchfield spent time on consulting projects and seminars.

For more sophisticated computer setups, having a centralized remote file server in place with one-to-one file redundancy may be a more appropriate solution. Your I.T. department or even a third-party company that provides I.T. and storage solutions can manage this for you. Tape drive backup systems, while somewhat slow and old school, work very well and store lots of data. There are several online backup solutions as well.

My video editing system has over 13 TB (terabytes) of hard drive space attached with much of that being dedicated to backup or redundancy. My main startup drive, which contains my operating system, applications, word processing documents, iTunes music and personal files is backed up on the hour via a USB drive system using the Mac OS X 10.6 Time Machine feature. My second internal drive, which houses non-video work files such as logos, templates, stock footage, music beds and graphics, is also backed up via Time Machine. My video drives, which take up too much space to simply back up via external storage, are housed on a RAID 5 eSata system which allocates one of the 8 drive modules as a backup which can automatically rebuild any drive that encounters a failure.

And failure has occurred. Just this past week I spent several days recovering from a bad PCIe card that corrupted the volume directory on my video drives. Luckily, due to my backup systems, none of my data was lost and I was able to rebuild my RAID 5 array and copy back all the data.

So plan for hard drive failure, even if your plan is simply to buy an inexpensive external drive and copy your data  to it every so often. Believe me, you don’t want to learn about data loss the hard way.