I made a $5,000 Mistake *not clickbait* VanLife as a Digital Nomad

NOTICE: The deadline for Make Stuff Challenge has been extended to the 30th of September!
Read description before helping problem solve or suggesting solutions.
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http://left.ly/1s → Click this link to read a short writeup on the dynamics of my setup into a simple online document you can read here:
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I know most of you don’t have 16 minutes to watch a full video and understand all the dynamics in play with the problem I am currently working through. But WOW. I love youtube. Love the power of crowd sourcing solutions.

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My Raid Failure Lessons and Problem Solving.
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Update: If you don’t want to watch video, but want to participate in problem solving. Please consider reading this so you understand what the problem actually is.

Currently I am looking for opinions on RAID 5, thunderbolt 3 units that are built to be portable and are mainstream enough to order in parts with 2-3 day shipping if failure of enclosure happens.

No, a NAS solution or any internet based solution what so ever is not the answer here. A NAS is just a raid connected to the internet. This would no have helped me.

– Please stop suggesting it.
– Any way I look at this I would be paused on work for at least a week, likely more.
– (unless I traveled with two editing raids by default, which I will do going forward.)
– The problem I’ve gotten myself into with mistakes I made means this might not just be a one week set back, it might be a 1 month set back do to how I managed auto saves. What I explain through this experience is that is entirely my fault. I could’ve been better prepared in this regard. Yes, when I have LTE I should consider backing up autosaves to the cloud

Our Limitations on the Road:

– internet is a non reliable, not regularly accessible asset. Even just uploading 1gb files can be a massive burden and involve driving hours to find internet via LTE.
– If there is household internet from friends it is painfully slow in a lot of locations
– I deal with producing and editing on average 2-10tb of footage in a given month. No normal Canadian internet can manage uploading that to the cloud without fibre. that is a non option.

What is my current setup:

– Redundant backups of all media/footage in 3 physical drives. in at least 2 locations
– When I hit the road, I take a RAID device with me (36tb raid for on the go editing of massive projects, 3tb a piece etc)
– Small drives with me on the road (between 4-8 at a given time) for duplicates of media/footage to mail to my backup location on the go.

What happens if my RAID fails under normal circumstances?

– I would purchase parts and get it up and running again, likely would take 1 week where we currently are based – However as I learned with my premium unit, parts and self repair are not a thing.
– If I can’t get parts for raid I could buy a new one from another brand.
– Load my backups that I have with me onto it and keep going, or if necessary mail backups expedited from my backup location to me, reload to the new raid, and keep editing. This solution would hopefully only take 1 week to get back online.

So what happend in my specific case that might set me back a month.

– Even though I have footage backups, my autosaves did not have a fail safe beyond my raid.
– So even though the raid is redundant, if the raid fails entirely, the work progress is gone, even though I still have footage. This is a massive over site as a result of being too confident in my raid.

So in my chain of events:

– A raid controller failed in my portable editing raid. 36tb suddenly un readable.
– Only way to maybe read the files would be to get my drives into a unit that is identical. Sourcing an identical unit has proven really challenging. If I had my autosaves at this point I would cut my loses and just buy a new raid and start from scratch.
– *What are my current failsafes for this?* I keep backups of all my projects on other drives, in other locations, and some with me personally. I could expedite one of those backups to me, or load one I already have in the van, buy a new raid, and get right back to editing.
– *Whats the problem then?* I made the mistake in my transition to mobile editing to keep my editing autosaves next to my project folders on the raid. I was accepting potential drive failure, but did not anticipate entire raid failure.

Either way, with the problems I ran into (which are guaranteed to happen if you work with large data storage and didn’t invest in two entirely identical raid units), I would be delayed by at least a week to source new parts, even if I hadn’t lost my autosaves.