Hi guys,
welcome back to the blog and another episode of My workflow with G-Technology.
In the last two episodes I provided you with some insights into my mobile workflow and the tools, which support me during this step of my creative process. This time though, I’m going to talk about my technical setup, here in my office in Berlin and how I further process my content when coming back from a project or a trip, by using G-Technology’s Evolution Series desktop solutions. So without further ado, let’s get started and have a closer look into this next step of my overall content workflow.
First things first: Another backup layer
If you’ve followed along since episode 1, you should remember, that I always do a first backup right on location by using a variety of of G-Technology’s G-DRIVE ev RaW drives. It’s crucial to have at least one backup at hand as soon as possible after capturing the content. So if you haven’t read this first episode yet, make sure to do so to get a better understanding of the value of content, especially as a working professional.
That being said, having a single backup of your content still doesn’t lead to a proper backup strategy in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely much better than not having any fallback option at all, but statistically observed, there’s still a big chance of failure or loss of your data due to unpredictable circumstances. Using stand-alone drives for such backups still can lead to drive failures and you could easily loose one when carrying them around very often. And to be honest with you, I’m not the type of guy carrying another backpack containing more and more of such portable drives when being on a trip. Better be safe than sorry! That’s why I use a G-Technology G-SPEED Shuttle XL with ev Series Bay Adapters as a proper desktop solution. Not only to backup up my overall projects but also to stay scalable and flexible, while not loosing any performance in the long run.
Overview of my work desk
The G-DRIVE ev RaW SSD with the Shuttle XL behind
I love the stealthy and beautiful design of G-Technology’s products
The G-Technology G-SPEED Shuttle XL with ev Series Bay Adapters is an Evolution Series-compatible 8-bay RAID solution with Thunderbolt 3, offering huge capacities from 24 up to 80TB. It supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10 configurations, to keep your content secure in case one or more hard drives fail.
From Portable to Desktop: How to transfer data
Personally, I’m owning the 48TB version, which let you plug in ev series compatible drive modules and readers, like for example my portable G-Technology G-DRIVE ev RaW drives. This allows me to quickly backup my data onto the Shuttle or to move projects from it to the portable drives for taking them with me while travelling. This way I don’t have to deal with a bunch of cables or connectors and it always feels like I’m working with the exact same storage media, no matter if I’m on the go or at my desk, where everything converges at one place.
The G-SPEED Shuttle XL with ev Series Bay Adapters & G-DRIVE ev RaW SSDs
The G-SPEED Shuttle XL itself can be connected via Thunderbolt 3 and therefore provides transfer rates of up to 1500MB/s, which is a lot faster than most SSD drives are able to offer these days. The Shuttle is a true workhorse, which can be run in a 24/7 scenario due to the built-in enterprise-class hard drives. These drives deliver insane speed and long-term reliability. G-Technology designed the whole Evolution Series ecosystem as flexible as possible and in a way that it never gets in between you, the creator, and your workflow.
Once you slide in a drive in one of the ev Series Bay Adapters, it gets recognized as a separate drive by the operating system of your connected machine, in my case an Apple MacBook Pro. This is straight-forward and works right out of the box without the need of further formatting or software to be installed, which often can be another bottleneck in your setup. Luckily, you don’t have to deal with these things in case of the Evolution Series. That being said, G-Technology offers the G-SPEED Software Utility, which optionally can be installed to maintain your Shuttle’s RAID configurations or to plan several types of integrity checks on the drives and monitor the health status of the overall environment. But I’ll get into that in more detail in one of the upcoming episodes of this series.
Slide a G-DRIVE SSD into the ev Series Bay Adapter, located in the front of the Shuttle XL
ev Series Bay Adapter with a mounted G-DRIVE SSD, next to the internal drives of the Shuttle XL
From here, you can decide on your own how to deal with synchronizing your content between the different Evolution Series medias and how you’d like to set up your overall content management process, based on your personal needs and your very own creative process.
Personally, I’m a very organized type of guy and try to enhance the efficiency of my workflow whenever possible. So to keep everything in sync, I use a handy but very powerful software tool called Carbon Copy Cloner, developed by Bombich Software, Inc.
Carbon Copy Cloner User Interface
This tool lets you create and manage different types of copy jobs based on connections, time schedules and much more. Showing it in more details would go way beyond the scope of this episode, but I’ll make sure provide you with an in-depth post about it in the future. In the meanwhile, go and check it out, as I think it’s very affordable for what it does and it works flawlessly with my overall content setup. That being said, it’s just one of the many options available and I’m very happy that G-Technology doesn’t force their users to use a specific one. The Evolution Series is as flexible as it gets and in contrast to many other manufactures G-Technology really listens to their professional users and offers not only reliable, but scalable solutions, which will stay future-proof for a very long time.
Stay tuned for the next episode, in which I’ll give you more insights on the technical side of things, like i.e. which RAID level is best for your process and how G-Technology’s G-SPEED Software Utility will help you to maintain a healthy system.
Check out all the supported Evolution Series workflow media here.
In case you have additional questions, feel free to reach out to me at any time.
Thanks for reading and following along!
Talk soon,
Chris