Solutions for lots of hard drive space?

Question

Yes, this is a repost from my thread in the getting started forum, but I figured that this board is more heavily populated, and perhaps some professional videographers visit here more frequently to help me out, so I'm posting my question here as well. Here I go:
Hello,
Next spring and summer, I plan to be shooting and editing weddings. The past weddings I've done, I use about 12 tapes. ~200mb/min x 60 mins x 12 tapes is about 144GB. That's about 3 weddings in a single 500GB hard drive (and I plan on doing about 20 in a year). Obviously, I'm going to need a LOT of hard drive space. I don't want to consider entirely deleting the media after finishing a project because it seems common that clients wish to change little bits of the video, so I want to keep them for a while longer.
Right now I have a 500GB HD in a firewire400 enclosure. I don't use the internal Mac HD for media.
What a photographer said that others wedding videographers do and suggested to me was to buy as many HD's needed for the year (approx. so I guess about 7 if 500GB), set a deadline for those whiny clients for returns or re-edits and such, and at the end of the year, and reformat them all and reuse them for the next year.
I'm thinking of doing the same, but using the same enclosure for all my hard drives, just unplugging and plugging as needed.
I've heard of using a RAID system. I can't say I know much about using it but with what I'm using, I don't think it's an option? I am using a 17" 2.33ghz MacBook Pro with Final Cut Pro and I plan on getting an aluminum 24" iMac (probably 2.4ghz unless you can convince me otherwise) as a secondary editing machine, and perhaps to make the dreadful capturing process twice as fast.
So some of my questions are:
* can plugging and unplugging HD's to an external closure possibly damage the pins?
* would storing HD's that are not being used at the moment be safe in those plastic containers that usually come with a HD when you buy one? Or would it be damaging to keep one in there and store it away for a year?
* is this idea okay or would you suggest another method?
* slightly off-topic but sometimes I take my external hard drive, put it in my laptop bag, and do some editing at another location. I know it's supposed to be portable but someone told me that external hard drives aren't meant to be taken around like that. Is that true or am I okay? It's just sitting sideways in the bag while I walk/drive, it's not like I'm hiking a mountain and dropping my bag.
Thanks in advance for all your help.

Answer 1

321estrellas wrote:
- I wonder if enclosure manufacturers do special orders of JUST the enclosure without the cables and power adapter? Since I'll likely be buying the same one but plugging one at a time...(maybe one other for another computer)
Not sure if they will or not. Of course, IMO, it is not bad to have an extra Power Adapter and cables (or more), just in case. You would be suprised how things can get misplaced or when you really would like another FW or eSATA cable. You can call some of these places and ask, it nevers hurts. I have had very good experiences with Firewiredirect, OWC/MacSales and Wiebetech, probably worth a customer service IM window with them or call or email. Worst they can say it is not possible.
- Alternatively the Wiebtech SilverSata I enclosure seems pretty convenient and maybe I'll expand it with 6-8 additional trays...but again I may want to use another HD in another computer but I'm sure I can figure a way around that...
If you get a G5 or MacIntel they all use the same drives so if you remove it from a tray you can put it in the computer. I like the SilverSata I because it is relatively small and light and I will often throw a 750gig Drive into a tray when traveling to have a place to capture things and keep copies of photo downloads, audio files for Soundtrack and other files which take up room and a partition for a boot/repair/restore disk for the laptop.