Hi Jeremiah--
In "archival" time, I think it is wise to assume that the products
that best meet necessary criteria will change pretty frequently. We
now add "instantly accessible" to "indestructible" and "cheap." I
agree that a huge argument for _redundant_ hard drives is the
probable ability to quickly convert one's data from one storage
system to another (at least compared to current optical discs).
For folks with a few hundred GB's to store, its not a huge chore to
use both drives and optical disks. For larger archives, arrays of
more than 8 drives become quite pricey and 1 TB per drive does seems
to be the recommended maximum capacity today. For me, its worth the
extra time to burn everything, including the less critical, original
long takes to DVD-R discs for more confidence and perhaps the ability
to "skip-over" a few less than-perfect storage solutions. If I follow
recommended storage conditions, I'll feel safer waiting for the ideal
storage medium with a bunch of optical discs 30 years from now than
holding onto 20 hard drives.
What I want to avoid is not making recordings because it will take
too much time or money to care for them. It will be fun to see where
all of this ends-up :-). Rob D.
=3D =3D =3D =3D =3D
At 2:55 PM -0700 9/29/09, Jeremiah Moore wrote:
> I think the idea is to see archive maintenance as an ongoing process. To
>maintain a digital archive, I see it as essential to re-copy the data ever=
y
>few years to new media. In addition to allowing verification, this will
>allow bridging the various gaps presented by constantly shifting storage
>technologies. i.e. for a while, it was common to have SCSI and firewire
>interfaces on workstations; that would've been a good time to migrate to
>Firewire drives.
>
>Factors in my decision to use hard drive mechanisms as primary archive
>media:
>
>- easy to archive large amounts of data without handling many individual
>pieces of media. This saves time and labor downstream as each piece needs
>to be cataloged and stored.
>
>- easy to copy a significant chunk of archived material in one move, savin=
g
>time and labor when the archive is migrated to the next medium.
>
>- costs per MB are reasonable. 1TB HDD is around $100. 1TB of DVD-R is
>roughly 240 discs, at $0.30 ea is $72.00 not including sleeves or cases.
>
>- de-facto, I was always way behind on archiving via DVD-R becuase of the
>work involved. Typical doc film mix would involve backing up to eight or
>ten DVD-Rs, plus their redundant copies. It would take much of a day to
>archive a single project, time I could not afford to spend.
>
>Significant downside is that the medium is writeable, meaning it's
>susceptible to filesystem damage or file corruption. Corruption could be
>carried from the "A" copy to the "B" copy during synchronizing.
>
>A better system would involve checksumming, perhaps zipping or using a uni=
x
>tool like tar. I access files from my archive semi-frequently, so it's
>helpful to have it all easily mountable and file-accessible on my system, =
so
>I make this tradeoff knowingly. If others have suggestions, I'd love to
>hear them.
>
>-jeremiah
>
>Rob Danielson wrote --
>-snip-
>
>> Its interesting to read that folks are using redundant drives as a
>> primary storage medium. Maybe drive hardware, stored under the right
>> conditions will work fine in 30-50 years. It might be faster to
>> convert data from a drive to the improved media that come along than
>> from optical disks. However, it could also become a headache to mount
>> current drives or a disc reader on a computers made even 15 years
>> from now. Certainly, both drives and optical discs will look ancient
>> in 100 years. Consider the challenge of mounting a SCSI drive on a
>> computer produced in 2009.
>>
>>
>
>-snip-
>
>--
>----------------------------------------------------------
>jeremiah moore | SOUND |
><jmoore%40northstation.net>
><http://www.jeremiahmoore.com/>http://www.jeremiahmoore.com/
>
>
>
>
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