I had to do something similar a couple of years back. But after exhaustive research the best practices are very expensive and require additional personnel to make sure all the steps are followed.
First: You need a starting media, 12 years ago it was 9-track tape, which under the best conditions had a life span of 3-5 years, before sticktion almost makes them unusable. Now it is probably a linear tape with a proven record and enough market share to last 10 years or to at least get service on a drive in 10 years if you need it for migration purposes. Most have a "marketed" life span of about 30 years, which is a best guess to migrate after 10 - 15 if they are stored in a pristine environment. Second: A perfect environment for storage. What is perfect ? Were the tapes made in a perfect environment? Yes and No. Ever get a bad lot of DLTs or LTOs? Humidity fluctuations, temperature fluctuations. Best idea is to make duplicate or triplicate tapes that are all stored in different locations by either different companies or different corporate sites with all the environmental controls. Third: Hardware. At least three, or more depending on the quantity of tapes, of whatever tape drives the data was written with. All must have maintenance until you no longer have the media. We had 10 years of 9-track tapes, 9 years ago, Close to 10,000 tapes. In an attempt to migrate the data, we had to keep our old tu78 tape drives on maintenance, $479.00 a month X 4, after sticktion caused 95 tape breaks and almost 100 maintenance calls for damaged r/w heads, our VP deemed it a waste and we crossed our fingers as our retention policy has slowly come up. I can't wait to see what we will be in store for when we are performing our first migration of ES data from DAT, CD, DLT 1 and 3490 cartridges. Fourth: Personnel that will know what to with the data once it is restored. Last but not least: A library system to keep track of it all, which will have to be upgraded, maintained and probably change companies every 5 - 7 years. How many media library products will still be around in 2052 ? Backup Exec, Netbackup, Networker, TSM ... It's not impossible but it requires due diligence on the part of the Media Librarian. Good luck. Duane Ochs Quad/Graphics Inc. 414.566.2375 -----Original Message----- From: Ward, Stuart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 3:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Data Retention *SMers.. In the very near future I will need to put together a software and hardware proposal for data retention of approximately 50 years due to FDA regulations encompassing the medical industry. My main question would be the type of media to use currently that has any kind of magneto retention life-span nearing or surpassing this. If there are any *SM colleagues out there that are in this situation, I would really appreciate either some feedback on this board, some direct feedback via email or even a discussion over the phone. I thank you all in advance. Stu Ward wards@<nospam>bmcmask.com