A thought: ...When deciding to go with an online solution, did you factor in bandwidth costs? It looks like you may be moving a fair amount of data around. May or may not be a problem depending on volume and the terms of your internet connection package. Should be checked though.
I'd probably be looking at something simple and cheap involving SATA drives in removable draws or maybe several NAS appliances. I'd have one big "working" directory tree (500GB+?) and have something like Microsoft's free Robocopy tool scan it daily and move everything that hadn't been touched for 3 months (or whatever) to a second onsite archive drive. Maybe periodically mirror that to third, which you swap weekly with a fourth in a bank size II safety deposit box ($70 a year?). Just thinking out loud. I'd be happy to talk about this further off list if that's useful. An inexpensive, simple, archive solution would be good for a lot of small orgs with little IT. David =========================================== David Marsh Chief Technician & System Administrator H.R. MacMillan Space Centre 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9 E sysadmin at hrmacmillanspacecentre.com T (604) 738 7827 ext. 229 C (604) 813 9667 F (604) 736 5665 =========================================== For your next special event or meeting, consider the unique atmosphere of the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. For more information go to www.spacecentre.ca or call (604) 738-7827 (ext 233) P Please consider the environment before printing e-mails -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Mary Bloodworth Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 12:42 PM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Offsite Digital Image Archive Options I am writing to ask if any of you -- like us here at the Folger Shakespeare Library -- are at small institutions and without major digital asset management or IT infrastructures but nevertheless are engaged in active digital imaging? If so, are you willing to talk (offlist or on) about your backup / archiving schemes? We are working on establishing scalable systems architecture and backup strategies for digital images of collection materials, and would love to compare notes with others who have some version of a 2-3 tier backup strategy. Our current situation is this: For each digital image of collection material, our Photography and Digital Imaging lab produces a minimum of two images: a ca. 100-120 mb unretouched master, and a ca. 80-100 mb cropped & color-corrected derivative. We are looking for a solution that will permit us to archive the masters offsite. We're currently running tape backups and taking them to a staff member's house. However, tapes sitting on the bookshelf in a Folger staff member's house isn't good enough anymore. What we'll need is at least 1.5 - 2 TB of space. This can be a dark archive because we won't need frequent access, though infrequent access would be necessary. I looked at the MCN-L archives and found one thread from November, in which some spoke of Amazon S3. Any thoughts on this, or a different service that's cost-effective? With thanks in advance, Mary Bloodworth Head of Information Services Folger Shakespeare Library _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
