No matter which media you prefer, keeping your data all in one location
or on one media system carries a risk that I would prefer to avoid.
Just my opinion based on the dozen or so catastrophic data loss
occurrences I deal with each year. Personally, I'm quite impressed
with auto-backup\archiving systems that distribute archives to multiple
sites from which at least one copy is removed from the system/network to
avoid programmed destruction. Have seen some of these systems
withstand some pretty nasty hits with not much more than a momentary
stutter. Expensive, but seems to be one of the better solutions---at
least from my experience.
Otis Wright
Shawn K. wrote:
Well Rob, from what I've heard the government uses hard drives to archive
information. Seriously, quality hard drives are simply the best storage
option. If you have a RAID array, the chances of having such a catastrophic
failure that all your data is lost are next to zero... Although, there are
other ways to lose data, such as to a virus... I simply don't trust the
optical writeable media. CD's can become unreadable without you knowing it,
even when stored properly. (I haven't used the writeable DVD's so I can't
comment on their longevity.) I have had cd's that were guaranteed to last
90 years go bad after 2 years. They were kept on my desk on a spindle, some
of the disks at the bottom of the spindle went bad, oh well. I didn't lose
anything important thankfully... Another thing, if a hard drive breaks
down, the data CAN be recovered, if a CD goes bad, the data is GONE,
basically the marks made by the laser in the ink slowly fade away... I find
that disturbing, better to keep it all on a nice SCSI hard drive.
-Shawn
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Studdert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 6:48 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
On 25 May 2004 at 14:11, Shawn K. wrote:
Storing data on multiple hard-drives is the best way to go IMO...
Actually,
having a networked computer working as a dedicated server with a RAID
array is
the best way to archive anything. Yes, it's expensive... ish.. I built a
P3
950 from almost nothing for about 250 dollars and I have it networked
right now.
I need to spend about 400 more to get a nice RAID array for redundancy
purposes
and then I'll pretty much be set for 10 years or so...
Hmm, I've got pretty much what you're aiming for, a dual PIII 800 server
with
mirror set and large RAID 5 array tethered via 1Gb networking on a large
extended power UPS and I still feel jittery until my new data has found its
way
onto DVD media and is locked away. I expect that the machine will be good
for
quite some years to come but I still expect to run out of storage capacity
well
before the machine fails. However optical media is my preferred archive
option,
I never view on-line data as archive regardless of how robust the system is.
Drives are pretty robust if the cooling is adequate, the box this one
recently
replaced was a dual PPro200 and it had been in continuous service without
any
failures for over seven years. It contained s RAID consisting of a set of
4GB
Seagate Barracuda FW SCSI drives, they still all work fine but their small
capacity pretty much makes them redundant.
Rob Studdert
HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA
Tel +61-2-9554-4110
UTC(GMT) +10 Hours
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/
Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
