Dear all, Thanks to all who contributed to the thread "OT: how do you store your precious moments for posterity". Some people defiantly responded with a well-established way of maintaining film archives. My apologies for not stating that I was primarily interested in _digital_ archiving. :-)
Many solutions have been suggested, but none have been priced. It would be very interesting to hear how much people have invested in hardware for their backup solution. I made some investigations based on Norwegian prices. Here are the alternatives I have considered: DVDs ---- Capacity: 4.7 GB Cost: 12 USD (the most expensive discs I found) Cost/GB: 0,5 USD Expected life: 5-10 years The cheapest discs would give a cost of 0,1 USD/GB, but I'll stick with the most expensive, high-quality acclaimed, stuff for this calculation. Single harddrives, USB/FW: -------------------------- Capacity: 200-500 GB Cost: 180-450 USD Cost/GB: 1,1 USD (average, surprisingly little variance) Expected life: 5-7 years? Have found little data. Single harddrives, networked: ----------------------------- 10-15% more expensive than the USB/FW counterparts, but otherwise identical. RAID-5 file servers: -------------------- Only two products researched. Capacity: 900 GB Cost: 1550 USD Cost/GB: 1.72 USD Expected life: presumably as for other harddrives, but with added fault tolerance. Interestingly, even for the most expensive DVDs in the market, the storage per GB is cheaper than for any harddrive setup. DVDs also requires the least investment in hardware. A good quality burner and software costs less than a hard drive, and the media can be bought as you go. The annual need for storage space depends on type of camera, file format and production volume. I have an *istD, so I'll make my calculations based on that. The *istD produce RAW-files of ca. 13 MB size. I shoot RAW exclusively. Different volumes and storage space: 1000 exp. = 13 GB 5000 exp. = 65 GB 10000 exp. = 130 GB At an annual production of 5000 images, the expected lifetime of a RAID-5 is less than the time it takes to fill it up. So shelling out big bucks on a large storage system seems a waste, moneywise. What could change the balance of the equation is the convenience of having the images accessible on harddrives, rather than rummaging around to find the right DVD. I guess the weight of this factor will be different for everyone. Another thing that could change the balance is Graywolf's suggestion of bying a RAID-5 controller for an older PC and recycle some hardware. This is indeed an option for the technically literate, but certainly not for everyone. Personally, I don't have any suitable hardware for the purpose. :-( I think a RAID-5 solution is out of range for me because of the investment cost, but the thought of using simple NAS units is very appealing. Then I can buy units with as much storage space as my production level requires, and add new ones as needed. thanks again, Jostein ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
