[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:33:47 -0700, Bill wrote
(in article ):

At the moment, I'm trying to re-archive material onto big hard drives
and CD's, with the material divided into CD sized portions. Material
from old CD's, DATs and reel to reel...
------------------------------snip------------------------------

That can work. Just be aware that hard drives fail, too. There's an old
saying: if you don't have your data in _at least 3 places_, you don't really
own your data. That means main copy, backup #1, and backup #2. I'm not
convinced optical discs are any better; I've had those fail, too, with all
recordable media (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R, BD-E, you name it).

Even then, you'll be lucky if the drives last 5-7 years. Somewhere before
then, you have to migrate the data to newer drives. The good news is,
they'll be larger and cost less than the original drives; the bad news is, if
the drives fail before you can make the copies, you're screwed.

The motion picture, TV, and record businesses are struggling with the whole
issue of how to do vast long-term digital archival storage of enormous media
libraries. Nobody has completely figured it out yet.

The Motion Picture Academy has been releasing technical papers on THE DIGITAL
DILEMMA, addressing concerns about how film, tape, digital files, and other
formats are going to survive over the next 100 years or so. Some good info
at this link:

http://www.oscars.org/science-
technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma2/index.html

Many sobering questions there. I don't envy studios, networks, and record
labels who own acres of warehouses filled with analog material that's all
disintegrating as time goes on. And the digital material is even more
tenuous and delicate in some ways.

--MFW

[Mxsmanic]

Marc Wielage writes:

There's an old saying: if you don't have your data in _at least 3
places_, you don't really own your data. That means main copy,
backup #1, and backup #2.

It's not the number of backups, it's the reliability of each. A single backup
that is 100% reliable is fine. If none of the backups is 100% reliable, there
will always be the possibility of a complete loss. Adding backups that are
less than 100% reliable improves overall reliability but never makes it
certain.

The motion picture, TV, and record businesses are struggling with the whole
issue of how to do vast long-term digital archival storage of enormous media
libraries. Nobody has completely figured it out yet.

One option is to throw things away. Just because something has been recorded
doesn't mean that it must be preserved forever. As the volume of recorded
material grows, eventually those creating it will have to realize that some
things just need to be tossed after a certain time.

The Motion Picture Academy has been releasing technical papers on THE DIGITAL
DILEMMA, addressing concerns about how film, tape, digital files, and other
formats are going to survive over the next 100 years or so.

How many analog recordings from the previous 100 years have survived? Is
society really any worse off because of the recordings that have been lost?