Long Term backup solutions

[marcnyc]

I have read the first five threads that came up when I searched the subject of my post but except for a redundancy (no pun intended ;-) of "I back up to DVDs" and "I back up to Hard Drives" answers nobody really tackled the "long term" aspect, which is the key part of my question.

I backup during sessions, after every take, to a second firewire hard drive and my commercial recording facility has an LTO2 tape backup machine that we use, however we all know that hard drives left sitting for years are not certainly going to spin and read data properly when they get turned on again and I personally (and I'd like to hear your opinions on that) tend to not trust a tape-based backup (because tape deteriorates with time, can be de-magnetized and, if LTO2 is anything like 2" tape, might need to be baked after 20 years to be used again).

So my question is really: has any one thought about how to back up for the long haul? What solutions do you guys implement? Which do you think are the most time-tested solutions available now?

Thanks

[Tony Shepperd]

GRAMMY.com

[marcnyc]

I don't see anything about long term backup formats there

[mobius.media]

i'm looking at single or dual layer blu ray. prices will come down, and 25-50 gig /disk is good enough for me.

[marcnyc]

How's blu ray's longevity? and how to we know it's gonna stick around if it's not even popular yet?

[Tony Shepperd]

Originally Posted by marcnyc

I don't see anything about long term backup formats there

It was the first one on the list.
http://content.grammy.com/PDFs/Recor...mendations.pdf

There is extensive information about long term backup.

[tINY]

Any back-up scheme requires maintenence. Even if you print out the hex values on acid-free paper, you still need to make sure that the environmental controls are working in your storeroom.

With the price of drives, and their robustness when not in use, I would have no issues using SATA drives. Every couple of years you could hook them up and access the files. Heck, maybe you just plan on making 2 more copies every 2 years....

Or, you could farm it out to an IT storehouse.




-tINY

[Blast9]

Or, you could farm it out to an IT storehouse

^ good idea tINY

[Blast9]

Originally Posted by marcnyc

How's blu ray's longevity? and how to we know it's gonna stick around if it's not even popular yet?

If Taiyo Yuden are making these - they have a good long-term rep for their dye.

I'd devise a stretegy whereby at least 1 of my backup sets is that brand - copy them every 5 years or something - not gonna cost much.

Replicate other media too... assuming future tape drives/HDD/optical are backwards-compatible.

Of course... storage environment strategies/safeguards are important

[Piranhadrum]

I feel like there is potential for a career in this field. Developing a long term, universal, storage medium.

[JoaT]

I feel like there is potential for a career in this field. Developing a long term, universal, storage medium.

Now that's an understatement of a lifetime.

Everything our digital age has produced is basically just current flickering in the void. There's not a single feasible method of storing anything digital permanently. If the recording medium stands, the format will be obsolete.

Then again, like tears in the rain..

[tINY]

They'll keep crying the really sad stuff.



-tINY

[Tommy-boy]

Fortunately, my data storage needs aren't too high. So I just rotate HDs for backups. I'm currently rotating 2, which will go to 4 very shortly. I keep everything forever, so each time I backup, I have the whole enchilada. By rotating the drives, they're being used and it keeps 'em alive.

This model probably doesn't work if you have a gigantic amount of data. It also doesn't work if you clear stuff off of your system and them use that to make the ongoing backups.

-Tom

[Piranhadrum]

Originally Posted by JoaT

Now that's an understatement of a lifetime.

Everything our digital age has produced is basically just current flickering in the void. There's not a single feasible method of storing anything digital permanently. If the recording medium stands, the format will be obsolete.

Then again, like tears in the rain..

I'm speaking more on the human race, our history, not just for digital media too.

[RBowlin]

This is an incredibly important topic and one too often overlooked. In the past, long term archiving usually meant documents that were simply placed on microfilm and shipped to Iron Mountain.

My guess moving forward is that procedures and practices will be as important as the medium our music is stored on. Right now, harddrives, CDs, DVDs, and other digital media is the way to go. But, as mentioned above, this stuff has its limitations. So, the practice and methodology of soundly moving data from one storage medium to the next generation storage medium will be critical. No more set it and forget it.

I use Cubase 5 and have asked Steinberg a number of times to incorporate project reports with each song. The meta data is there; it just needs to be made available. Remember, even if we're able to store projects indefinately the means to read that data may no longer exist. Thus, at a minimum, project reports listing all the info on a song file would be very useful, say twenty years from now. That is to say, we might not have that compressor plugin used on the snare, but we know that the UAD-1 LA2A was used and its settings.

This is very important issue that studios and record people are going to need to come together on to create a unified methodology for long-term archiving that will be widely accepted within the industry.

-Rich

[huggie]

I use Gold DVD's ... suppose to last 100 years.

Delkin Archival Gold DVD-R. The Most Reliable DVD-R in the World.

I guess time will tell....

Hugo