Archival suggestions

[Phil O]

Back in the day, I determined that the most cost effective media for archival purposes was DVD. I have stacks of these things. Moving into the 21st century - I obviously need to upgrade.

I'm thinking of getting some cheap spinner HDs (NewEgg has some decent prices on Western Digitals) and a USB dock. If there's a reason I should be considering something else, suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Phil

[MIDI Life Crisis]

As drives fill up, I replace and store them "as is" and that has worked ok. I make sure the files are also on my backup drives (two 2 TB multiple TimeMachine disks). When the backups are filling, I do the same with them. It's a simple matter to pop those (all spinners) into a dock when needed.

Much of my work exists in print as well and also resides at the Library of Congress and in a few film archives around the country. Finished projects for film, TV, radio, and live shows also get archived to DVD or CD and usually reside in iTunes as well. That a lot of redundancy. I didn't t often need to access or harvest anything from older DP projects, but it's sometimes necessary and not always successful. This is particularly true when work video files are not archived with the DP project, but I can usually put my hands on a work DVD and resync- again, rarely necessary.

And all that said, the one file I need is usually on the last location I check. That's just the way the universe seems to roll in my tiny studio. I still have a PowerMac 7500 for some really old stuff and I've moved it all to the new OS, yet I can't part with that machine, if only to run SVP and marvel at how great it really was.

[kgdrum]

i want to clone my sample drives to have a complete backup of all of my libraries,whats the best approach,would you just keep the backup drives running 24/7 to keep the drive from freezing or store and powerup the hd's occasionally?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Keep them running 24/7... Submersed in sump water seems to keep them humming just fine.

I haven't had one freeze up on me yet, and if it got hopeless, I'd pop open the case and nudge the platter. What the heck, it's could hurt... Could it?

[mikehalloran]

I have never had a drive freeze up. Many have gone bad over the years from head crashes or bad media but never bad bearings for me. I have 29 yr old SCSI drives that still spin and a Mac that can still read them

My old ZIP disks can still be read, amazingly.

I did burn a lot of CDs and DVDs that are now 10–15 years old that can no longer be read, however, so that's out for me. The worst were to a special Kodak media guaranteed to last 100+ years. I have only lost one important file and I'm hoping it's on one of those many working backups.

Redundant mechanical HDs sitting in an eSATA/USB dock for archival — eSATA is still much faster. I also have three Time Capsules backing up my entire network.