Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
- Original Message - From: Shawn K. Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions) Well, its bad to store records lying flat, probably bad for CD's too. I've had to use the spindles though as I've got literally hundreds of CDR's around here, though the most important ones are in jewel cases, of which I also have quite a few... I don't know, trusting all that data to a plastic disk just gives me the willies. I should look into that box you mentioned though for my CD's, most of the storage solutions I've seen are rather bulky for the number of CD's they hold. Have you thought about paper sleeves and storage boxes? I have heard that CD's stored on spindles will soon develop scratches, as they do get to abrade each other when you go digging around for the one in the middle that always seems to be the one you need William Robb
RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
Quite frankly, my negatives are in a jumble but my files are on CD. When it goes out of style, I'll copy them over to the new medium. Presumably, this won't happen while I'm sleeping ;-) OTOH, a library might find such a switch more daunting. For this reason, any new medium is also going to involve the transition path.
RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
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... (I made some case modifications and added in some extra fans and it's the only computer I've ever had that actually cools down as it's left on, so heat problems won't end up killing my system and losing my info...) Who knows how long a computer can really last anyhow?? The hard-drive I have on my main system is guaranteed for 100,000 hours of use. That's about 11 and a half years of continuous use, guaranteed. So as a minimum I would say a quality hard drive can last 10 years, and as a maximum maybe 15-20. But who knows for sure? I have an old 500MB Conner hard-drive that still works perfectly even to this day and it's about a decade old. Of course, at 500MB it's not worth the space it takes up in my computer, so it doesn't get used, but about 2 years ago I got an old 486 running again and installed Linux onto that ancient hard-drive, it worked like a charm. The reason why people have hard drive trouble is because they buy cheap hard drives, and they are not properly cooling their systems. I've learned some lessons the hard way, with hard drives going bonkers on me every couple of years, then I decided I wasn't going to buy Best Buy's low quality crap anymore, I forked over the cash for a quality SCSI drive and haven't had a lick of trouble in over 2 years. Heat is a computers greatest enemy, do everything you can to eliminate it, within reason of course... Properly cooled, quality hard drives are extremely, extremely stable. -Shawn -Original Message- From: Tom C [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 2:38 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Implications for Film May be old news to some... I found this Fuji white paper release interesting, especially it's implications for film in the future. This is just an excerpt of what is on www.fujifilm.com in an April report. Film use continues to decline. In 2004, 27% of digital camera users said that their film use has been completely replaced by digital, compared to 23% in 2002. Additionally, 43% of digital camera users believe that 100% of their photos will be captured digitally at some point in the future. As a result of the declining use of film, retail photofinishers need to build their photofinishing businesses effectively to respond to changing consumer needs. More users have been able to replace film technology with their digital cameras because they trust their digital cameras to capture important photos for keepsakes and memories. Just 42% of respondents indicated using their film camera instead of their digital camera for keepsake memories in 2004, down from 56% in 2001. This is good news for the industry because as digital camera users continue to capture more of their cherished memories with their digital cameras, they are more likely to want high-quality prints of these images. However, the fact that 72% of digital camera users also store their photos on their hard drive, means that they are at risk of losing some of their most important memories to a hard drive crash. Retailers and the digital imaging industry have a responsibility to educate digital camera users about the need to archive their digital photos. While CDs and DVDs are one way to archive digital photos, it is uncertain how long these formats will be available. Prints are a time-tested method of archiving photos, especially if they are stored correctly.
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
RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
I think redundancy is the key. Just have backup offsite. -Original Message- From: Shawn K. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 6:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions) Hi mark, That sounds like a terrible situation, and you're right it can be a stressful thing coming up with the best storage option, the best a guy can hope for is to minimize the risk as much as possible. If I had 6-7 grand to burn and was going to build the top notch server to last a really long time, I would make it a Dual Opteron with a Tyan board. Tyan makes Dual SATA boards with each channel supporting a RAID setup. In this instance you could have 4 drives on each channel, or even just 2 drives on each channel (for raid 1). 4 drives per channel would be the best because then you would have 2 RAID 0-1 setups, which are the best performing, but by far the most expensive. Of course there are other more practical drawbacks to such a system like the power requirements... I know it seems absurd having 8 hard drives in a system but, I think it might be nearly foolproof, except for maybe a lighting bolt. I know there are instances where the system can let you down, but I still feel that on the whole, the most flexible and safe data storage option is hard drive based, backed up regularly with something like a tape drive, something I should have mentioned earlier as it crossed my mind. If the technology for optical media can be improved to make the data longer lasting then those would be an excellent addition to a good RAID setup as well. For me, it doesn't make sense to make backups of info if I can't access it quickly. Having to properly store dozens of optical disks is something of an annoyance, IMO, and optical media is also slower. Plus, imagine the situation where you aren't entirely sure where the data is you want. How many DVD's are you going to have to look through before you find it? And don't tell me you would index it all manually!! Imagine the pain of indexing those gigs of information, it's not like you can write 50,000 file names on the back of a CD case. Having it all accessible on the network is a huge boon and having an archive that is active, rather than, residing in your closet, gives more reason for archiving info at all. -Shawn -Original Message- From: Mark Stringer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 7:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions) Remember Murphy's laws. Our server, fairly new, raid 5 scsi, multiple fans. Nice Gateway server about $7000. Raid controller failed, corrupted the data in the raid array, much of which wasn't recovered. But we had tape backups. Never think the system won't let you down. We use tape drive, external usb 160 gig drives that are stored off site as well as backup to remote computer in different part of the building. Obsessing over data storage can become a mental health problem. But there is a way for it to fail... and it is easier than your house burning down and destroying your photos. My digital stuff is stored at work and at home. I used to keep negagtives in a safe deposit box... -Original Message- From: Shawn K. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 1:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions) 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... (I made some case modifications and added in some extra fans and it's the only computer I've ever had that actually cools down as it's left on, so heat problems won't end up killing my system and losing my info...) Who knows how long a computer can really last anyhow?? The hard-drive I have on my main system is guaranteed for 100,000 hours of use. That's about 11 and a half years of continuous use, guaranteed. So as a minimum I would say a quality hard drive can last 10 years, and as a maximum maybe 15-20. But who knows for sure? I have an old 500MB Conner hard-drive that still works perfectly even to this day and it's about a decade old. Of course, at 500MB it's not worth the space it takes up in my computer, so it doesn't get used, but about 2 years ago I got an old 486 running again and installed Linux onto that ancient hard-drive, it worked like a charm. The reason why people have hard drive trouble is because they buy cheap hard drives, and they are not properly cooling their systems. I've learned some lessons the hard way, with hard drives going bonkers on me every couple of years, then I decided I wasn't
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
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
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
The government is a bit broad and unless you understand a the risk and recovery considerations for a particular system, the merits and application of the approach used by any particular group is not easily assessed. I am always careful with government approaches as they tend to serve a different value system than that faced by most of us in our own business ventures. In most government environments, if a catastrophic loss of data occurs, quite often, few if any are penalized, and no matter what the financial hit there is no real financial penalty to the operation of the organization as there almost often is in industry. This environment does not necessarily lead to practices and procedures that you would want to implement to protect your own at-risk assets --- just my experience. Otis Wright Shawn K. wrote: Alright, lets just say I know someone in the government and this someone says that the government uses hard drives... The NSA also uses hard drives that's fairly common knowledge as many geeks are aware and admire that they built their file server on a special foundation to absorb the ultra low frequency vibrations emanating from the earth -Shawn -Original Message- From: Rob Studdert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2004 8:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Implications for Film (storage opinions) On 25 May 2004 at 19:08, 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... Who knows what the government uses. What I know that during my period in the industry I saw many array failures, from controller failures to lightening strikes and actual media failure of a series of drives due to manufacturing errors. 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. The archives from last moth with reveal a smorgasbord of information concerning this very topic from users with much experience many with contrary opinions. Check the threads CD Storage and CD-R lifetimes disputed 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
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
Speaking of Canberra, seem to recall some very interesting systems at CSIRO's Black Mountain Complex. Still exist? Otis Wright Rob Studdert wrote: On 25 May 2004 at 19:41, Shawn K. wrote: Alright, lets just say I know someone in the government and this someone says that the government uses hard drives... The NSA also uses hard drives that's fairly common knowledge as many geeks are aware and admire that they built their file server on a special foundation to absorb the ultra low frequency vibrations emanating from the earth OK you win, stuff the practicalities. Try to remember that this is an international list too, ie the government is located in Canberra. 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
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
On 25 May 2004 at 23:33, Otis Wright wrote: Speaking of Canberra, seem to recall some very interesting systems at CSIRO's Black Mountain Complex. Still exist? I've only ever been involved in the ABC/SBS broadcast side of the comms tower, I really don't know what else they've got going on there :-) For anyone who hasn't been to Canberra vbg it's a pretty ugly piece of kit. http://conspiracy.cia.com.au/Holidays/2002_Canberra/blackmountain.html The last time I visited Canberra it was for Floriade, a great place to generate a great deal of cliche images :-) http://www.floriadeaustralia.com/index.html Cheers, 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
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
On 25 May 2004 at 23:09, Otis Wright wrote: 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. Personal experiences mould perspectives. As you mentioned automated distributed data systems are likely the most robust storage solutions ... for a multi-national company or government. I think I'll stick with DVD archives for the mean time ;-) 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
Re: Implications for Film (storage opinions)
- Original Message - From: Shawn K. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (snip) 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... (snip) Shawn, Surely spindles are only meant to serve as retail packaging. I wouldn't dream of archiving burned discs on a spindle. Mine all go into Kensington brand boxes, about 7 or 8 Aussie bucks for a box that holds 60 (IIRC) discs in double-sided sleeves. I've seen bigger boxes in catalogues, but not seen them on store shelves. regards, Anthony Farr
