Re: [ARSCLIST] Hard disk drives and DAT

["Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 05:30 PM 2007-03-27, John Spencer wrote:
> Richard,
>
> I've probably bored the list to tears at this point, as I usually
> don't post on a daily basis and I can put my wife to sleep in 30
> seconds when I talk about work...so sorry, everyone in advance.

I was asking the same thing when I posted two more messages in this 
thread. My apologies to everyone else as well.

One of the fun things with John and me is we usually come close to 
agreeing after we talk things out.


> Your second paragraph states clearly that ALL storage media only
> postpones the problem. But since we don't know what the solution is
> at this time, aren't some of these formats a reasonable course of
> action?

Therefore, getting into the SYSTEM as well as the media is the key 
IMHO. It won't be perfect on day one, but doing stand-alone, 
non-integrated media as we have been doing does prolong the agony.

> In the third paragraph, I would propose that an entire industry of
> data backup services has become very cost-effective due to Sarbanes- 
> Oxley and HIPPA compliance, and one could make the logical "leap of
> faith" that the Service Level Agreements of those companies would
> rival those of a TDR. Every once in a while, private industry can
> provide a cost-effective solution - let's face it - all of us in the
> digital archive business benefit from the technology leaps that occur
> within the IT community, while our own industry is quite small and
> could not otherwise drive manufacturers to create the equipment we
> have available. That is where I jump off the government/ university
> train.

I apologize for not being clear.

The commercial digital repositories that I am aware of charge a 
per-chunk, per-time-period fee and if you don't keep paying your data 
goes to the bit bucket in the sky. The university systems I am 
familiar with have a higher cost-of-entry, but for a one-time fee 
they are storing your data in perpetuity.

I see this as a huge, important difference and I didn't articulate it clearly.

The other concern with commercial operations is when they go <poof>. 
Enron? MCI? Global Crossing? Nortel?

Iron Mountain has been around forever with a slightly sub-optimum 
track record from my perspective. But anything that big and that 
diverse might have the same slightly sub-optimum track record. We've 
had several significant nitrate vault fires that shouldn't have happened.

Anyway, perhaps I've better articulated the reasons behind my concerns.

I have been asked to "permanently" store files and have declined. I 
don't want that responsibility. I have master tapes from the 1970s 
that are causing me enough headaches of getting them into the proper 
repository while I can still play them (and they are playable). My 
goal is to donate the tapes WITH digital copies to the proper 
repository. That was actually how I got started in all this -- and I 
still haven't done it.

Cheers,

Richard

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess                   email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada       (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
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