[AV Media Matters] Toward a MediaLESS Archive

[Jim Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

Several months ago I wrote a rather lengthy email that was posted to the
AMIA Listserve that posed a schema for a medialess archive. It was a
conceptual outline that posed the fundamental question of whether we
really want to have any media at all for LONG term planning.  I posed
the idea that one could distribute a collection across a network in a
variety of different locations - each using a RAID schema (RAID refers
to ways of keeping information on multiple disks for fast access as well
as redundancy), that would allow for true decentralization.  Safety
through MANY copies supported in many locations.  I also suggested that
in time a "barter" system might develop which would allow a user to move
information to storage space selling organizations more or less without
operator intervention - sort of a stock exchange for storage.  There
were several assumptions which included very inexpensive storage and
very high bandwidth.

While there were no real comments on this - I nevertheless have been
thinking quite a bit about this idea and also keeping my eyes open.

I recently noticed a few interesting things, one of which is a vendor
which is offering UNLIMITED storage for $9.95 a month.  No - I did not
make this up - and the site goes to great lengths to describe how there
are no additional fees for access.
Check out http://www.sgii.com/products.html
and
http://www.sgii.com/notequal.html

 I suspect that there are some "gotchas" in this somewhere (probably in
the bandwidth department) but the notion is one that is interesting to
think about even if this particular offering is not valid. Now of course
they are not expecting users like US to take them up on this offer, but
if one has a T1 or DSL line like we do - the question come us - why
store locally at all?  Indeed why not store across the network? Perhaps
not for immediate need, but for near term storage why not? Clearly we
are not talking about full quality video on demand, but perhaps one can
consider LOSSLESS compression instead of lossy compression, and the
trade off of speed could be acceptable for a wide variety of storage
needs.

Now of course there is media being used at the service providers
location, but from a user point of view - do you really care?  Certainly
you have to be sure that there is adequate procedures at your chosen
vendors, but frankly if they have a failure a RAID schema should allow
you to recover, and by distributing the data widely over several servers
the risk is further reduced. If one had 10 or more vendors in
geographically desperate locations that the data would be spread over
the chances of large scale loss would be essentially nil - or at least
far less then if you had all the masters in one building or even in one
off site storage location.

So what is missing here?  Well a schema for actually doing the data
moving is not here - or at least I have not seen it.  There seems to be
a ready supply of web based on line storage vendors - not offering
UNLIMITED storage - but nevertheless there are

Internet Filezone
@backup
compaq online.backup
Magicaldesk

and probably many more.  The issue of bandwidth is there - but this will
be less and less of an issue as time goes on.  And of course a database
system that keeps track of where everything is would be a natural
extension of a digital asset management system.  In any event - I am
interested in hearing some feedback on this idea of mine.

jim

Jim Lindner
VidiPax
The Full Service Magnetic Media Restoration Company