A while back I posted an open question on twitter regarding backing up verses archiving, and it seems that everyone is in agreement regarding the core difference for media professionals. What I have yet to understand is why these same media professionals who understand the concept of long term archival long to use backup practices to achieve this.  Either deploying  binders full of optical media, shelves full of USB driven external storage, or a huge rack of SAN.

Simply trying to adding to a SAN or a RAID strategy for accommodating an every growing amount of data is NOT the path to archival bliss. Studies by IT experts show that the costs for doing this are deceptive – individual disk drives are cheap but not the infrastructure to support them.  Adding rack space, power, and cooling requirements is just impractical.  Also according to  the Clipper Group Inc., the costs for a Terabyte stored long term on SATA disk versus LTO data tape is about 23, to as much as 290 times more!   The issue with trying to grow your storage you will always grow faster than you anticipate. (more…)

If you are doing a job, make sure that you are using the right tools for the job.  It brings me great pain to see people not using the proper tools. Whether it be going with cheaper parts or not upgrading your system when your system is a decade old, if you plan to drive income from a task, that task requires tools.

You don’t always need to get the most expensive, latest and greatest  gear.   You have to know what you are going to use it for. For example, someone who is just surfing the web and writing blog posts does not need the same kind of system as someone who is cutting HD video.  In these cases it’s important to enlist the help of a pro and make sure that you are investing in the right equipment to get the job done efficiently.

Here are the top five things that people often forget to factor in when dealing with their computer system: (more…)