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…)

It’s true for any industry, but especially computer users in the media production field- if you do not have a backup solution in place for your computer systems and all of your media assets, you are sitting on a ticking time bomb. It’s not a matter of IF, but of WHEN you will have a hard drive crash. Not having a backup solution in place as a media producer is like not changing the oil on your vehicle.- it is a virtual kiss of death. Stop and take 30 seconds to ponder on how many hours, DAYS in fact, that you have spent on recording, editing, chroma keying, post-production, rendering, etc. Now imagine, no really; right now, imagine the gut-wrenching feeling you would have if you sat down in your studio only to find that those media assets are missing or corrupted, or maybe it’s JUST the configuration settings of your most used apps. How would you finish that one project you are currently working on, not to mention reference any media assets for future projects? How many deadlines would you miss? How many potential clients would you lose while you are attempting to salvage your work environment? Again, the thought of losing your data in ANY field, such as a common office environment, is a sickening feeling. But it is exponentially worse as a producer in the media field due to the hours of time spent on media projects. I’m a very optimistic person, but I’m also a realist. I’m not trying to point out the worse case scenario. I’m pointing out the inevitable scenario. You MUST have a backup solution TODAY. Don’t put it off another day. (more…)