What is the best archival solution for HD footage and projects?

M

Max.boffo

New member
I recently had a hard drive fail on me. Luckily I had everything backed up, but it made me really think about how I should archive and organize my video and photo projects. When I used to shoot with a DVX, I always had the tapes to fall back on. Now that I use a 7D, I no longer have the comfort and security that the tape archives provided.*

I'm leaving for college (for film/photography) around New Years and want the peace of mind knowing that my past/future hard work will be safe and sound.*

I've been toying with the idea of burning to Blu Ray, using secure online storage, RAID setups, etc., but I would like to learn a tried and true, yet current, archival solution that that will not degrade over time.*

I shoot with a Canon 7D, and edit in Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Lightroom on my (currently out of commission) '07 MacBook Pro. I have two 500GB HDDs and one LaCie 2Big w/ two mirrored 1TB drives.

Any advice/links/guides on the subject would be greatly appreciated! :)
 
Well, you've got a problem.

Everything degrades over time. So if that's your criteria, you might as well stop now.

In terms of long term archive you have two choices:

1. Print to film in RGB separates like Hollywood does
2. Archive to LTO tape.

I am going to guess that neither of these will be palatable for you. Both are pretty costly. So outside of these choices, BluRay as data disks are probably the next best solution. The disks are fairly inexpensive, the burners and readers are available commonly and not very expensive, and the media is pretty stable. I wouldn't call it archival necessarily, but it should be fine for a number of years. And you can rotate the media every few years or move on to whatever else in a few years if something better comes along. Hard drives aren't archival by any means, and solid state ls likely worse.
 
BD could be a good option but it is time consuming. a 25 GB disc could take a few hours to burn. I looked very seriously at BD for archive and met with vendors at NAB and the cost per gig was great but laying off a 2TB drive 25 or 50 GBs at a time could literally take me 40hours. Given I don't have to sit and watch it but its still a lot of time. The added time cost in billable hours completely negated the money saved with the low cost media and burners.

I am now using hard drives. Redundant copies on the shelf and raid 1 tied to the system.

I am with Perrone LTO is the way to go if you got the resources.
 
Max.boffo said:
I.... When I used to shoot with a DVX, I always had the tapes to fall back on. Now that I use a 7D, I no longer have the comfort and security that the tape archives provided.*

...:)
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Just FYI, tape isn't archival either. PBS found that audio tapes in storage under controlled environmental conditions occasionally deteriorated to the point of being unplayable in as little as five years. The magnetic fields didn't deteriorate, the oxide and plastic substrate were fine, but the binders that attached the oxide the tape substrate are actually quite fragile and unstable. NASA has warehouses full of telemetry tapes and image data from the Apollo program, Mariner and Voyager missions, etc, that have never been reviewed and are slowly deteriorating. Their problem is also compounded by the fact that most of these tapes are reel-to-reel 9-track data tapes and there are only a handful of decks left to read them that are in operating orde, kept running by hand making replacement parts as they fail. Virtually any data storage today - hard drives, tapes, floppies, optical drives like CDs and BlueRay - are going to eventually disappear, victims of technical progress. True archival storage is for the very long haul, at least many decades and centuries is an even better goal. But how many of us have a handy stereopticon to review the data archived on those scenic stereo views recorded in the late 1800's?
 
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Steve House said:
Just FYI, tape isn't archival either. PBS found that audio tapes in storage under controlled environmental conditions occasionally deteriorated to the point of being unplayable in as little as five years. The magnetic fields didn't deteriorate, the oxide and plastic substrate were fine, but the binders that attached the oxide the tape substrate are actually quite fragile and unstable. NASA has warehouses full of telemetry tapes and image data from the Apollo program, Mariner and Voyager missions, etc, that have never been reviewed and are slowly deteriorating. Their problem is also compounded by the fact that most of these tapes are reel-to-reel 9-track data tapes and there are only a handful of decks left to read them that are in operating orde, kept running by hand making replacement parts as they fail. Virtually any data storage today - hard drives, tapes, floppies, optical drives like CDs and BlueRay - are going to eventually disappear, victims of technical progress. True archival storage is for the very long haul, at least many decades and centuries is an even better goal. But how many of us have a handy stereopticon to review the data archived on those scenic stereo views recorded in the late 1800's?
Click to expand...

I agree on the tape issues. When I had to transfer my old 2" tapes from the 70s I actually bought an oven to re-bake the tapes for that last transfer and it worked very well with a rather cheap fruit dryer.
You have 1 try and need to find out the right temperature, the separation of the magnetic oxide layer from the plastic substrate can be reversed only once but it works.
So which storage for long term? I keep 3x harddrive copies plus dvd backups of the most important things now. I stopped using data tape drives totally: they were worse than anything else!
So for now I rely only on triple backup on harddrives but triple!
 
You need to check your numbers. 25GB BluRays burn for me in about 23 minutes.
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What kind of Burner> Internal or USB?

The rep I met at NAB said there USB external burner would burn one in 1.5-2 hours. perhaps I was min informed Thanks Perrone.
 
What you have encountered is known as the "Digital Dilemma", and it's good you experienced it sooner rather than later and had a backup.

Check out this:

http://www.oscars.org/science-technology/council/projects/digitaldilemma/

Short order, have two hard drive back ups at separate locations. Spin up the drives once a month and make sure everything is there. (hard drives can and do freeze up if not used, just like a car motor) If there is a problem, take the remaining good disc and make a safety copy. Every 5 years copy and replace the hard drives.

It sucks I know, but welcome to the future.
 
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