Paul Thomas wrote:
External hard drives, my man. Big, fast, and cheap.

A single head crash, and you lose it all.

If you go that route, do it to a striped RAID array and make sure you replace drives that die.

Tom deL wrote:
While enjoying the light hearted and edifying banter here on MM, I have actually been working - migrating data to new media.

Are you digital photographers keeping up on this? Since optical media is pretty short-lived and I don't have access to massive tape storage, I try to move it forward on a somewhat regular basis.

Today I am finding CD's as recent as 2003 that are beginning to fade, hence this reminder.

You failed to mention what you’re using for the new media.

Paul Thomas wrote:
External hard drives, my man. Big, fast, and cheap.

Christopher Ambler wrote:
A single head crash, and you lose it all...

Not if you use 2 drive sets, or 2 DVD sets, or data on DVD and tape.  My archived data is in 4 places, but it is still seriously unlikely that 2 data volumes will simultaneously fail.

I agree that Taiyo Yuden or Verbatum or TDK DVD/CD media should last 20 years. But I've been around long enough to know not to trust it.  Never will I put data in only 1 place, and only 1 DVD.

Christopher Ambler wrote:
Backups burned to quality name-brand single-layer DVD, disc-at-once finals, and kept in a protective binder out of the light can and should last as long as 20 years.

Burned to quality ... {left out} on carefully calibrated laboratory equipment with clean lenses {/left out} ...

In the real world of (in my case) well used laptops and office PC's with potentially dirty lenses and misaligned heads along with the media degradation over time, I will spend the very tiny money and time required to keep them fresh thank you.

Before you wait 19 years and six months to migrate you might keep testing them and read some of the industry mags:
  http://computerworld.com/hardwaretopics … 07,00.html

I wish there was an easy way to keep digital images as well as my 35+ years worth of 35mm - 8X10 negs :-\

Craig Thomson wrote:
You failed to mention what you’re using for the new media.

Due to the costs, right now I am simply moving everything forward to fresh DVD's and putting the best (and worked up) images on SLR tapes.

With decent DVD's below fifty cents, right now keeping stuff on them makes sense. The nice thing about digital is that as long as all of the bits can be read the quality will remain the same.

Christopher Ambler wrote:
If you go that route, do it to a striped RAID array and make sure you replace drives that die.

Word of caution: a "striped" array on its own (RAID 0) does NOT mean you can just swap out a bad drive. Quite the opposite: if *either* drive dies, you're screwed, since only half the data is stored on each drive (for read/write performance).

You want a RAID 1 array (mirrored drives), RAID 0+1, or RAID 5 (striped, mirrored, and distributed parity).

Of those, RAID 1 is the lowest-risk: with any of the others, if your RAID controller or software goes belly-up and you are unable to obtain another of the same type, you're *really* screwed. With RAID 1, theoretically you should be able to read either drive in any computer that supports the drive array's file system.

Also, RAID 1 may not have the fastest write times, but reads can be just as fast as RAID 0, if not better, depending on the controller hardware/software.

Paul Thomas wrote:
External hard drives, my man. Big, fast, and cheap.

I'd call that risky unless you "exercise" them regullalry. More drive die while off than running 24/7. I use a server with Raid 5 for mine.
Mike

Tom deL wrote:
While enjoying the light hearted and edifying banter here on MM, I have actually been working - migrating data to new media.

Are you digital photographers keeping up on this? Since optical media is pretty short-lived and I don't have access to massive tape storage, I try to move it forward on a somewhat regular basis.

Today I am finding CD's as recent as 2003 that are beginning to fade, hence this reminder.

How do you store them? If it's dark and dry you shouldn't have those porblems. I do mine every 3 years like clockwork cause I'm Paranoid! But no falty discs ever...even from the begenning od CDs. i now use DVDs. Still no problems but i have found a file or two that came back unrecogniziable from them. No entire discs though.
Mike

Christopher Ambler wrote:

A single head crash, and you lose it all.

If you go that route, do it to a striped RAID array and make sure you replace drives that die.

Not striped. Striped is for speed not redundance. Level 1 with drive mirroring or duplexing is for security.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ … iping.html
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ … evel1.html

Le Beck Photography wrote:
Not striped. Striped is for speed not redundance. Level 1 with drive mirroring or duplexing is for security.
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ … iping.html
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ … evel1.html

Striped is speed with redundency. Each byte is split on separate drives with a checksum. The checksum is redundency in a different form. When you lose a drive, the lost bit is recaculated from the checksum, restoring the missing bit.

Kansas City Media Group wrote:
Disk striping stores each data unit in only one place and does not offer protection from disk failure.

If you want failure protection...move to level 5

Actually RAID levels 3, 4 and 5 can all tolerate the failure of one of drives.

Levels 1 and 10 offer better fault tolerance being mirrored, if duplexed they can even tolerate loss of a controller.

Now I hope that all of this RAID nonsense hasn't obscured the original point of this thread:

   ***** ***** ***** *****
OPTICAL MEDIA IS NOT FOREVER.
   ***** ***** ***** *****

Sorry for shouting.

Tom deL wrote:

Actually RAID levels 3, 4 and 5 can all tolerate the failure of one of drives.

Levels 1 and 10 offer better fault tolerance being mirrored, if duplexed they can even tolerate loss of a controller.

Now I hope that all of this RAID nonsense hasn't obscured the original point of this thread:

   ***** ***** ***** *****
OPTICAL MEDIA IS NOT FOREVER.
   ***** ***** ***** *****

Sorry for shouting.

With RAID 3, simple parity sums are used for redundancy..Simple Sums
I do not and could not, recomend, or consider this true talerant....You do no see much 3 out there..mybe it's just me?!?!

as for your opitical media statement....I agree...but then again nothing man made lasts forever?