Hi Steven:
This is what I do but I am my own "managed storage utility" and do have software that mirrors
everything. My take on off-the-shelf hard drives -- as long as they work, they're as good as
anything else. But they're not rebust in some cases and they all fail eventually. So never have one
copy of anything any more time that is absolutely required.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steven C. Barr(x)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 12:18 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] huge number of links on digital preservation
> see end...
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ronald W. Frazier" <[log in to unmask]>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> (Please forgive cross postings.) After reading Mikes reply to my How CD's
>> and DVD's can fail article, I've been doing extensive research into CD and
>> DVD media which lead me into studying digital data archiving. I'm going to
>> be modifying my article to correct some of the errors Mike pointed
>> out. The field is so broad, my head is spinning. The one conclusion I
>> came to is that, to really preserve digital data, takes lots of technology
>> and manpower and planning. One document I read, either from the British
>> Library or the British Archives (can't remember which) cited a digital mass
>> storage system that they have. They ingest enormous quantities of data. I
>> saw a chart which estimated their average cost of maintaining the system
>> and administration over 5 years to be close to 9 EUROS PER GIGABYTE! That
>> translates to $12.12 at the current exchange rate. This is an astounding
>> cost. This means the cost of archiving the data from a standard DVD movie,
>> 4.7 GB, for 5 years, would be 42.3 Euros or $56.97 at the current exchange
>> rate! It would be cheaper to just buy a couple of movies from the
>> publisher every 5 years. Of course, with most digital data, you don't have
>> that luxury. Anyway, this cost factor really surprised me, considering the
>> almost negligible cost of the storage media itself. I also saw a proposal
>> for a data storage system for audio visual materials for an agency
>> affiliated with the US National Archives which is planning to ingest, get
>> this, 23 TERABYTES PER DAY! That's 23,000 GB / day. So, combining these
>> two figures, it would seem that this US agency would need to budget $12.12
>> * 23,000 = $278,760 / day to cover their 5 year data storage costs. This
>> works out to about $99 Million / year. That sure sounds like a lot to
>> me. In your experience, does that sound correct?
>>
> Actually, I'm in an interesting off-list conversation with Richard
> Hess per using hard drives (currently very affordable, with 320GB
> drives retailing for Cdn$129!) as another method of digital archiving.
> At that price, 32TB would need ten HD's, or about 10xUS$115, or
> around $1,150/day (not counting the possibility of lower prices
> for mass purchasing, usw.)...
>
> Given that price, and assuming the data doesn't take weekends off,
> we get $419,750.00/year...or about1/250 of the cost of the little
> adventure in the Middle East...
>
> ...stevenc
> (note that the death toll for data archival is somewhat lower
> as well...)
>
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