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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...)