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[JackJohnston]

Quote:

The cost of the backup drives is a very small part of the entire infrastructure that would need to be built and administered on an ongoing basis to have it be useable. Outsourcing it isn't viable, as the masters need to be under the control of their owners for a variety of reasons, the most important being that an outside company could go bust and take your entire archive with it.

That's an excellent point. I would be comfortable setting it up for myself, but I don't think it's a good idea for those of you who are not comfortable with system administration. I think the big companies that provide this service are pretty safe though. Much safer than keeping it in your own storage area.

Jack

[Fergal T]

electrical wrote on Sat, 30 April 2005 23:43

The cost of the backup drives is a very small part of the entire infrastructure that would need to be built and administered on an ongoing basis to have it be useable. Outsourcing it isn't viable, as the masters need to be under the control of their owners for a variety of reasons, the most important being that an outside company could go bust and take your entire archive with it.

This is a fairly valid concern alright, but I'm pretty sure that it could be sorted out in the contracts.

Many banks have outsourced management of their data, indeed the Bank of Ireland have recently outsourced their data systems to HP. I doubt that they did that unless they had ensured that procedures were in place in the event that HP/Compaq went bust. If it works for banks, there is no good reason it wouldn't work for storing audio archives...

It's a tough call, but I have to repeat that it's got to be safer than storing a single copy of a magnetic tape...

-Fergal

[Fergal T]

eliot wrote on Sat, 30 April 2005 17:36

I think the biggest problems really are: format standards (Bob mentions broadcast wave files - that's fine, but requires studios to actually generate the proper backups, and in some DAWs bouncing each track to a wave format is far from an easy and automated process).

Yeah, I'll agree with you on this, though there is absolutely no reason why an automated function couldn't be implemented in protools or nuendo or the like. It just requires a bit of pestering from record companies.

Quote:

constant redundant backup (not a technical problem for a co-location type environment)

Agreed.

Quote:

security (the hardest-to-implement concern). Who gets access to the files? The artist? The studio? The producer the band dumped half-way through the project? Besides that, potential (and incentives) for hacking are very high.

Hmmm...

Security: Surely banks manage to avoid being successfully hacked. If banks can do it the record companies will be able to do it? Of course all servers can be hacked, but I'd feel safer having my data on a secure server array than on a single piece of tape in a vault...

Permissions: This is a messy issue I'll agree. But couldn't the permissions be the same as they currently are for an analogue archive?

Quote:

Though it's mostly automated, it's not free. We're talking tens of millions to build it, and several million a year to keep it runnning (minimum). And the costs would grow with the growth of the archive. Think of it as "the music industry's colocation".

Hmmm... I don't know if agree with this. The cost of storage space drops every year, so, it could be the case that new server purchases/staff training won't be needed. This depends on how much of the current archive is tranferred to the servers, mind...

-Fergal

[Bob Olhsson]

All of the talk is great but it's been going on for far too many years. The fact everybody seems to be avoiding is that very few of us employ digital technology for any reason other than lower immediate cost. We pollute our planet for the very same reason.

Digital technology potentially has some major advantages but it remains only potential until people are willing to take responsible positions towards how they develop, manufacture and use this technology.

[rankus]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Tue, 03 May 2005 08:11

All of the talk is great but it's been going on for far too many years. The fact everybody seems to be avoiding is that very few of us employ digital technology for any reason other than lower immediate cost. We pollute our planet for the very same reason. Digital technology potentially has some major advantages but it remains only potential until people are willing to take responsible positions towards how they develop, manufacture and use this technology.

Bob makes a VERY good point... where is the profitability in manufacturing devices or mediums that will last? We're doomed..

[Tomas Danko]

[quote title=Fergal Toohey wrote on Thu, 28 April 2005 19:54
It isn't possible* to recover a harddrive if it has been damage by being dropped whilst reading data - If anything goes wrong during a read or write operation, it goes very, VERY wrong... the harddrive needle is remarkably similar to a jumbo jet flying a few inches off the ground...  

[/quote]

Man, I always felt confidence towards my old 150 MB Bernoulli drive. Drop it to the concrete floor and the needle looses proximity to the disk.

Cheers,

Tomas Danko