Archiving/data storage?

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gtrman_66

gtrman_66

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One of my Christmas presents, which I actually got a few days early, was a DVD burner. Finally, I have the ability to burn and store more than 700mb at a time :D

I'm archiving a whole crapload of stuff that has been sitting on tape for a while. Some is on R2R analog and a crapload of stuff on ADAT tape. Generally, are recordable DVDs considered to be a good, stable storage medium, assuming proper care is taken in storing them? I've got a lot of stuff I really wouldn't want to lose, and I know the tapes are not going to last forever.

thanks :)
 
Well, I'm still pulling stuff off DVDs I burned years ago with no problems. :)

I think the most important thing is a good DVD burner that can burn without errors.

I also find it's a good idea to burn at a slower speed and check the disk afterwards to make sure there aren't any errors.
 
More stable than some of the other options out there, but not eternal.

Burnable media (CD's and DVD's) have a layer than changes color when hit by the writing laser. This mimics the light/dark of printed media which has actual holes in the media layer.

Over time the writeable media cand fade. Maybe 10 years or so? I can't remember where I read it or how long it was- but it certainly isn't forever. Of course, in 10 years there might not even be DVD players...

Archiving is a challenge. Even the Smithsonian Institute is having trouble figuring out the best way to do it. In the case of audio, I believe they are converting their entire collection to wax cylinders...

I figure I'll have to reburn my backups every 5 years or so. Or evaluate every 5 years if I want to keep it all or not.

Aloha,
Chris
 
Thanks Danny, that's good to know that it's still there when you need it. I might just burn two copies of the stuff that's really important.

Going back through some of that stuff and listening to some of the guitar playing I mangled on some tunes, I might only burn one copy on those :o

The irony of the whole thing is I found an old gig taping I did on an old stereo reel to reel with just a couple mics out front, not very good recording at all and the tape had degraded a bit, so it reallt didn't sound good at all from a recording quality standpoint, so naturally, that was the night I was just on fire on the guitar. Why can't that happen on the good sounding recordings :confused:
 
Thanks Chris.

Yeah,it's a challenge trying to figure out how to keep this stuff around without a climate controlled, hermetically sealed storage facility. I want to leave some of this stuff for my daughter after I'm gone or whatever, it would be nice for her to have.

I can imagine, 50 years rom now, some engineer saying, " holy smokes, your dad was using 24-bit 44.1 PCM? Man, that's some stone age shit there, let me see if I can find something that will play it :D
 
gtrman_66 said:
I can imagine, 50 years rom now, some engineer saying...
Click to expand...
It won't even take that long, unfortunately. Look at the history of recording media in both audio and computers over the past 50 years, and not only will you not find a single media that was common 50 years ago that is easy to playback today, but you'll have a hard time with some media that only 5 or 10 years old.

How many people still are able to use 16-bit computer software or read 16-bit computer data a la DOS or even Win98 or before? Win98 is only 9 years old! How about floppy discs (not just 3.5" mini discs, but how about the 5 1/4" floppies commonplace just 15 years ago or the 8" ones from 25+ years ago?)

On the audio end, turntables are getting harder and harder to find, and they'd be next to impossible for anyone except a narrow segement of audiophiles if it weren't for scratchers. Then there's 8-track tape, cassette tape, and 1/2" 2-track, 4-track and 8-track open reel. Hell, ADAT and DAT are both "obsolete", and they only go back less than 10 years.

VHS, Betamax, S-VHS, SCSI, VHS-C, Laserdisc, Elcaset, IDE, Hi-8, yada yada yada...

Now we have SACD, Blue Ray, DVD-HD, flash cards, thumb drives, Internet archiving, yada some more, all threatening to obsolete both CD and DVD and HD packs Real Soon Now...

None of those has made it in the mainstream for more than about 25 years at the most, and only 5-8 years at the least, and most of them are hard to find both decent media and playback mechanisms for more than a handful of years after the market has "obsoleted" them.

Wax cylinders start sounding like a good idea after a while :D...

G.
 
one suggestion....
try and avoid saving your projects in a compressed file format (ZIP, etc.)

It could have just been my bad luck once, but I had a really large session that was barely too big for a DVD-R and so I decided to compress it to save space. When I went to retrieve it one day, the file was corrupt and it wouldn't unzip. So basically the entire thing was lost.
Don't learn the hard way :(
 
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I hear what you'r saying Glen, it's hard to keep up. My friends think I'm nuts because I still use a VHS Vcr I bought in '92 to record my TV programs on. Hell, I paid good money for it and it still works :D

I guess I had better throw a laptop with appropriate software in the box with the archives I'm saving so she'll have something compatible with them.

Benny, thanks for the tip, I lnow how you feel. I have a zip file of pictures I can't open right now, so I won't make that mistake with the audio I'm saving.
 
Mad works at SI and I think he is or used to be involved with archiving. They use 1/2" tape as I recall him saying . . .

I don't think a future engineer would be surprised by 24/44.1 PCM, because it's the de facto standard now. That's like saying we should be surprised by the Velvet Underground vinyl that just showed up on eBay. That said, when you have pieces of real importance, there will be professional archivists with the ability to properly handle the material. If it was your grandmother banging out "Danny Boy" on an out-of-tune piano, you'd probably be happy to slap it on the turntable you found in your parent's attic.

I use archive grade CD-Rs, and I'm prepared to migrate whenever standards change, but I can still play everything I've ever recorded . . . I still have my Tascam 4-track :)
 
My present storage solution is a separate hard drive. Use it only for long term storage of audio projects. Short term, I use DVD+RW
 
A few important archiving principles I've learned over time (the hard way):

1. Don't archive to only one medium. If you archive to CDR make sure you also back it up to DVD, and then also make sure you have the files on hard disk.

2. Make multiple archive copies. Don't copy to a CDR and then consider yourself done. Make two copies and store them in different places.

3. As formats change, re-archive your projects to the new format. So if you've got mixes stored on DAT, transfer those to your DAW and then burn audio and data CD's of the tracks. Likewise, if you've got ZIP, Jazz, Orb discs, or any of those other removable hard disk formats, copy those files to your computer and then burn new archives on CD/DVD. New Macs don't even come with Zip drives as an option anymore.

4. Store your multiple archives in multiple places. Ideally in a cool, dry and dark setting that doesn't have wide temperature changes.

5. Use the most basic and standardized format possible when archiving, proprietary formats are bad. So for example, for multi-track audio projects you would consolidate the tracks into long WAV files, then archive them. Then later, if you need to revisit the mixes, you could open the WAV files, line them up in *any* DAW, and be good to go.

6. Avoid archiving in compressed formats. If this means having to use several CD's or DVD's to back up one project, then use the extra discs and keep them stored together.
 
Thanks for all the replies and tips everyone :)

I guess the first thing I need to do is sort by "importance" and go from there. I know I have a lot of stuff I recorded with friends that have since passed on, so I think I'll put those at the top of the list.
 
Nick98338 said:
My present storage solution is a separate hard drive. Use it only for long term storage of audio projects.
Click to expand...
It's a good idea when using HD storage to refresh the surface and exercise the bits every once in a while. The magnetic patterns for both the data and the disc formatting can go stale after long periods of non-use.

For serious archiving purposes it's not a bad idea to have at three sets of HD archiving in a rotation program similar to the common tape set archiving used in major data centers. Not every home wrecker - probably only a few - need to get this involved, obviously, but there's still good inforamtion and ideas to be harvested as subsets of this scheme. And there are variations on the rotation scheme described. Plus this can be used not only for HDs but tapes and optical discs as well:

Set one is the online or near-online data set, the one that can be appended to as newer projects are archived.

Set two is off-line but on-site storage (e.g. an archive/backup hard drive stored in a safe location such as a mini-safe or strongbox on-site.)

Set three is a second archive/backup set kept off site in a seriously safe location off-site such as a safe deposit box in a bank vault or a bonded data stroage facility. Environmentally controlled, fireproof, and magnetically isolated.

When it comes time to rotate archive sets, the oldest, third set gets pulled from the off-site storage and rotates up to set one on the online facility. There it is freshly fdisked, reformatted and tested for media integrity. If it still looks good, then a fresh archive is copied over to this new set. If the media is old according to a schedule or is starting to show signs of instability, then the HD is retired and replaced with a new one.

The old set one now becomes the new set two, kept safe offline but stored onsite as a readily available backup. The old set two is now the new set three, and moved to the off-site safe archive location.

The basic idea is to have one accessable archive volume that can be updated and accessed as needed, one backup copy on-site in case of any loss of data on the primary archive, and a third safe archive kept in another safe location, in case of natural disaster such as fire, flooding, tornado, etc. that may take out the first two sets simultaneously along with the room or building in which they are stored. And then to rotate them on a regular schedule (to be determined by the scale of the project and the importance of the data) in order to ensure that the magnetic media and data don't spoil.

G.
 
Another way to archive finished tracks is on an ftp site. Certainly not the only place to have them, but as yet another backup that is easily accessible.

The other thing is, I rarely seriously archive anything but finished tracks. It's the masters that are valuable and you don't want to lose. If you've got reams of unfinished projects, in my opinion finish them and back up the masters. Throw away the rest of it. Unless you are the Beatles or some other multi-million selling artist. I always ask myself: what am I archiving this for?

Certainly with film projects I finish the cues, then keep the files for a while until it hits distribution. There will be the stereo mix, plus an M&E mix. But once those are done, it's over. No need to keep that stuff hogging hard drive space. Maybe a DVD backup, but really, I've never had anyone come back and want to do more with the audio. In fact, I've got 24 track tapes and two track masters of film scores that nobody wanted to bother archiving because it's a pain. It's like I got stuck with them.

So the best archival method is to finish the project and release it. Then back up the masters.
 
An analog storage media usually beats a digital one for long term archiving, though neither is infallible. There have been tapes that I worked on from the 80s that needed baking. Even when there are drop-outs or other issues on an analog media at least there is still audio to work with instead of digital hash.

All told I would guess that vinyl is the best for long term storage of stereo material, but difficult for most of us to get our stuff on to.
 
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