POLL: How are you archiving?

[Frederic Lumiere]

Pretty fast. 64 MB/sec

Frederic

[Tom Brooks]

Is yours the “MXF-Aware” type (LTO-3a, I think)? Is that a big advantage? You have multiple systems, so obviously the network attached model works well for you. For a single system, do you think a cheaper SATA LTO would work just as well, even though not “MXF-Aware?”

[Mark Palmos]

[Bob Flood] “my 3.1417 cents”

hey bob old buddy, we are now using the same edit system you know?! so i can just let you know its really 3.1415926 cents – so stick that in your xmas pie.

catcha later
mark.

[Mark Palmos]

[Bill Bilowit – Tareco Pictures] ”
Coming soon is Panasonic’s dual-layer Blu-Ray SATA burner promising zippier speeds”

hi there
is the drive you mention the SW-5583-C?
I went to panasonic’s site and could not find any drives which are OSX compatible.
Thanks
Mark.

[Mark Palmos]

hello all

For me, Blu-Ray is the best solution. At the moment is it a little slow, a little costly but it is more future proof than others because they will get a lot faster and cheaper in a short while, and in the meantime you will be building up a library of disks you can use into the future.

Physically, disks are a lot easier and more efficient to store than any of the other methods, and their size lends them well to being archived in easy to access libraries. At work we have a bunch of usb drives floating about – looks messy and is clunky.

thinking green for a momet, the idea of buying hard drives and stacking them up, knowing their shelf life is short kinda makes my stomache turn… such a waste of natural resources.

300gb tapes are probably best, but the faster tapes drives are still extremely expensive.

GO BLU RAY
just have to find that panasonic 4x mac compatible drive now!

Mark.

[Bob Cole]

[Wayne Carey] “BluRay has a shelf life longer than 50 years. Lots more permanent than any tape based system to date or SATA drive.”

When DVDs came out I think I heard that they had an extremely long lifespan. My own experience has taught me otherwise.

Is there an authoritative source which can tell us which method is most bullet-proof? The whole point of archiving is to be able to get the material back at some distant future date.

I don’t need 50 years — I’d settle for 15! That’s a lot more than I’m getting now with DVDs and, apparently, my stack of external hard drives.

btw, I doubt that Blu-Ray is the answer — far too little capacity.

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
Kona LHe
Sony HDV Z1
Sony HDV M25U
HD-Connect MI
Betacam UVW1800
DVCPro AJ-D650

[Bill Bilowit]

I read about it earlier this year on MacNN; one seems to be available now, as an internal.

Below, this listing says it’s OS 10.2 and higher compatible:
https://www.datamediastore.com/panasonic-read-write-dual-layer-blu-ray-sw-5582.html

Below, a Mac equipment site:
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Panasonic/SW5582BK/

[Bill Bilowit]

You are saying that for you, DVD-R is not reliable; details please! What media did you use? Speed at which you burned? Verified or not?

Maybe I’ve been lucky but I’ve not had a problem. I use high rated media, burn a little slower, wait for verification. It takes longer but I use a spare Mac w/ external burner and I don’t sit there and watch it. The killer issue these days I think is capacity; longevity will always be in question until we get a few decades into the issue.

[Bob Cole]

[Bill Bilowit – Tareco Pictures] “You are saying that for you, DVD-R is not so wonderfully reliable; details please!”

I haven’t kept count, but I’d estimate about 1/25 of my data DVDs fail. I burn most of my DVDs on PCs, with Sony burner, Taiyo Yuden DVD-R blanks, RecordNow Deluxe software (which I suspect is the weak link, since it often necessitates a reboot after working). Oddly, my results burning video DVDs are much better, perhaps because I use .iso image files and DVD Decrypter for those.

The main problem with DVDs is low capacity. That’s why I’d really like to hear a good solid recommendation for LTO tapes. It is not sensible, imho, to go tapeless, until the archiving process gets cheaper and more reliable.

MacPro 2 x 3GHz dualcore; 10 GB 667MHz
Kona LHe
Sony HDV Z1
Sony HDV M25U
HD-Connect MI
Betacam UVW1800
DVCPro AJ-D650

[Bill Bilowit]

We have gone about 75% tapeless, and for all its thrilling production convenience there is certainly the added inconvenience of archiving huge amounts of file data.

LTO is expensive, Blu-ray has too little capacity, and cheaper methods are slow and less reliable (as always). As tapeless production workflow expands, users demand more affordable and faster archiving solutions. Market forces in this business usually always capitalize on growing demands.

Meanwhile it’s a balance between front-end workflow productivity / efficiency, and back-end job revision likelihoods / archiving. For the jobs with limited budgets, the front end gets the most attention.