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Archive for the 'Archiving' Category

You backup all the time, right?

Backups have always been a thing with computers, but data has been getting progressively larger over time, and for those of us doing digital media, it has gotten intensely large. Backups are a constant issue for me and when I read this article over at CDM, it made me think about it again.

Create Digital Motion » Protect Your Work, Movage Your Storage, and Stop Using DVDs for Archiving and Backups

There are some good suggestions there. I’ll summarize and add my own.

1. use multiple media when possible. I had a week-long studio session costing thousands of dollars. We had archived it to a hard drive which I had backed up to TWO sets of DVDs. I kept one set of the DVDs and I gave the other set to a band member. A year later, most of the data in both sets of the DVDs was unreadable. (I had verified all of the DVDs on a separate computer before putting them away). Luckily, I hadn’t needed the hard drive for anything else and I was able to back it up to another hard drive so that the session wasn’t lost completely. Now, for anything critical, I will archive to hard drive and DVD, and I will keep the tape as well whenever possible.

2. make multiple backups. I have some stuff that is the most important to me: Digital Family Photos and movies; personal records; business records; my media library (this is important because it took me 6 months to rip all my DVDs). All of these are backed up to multiple locations. The photos are backed up to a separate drive in my computer every night along with the (smaller) files. I have two full machine backup drives which I alternate between so that I always have at least two backups of my machine. I am investigating creating on-line backups of all the impossible to replace data as a third backup.

3. keep the data moving. Hard drive seize, DVDs get oxidized, web hosts go out of business. This one I got from CDM. Hard drives keep getting cheaper. This means that you can periodically buy a couple new drives and archive all the old data from the older smaller drives. This reduces the chance of a drive failure due to age and keeps the bits moving forward. Personally, I’ll also point out that it makes it less likely that you’ll end up with your data on a drive with an incompatible format or adapter (SCSI anyone?)

4. store your backups in multiple locations. I keep one set of backups at home and one set at work. Sure, it is a pain to have to bring drives back and forth, but it makes me feel a bit more secure that if the worst happens at home that I’ll still have my most important digital assets.

5. back up often. duh.

I’d love to hear any other suggestions. Especially around archiving large video projects…

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New NASA images archive

nasaimages.org

Great space images for your comps or projects. From their terms of use

The NASA imagery offered on NASAIMAGES.ORG is generally not copyrighted. You may use this NASA imagery for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages (personal or otherwise). This general permission does not extend to any use of the NASA insignia logo (the blue “meatball” insignia), the retired NASA logotype (the red “worm” logo) and the NASA seal (the “NASA Properties”) whether or not used in conjunction with images obtained from NASAIMAGES.ORG. Notwithstanding the foregoing restriction, you may use the NASA name and the NASA initials only as indicators of the original source of the NASA imagery.

If the NASA images obtained from NASAIMAGES.ORG are used for commercial purposes (including advertisements or packaging), such use may not suggest, either explicitly or implicitly, that NASA endorses any commercial goods or services.

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Review: Fade resistance test – Pixinfo.com

Review: Fade resistance test – Pixinfo.com

Pixinfo.com checks out several current photoprinters to see whose prints last the longest.

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How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media » Ad Terras Per Aspera

this is a great article. It definitely jibes with my experience. After having some bad scares with DVD-R and CD-R media going sour years later, I’ve switched to archiving on both Hard drives and DVD (hard drives are actually cheaper per MB these days), but it is always important to know the differences between brands and types of media. I have to second his recommendation for Verbatim DVD+R DL, it is the only one I’ve found to work consistently.

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