Hello all,
(Please forgive cross postings.) I've been doing extensive research into
CD and DVD media which lead me into studying digital data archiving. 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?
Anyway, I've uncovered and saved dozens of links, and I'll probably share
some once I've had more of a chance to assimilate them. I've included 4 of
the best I've found below. This one site has hundreds of links to
resources on digital archiving. Enjoy.
http://www.dlib.org/about.html - D-Lib Magazine
http://www.dlib.org/title-index.html
http://www.dlib.org/title-index2.html
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/rosenthal/11rosenthal.html
Sincerely,
Ron
------------------------------
Ron Frazier -- P.O. Box 2284 -- Cumming, GA 30028 -- 770-205-9422 (O)
Email: rwfrazier AT macdatasecurity DOT com (replace the AT and DOT by hand)
I am an independent consultant interested in exploring ways to archive data
over long periods of time.
Recordable DVD's & CD's can fail in relatively few years. Don't let that
happen to YOUR data.
Get your GOLD Archival Grade DVD's & CD's from
http://macdatasecurity.com/ today!
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