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davenfl wrote:
First, not to scare anyone but CD/DVD backups are not really the way to go. Unlike professionally produced copies they unforunately have a shelf life once they are burned on a computer drive. It varies widely based upon the manufacturer of the media and storage conditions but, you can begin to have data read failures in as little as a year and typically after 3-5 they are not reliable. OK now that I scared you let me discuss our procedures good or bad. All of our primary files are on the servers in the office on a raid disk array. Those are backed up to a set of portable firewire drives once a week and those are put in a fireproof box at the house. We also use an internet data vault service where we backup everything online. This is done automatically in off hours using a set of "net change" software provided by the data vault company which uploads any file which is new or changed. So we have triple backup. Overkill for a startup but it provides you with the options. The online backup companies (the big ones) are totally safe and secure and it is an easy and fast way to have a copy of your files. They can be had at very economical cost also.
Please don't depend on dvd's, there is a heartache waiting to happen. The ones produced in a factory are permanent, yours are temporary. We advise all our clients that we provide a dvd that they should place a copy on a hard drive as soon as possible.
Although I don't discount what you write, I will say that I do have DVDs and CD which are more than 4 years old and read fine. The only ones with issue are those not 'finalized.' Additionally, though I do not doubt the security if off-site back ups, I will say that over the years, my web-host provider has had more file issues than my DVD/CD system.
As you write, a tiered system is the way to go. But, we have accepted a few facts to keep our sanity here...
1- we will loose files somewhere along the line regardless of what we do
2- a computer/hard drive will crash at some point regardless of what we do
3- we will delete a file by mistake
But, the biggest thing we've accepted is that our responsibility is to produce prints and images for our clients. WE DO NOT PROVIDE ARCHIVAL SERVICE. I think too many in the photo business believe they do.
We simply need a good working archive systems for images to be stored up to a year, possibly 2.
>rw
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