Digital BW, The Print

On Nov 22, 2004, at 4:03 PM, bhhc wrote:

>
> I would be really interested in knowing how many REALLY do store 
> digital copies elsewhere. Virtually every post I read from digi-geeks 
> goes on and on about how cheap it is . . . which would lead one to 
> suspect that having a "safe" storage site elsewhere, which would incur 
> additional costs, is contrary to the digi-geek mantra of "we spend no 
> money, we spend no money".

I have 120GB of photography (and growing at a ridiculous clip), and 
about 30GB of other critical current data (I also have a few hundred GB 
archived of old projects); it's all replicated in full to one other 
location on an ongoing basis (rsync rules) and regularly incrementally 
"archived" to DVD-R which are also stored off site (at my office, which 
is in arguably one of the most environmentally secure facilities in 
Southern California at least). My current bandwidth isn't going to 
sustain me much longer - my photography is growing faster than my 
bandwidth -- at which point I'll likely just start shuttling 400GB 
Firewire drives around (there's an old maxim about not underestimating 
the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes! same goes for 
a Beetle full of Firewire drives).

I'm a big geek, and I'm cheap - I write my own apps, and assemble my 
own systems; but every time I purchase storage, I double up on my 
requirements (on top of local redundancy) - it's cheap enough that 
there's no excuse. I've seen disasters hit folks I know, and it is 
heart wrenching. I have a lot emotionally - not to mention 
professionally - invested in my data. It's worth the tiny cost. I'd 
happily see all my workstations melt down in flames, if I knew that I 
had backups offsite - really.

I've no doubt many people don't have good practices for archiving and 
disaster recovery - I do, but I also lecture on the subject (and more 
broadly on digital preservation), so I'm maybe a bit more sensitive to 
the issues (and more prepared for the efforts).

But the reality is, most people won't think of it until it hits them 
once; I don't wish this on anybody, but only know from experience that 
my admonishments will fall on deaf ears - until that one event, after 
which they will be converts and hopefully disciplined from then on out.

- R

PS, while it was already an interest of mine, the words "digital 
preservation" hadn't even crossed my lips when the LA riots hit in the 
90s. I was living in Long Beach, and could see the flames from my apt. 
My first thought on the first night was - besides saving my own ass - 
packing up my drives. I couldn't have afforded new computers, but I 
knew even then that the computers themselves had no intrinsic value to 
me, but my 15 years at that point of papers, projects, etc, were my 
life - so I packed all I could on SyQuest cartridges, pulled my three 
harddisks from their sleds, and walked around for several days with 
about 25 pounds of fixed disk storage strapped to my body (those 
SyQuest could have stopped bullets, had they needed to!)