Digital BW, The Print

Smugmug.com uses Amazon's S3 technology which has at least 3  
redundant copies of your data distributed.

I think it's vital that we all read the user agreement when we pay  
our hard-earned money to the online archive service and make sure  
that when they want to go out of business, we'd be at least notify  
ahead of time to transfer our asset over to another service.

Using online archive service doesn't mean that you should have a  
reliable storage solution yourself though.

I have a RAID system taking care of my local backup and use Amazon S3  
as the online backup for a third backup copy in a geographical  
different location.

The drawback of CD/DVD is its speed.  Totally not worth it in my  
opinion.  I'd rather bill myself to have a faster but slightly more  
expensive solution.  Unless the data you need to backup are not a  
lot, CD/DVD is just not very scalable.

Chris

On Aug 12, 2007, at 2:22 AM, Dennis W. Manasco wrote:

>
> At 1:22 AM -0700 8/5/07, Chris Wong wrote:
>
> >Or archive with one of the many online archive services. Then, you
> >don't have to deal with the slow and cumbersome CD/DVD media.
>
> That's right!
>
> You don't have to make "cumbersome" copies.
>
> _If_ you believe your online "archive service" will remain in
> business indefinitely.
>
> But:
>
> You _do_ have to worry about whether your "online archive service"
> will be in business five years from now.
>
> And where their servers' hard disks will wind up after the inevitable
> bankruptcy.
>
> Not to worry:
>
> They'll probably be shredded during the standard asset-transfer.
>
> There was an article about this in last week's Wall Street Journal.
>
> The author was lucky, but that doesn't mean that everyone stupid
> enough to trust their only copies of their photos (or albums) to an
> online service will be as lucky.
>
> Back up to CD or DVD.
>
> Make refreshed copies at least once a year.
>
> When new technology comes out migrate, and make more yearly copies.
>
> (Anyone got any important files on 8" floppies? Or maybe your choice
> was 5-1/4" DOS, or 3-1/2" MFM 400Ks, or even twiggies? No? Maybe your
> choice was Zip {can anyone read 800K any more?}, or cassette tape, or
> SCSI HD with a Centronics connector, or even an HD with 25-pin SCSI,
> or...)
>
> NEVER trust the medium --> Backups cannot be static.
>
> Always refresh.
>
> Always use the newest proven media.
>
> Always keep multiple copies in different locations.
>
> Never trust anyone else's hard disk.
>
> Especially the hard disks of a company far far away that may go out
> of business and destroy your photos when they nuke their servers HDs
> with an industrial "media shredder."
>
> -=-Dennis
>
> .
>
> 



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