Long-time storage for archival purposes

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

One of the things that attracted me to broadcasting included blinking lights, meters that wiggle and wave, and somethings things that BEEP. I left the business but the love for blinking, waving and beeping left the building with me. In recent years I have been heavily involved in sound as used within the church.

Churches like to keep archive material. Pictures. Newspaper clippings. Reels and reels of audio tape in some cases. I have been invited to write a technical article for a magazine... maybe a series of several articlels... discussing the mechanical/technical aspects of archiving audio events.

Currently the hard-drive looks like the media of choice. To transfer the old tapes to new media is a very hands on, one-at-a-time process. Hard drives may not be permanent, but it is fast and simple to take a hard drive with maybe 12,000 items on it and turn it loose to transfer, either to a new or back-up copy, or to whatever the next generation of media will be.

What will the "next" be?

How often does a hard drive on the closet shelf need to be un-wrapped, plugged in, and accessed just to keep the moving parts from freezing in place. How long will the image of the platter sit there before it begins to fade? How often should everything on a hard drive be transferred to another similar hard drive just to have a fresh un-faded version of the same bits and bytes?

I'm looking for opinions, facts, reference articles and other resources. Some answers may be appropriate here in the forum. Others you can use the Personal Message feature of the board, or just e-mail me at <[email protected]>.

I would think the information I am trying collect will also be of interest to people who have closets full of family videos and audio and pictures.

If you have a contact person at a company that manufactures/markets hard drives AND OTHER POTENTIAL MEDIA, I would like to reach out to some of those folks as well.

Thanks. GRC

 

[markbohach]

Given the low cost of today's SATA hard drives, I would convert all audio to true uncompressed WAV format.
This should be future proof and maintains as much of the original quality as you can get off the tape. If you want to get fancy, record the tapes into a good editor like Adobe Audition and clean up hiss and other problems as you go.

For paper documents- a high resolution scanner and PDF conversion would do nicely.

Take a look at a DROBO for mass storage. Reasonable cost- Linux based and you can configure the RAID to your liking. You can have one up and running on a LAN in minutes. This will allow multiple persons to contribute theireffort to the process.

Then, as an off site backup, pick your favorite cloud based storage. I am a fan of Carbonite myself.

Sounds like a fun project.

 

[TomT]

For certain documents and photos--such as a 100 year old story on the church founding, or early black and white photos; you might want to consult with your state's historic preservation office. They may have tips on preserving those original items.

 

[RadioMan203]

A group of us were recently discussing CD rot, where both manufactured and home-burned discs were starting to show signs of failure. A friend of mine with an extensive archive of broadcast airchacks recently discovered some of his media had started to fail, leaving some recordings unretrievable.

I noticed this some time ago with several discs of my music library. One purchased music CD showed aluminum flaking and when held to the light you could see the missing aluminum would allow daylight right through. I needed to purchase several CDs before I found one that didn't have signs of CD rot, making me think it was a manufacturing problem. The burned discs must have varying quality of dye characteristics as some have lasted a long time while others failed within a relatively short time span.

I've decided to just keep purchasing drives and rotate backups of archived media on them. I have yet to see a single burnable media live up to archive quality.

 

[TomZ]

There is a reason for the term: 'etched in stone' 8)

 

[Robert Bass]

From my experience, hard drives will last much longer, as long as you keep them running. I had a Compaq machine from 1998 that lasted through 2012 without a single hard drive failure, because I left it turned on as much as possible. That computer has since been handed off to electronics recycling, but was still fully operational at the time I retired it. I had a brand new PC at my former job that suffered a hard drive failure within two years of it being purchased. I believe it failed because I didn't leave that machine running 24/7.

R

 

[nmoore6676]

Other than manufacturing flaws hard drives can live long and prosper either turned off or on. The trick is avoiding constant on and off cycling IMHO. The heads are floating when the drive is spinning and when it is off, they are parked off to the side. But just like an airplane is most vulnerable during take off and landing so are the platters of your drive at most risk during the spin up and wind down cycle.

However all magnetic media has the potential for deterioration. Audio tapes that are played a lot are subject to head wear and abrasion of the oxide coating. Also the old floppy disks are subject to the same wear and tear due to head contact. Video tape and digital audio tape add the spinning of the heads (helical tracking) to the equation. Computer hard drives are hermetically sealed and the heads do not contact the magnetic coating. So they have the potential for the greatest longevity so long as they are handled properly and not ubjected to sharp shocks.

All kinds of optical media are transitory, strong light can degrade the coating. Solvents and fumes from them can damage them. I used to write info on them with a sharpie which may have compromised them. I now use a Brother (Dymo will do) label printer and I affix the label by pressing firmly. But there may be elements in the adhesive that have harmful effects as well. So I guess redundancy is the best answer for permanent archives. Off site online services such as Carbonite are a good investment.

 

[kenglish]

The Library of Congress has been working on that the last few years. They took over a huge government-surplus facility in Virginia a while back, and are putting together a massive archive. They would be a good place to start looking at techniques and ideas.

Also, KBYU at Brigham Young University, has been archiving a lot of their old material over the last few years. I think they started dubbing to CD and DVD, and may have gone exclusively to DVD later. You could call them and ask for some input for your article.

My brother used to work for Good News TV in Macon, Georgia, and they did remote recording and sound/video for all the Methodist church stuff, all over the world. They have tons of material back there, but I don't know if they have any special ways to preserve it all. You could talk to them, too.

 

[Kent T]

Open reel tape non backcoated recorded at 7 1/2 IPS or faster half track stereo or full track mono is still the most archival format ever made. Digital is a fleeting media.

 

[kenglish]

Open reel tape non backcoated recorded at 7 1/2 IPS or faster half track stereo or full track mono is still the most archival format ever made. Digital is a fleeting media.

;D I could not believe how well those old tapes from our Church sounded a while back. Recordings of my Mother, the Church Organist, were made at 7-1/2 IPS, on two track, and 10-1/2" reels, back in the mid 1970's.
They were stored properly, standing up, in the bottom of a closed cabinet...probably stayed about 68-78 degrees, and 45-55% RH all those years.
They played perfectly, and we saw no shedding.

 

[Robert Bass]

Open reel tape non backcoated recorded at 7 1/2 IPS or faster half track stereo or full track mono is still the most archival format ever made. Digital is a fleeting media.

;D I could not believe how well those old tapes from our Church sounded a while back. Recordings of my Mother, the Church Organist, were made at 7-1/2 IPS, on two track, and 10-1/2" reels, back in the mid 1970's.
They were stored properly, standing up, in the bottom of a closed cabinet...probably stayed about 68-78 degrees, and 45-55% RH all those years.
They played perfectly, and we saw no shedding.

What brand of tape? If it was anything non back-coated, that would probably explain it. Back-coated tape needs to be stored at lower RH.

R

 

[WPPCProductions]

I archive my files on external drives.I have not burn a CD or DVD in years to archive any files.I don't trust the media.Since those external drives are so cheap.I recommend to mirror the important file on another drive and keep it somewhere else for safe keeping.

I who not trust those cloud drives for long term store encase they go belly up.

 

[nmoore6676]

I archive my files on external drives.I have not burn a CD or DVD in years to archive any files.I don't trust the media.Since those external drives are so cheap.I recommend to mirror the important file on another drive and keep it somewhere else for safe keeping.

I who not trust those cloud drives for long term store encase they go belly up.

You have a point about off site on line but Carbonite seems stable as does Mozy but one problem can be that eventually the cost will rise drastically in order to keep their bellies right side up. But for instant back up security they can't be beat. However if you are just wanting safety copies then backing up onto portable drives and off site storage is best for archival purposes. I am looking at getting a safe deposit box and keeping them there.

Actually when I retire a computer I keep the drives and place them into adapter boxes with a USB connection for ready access to the files after I transfer them to my new machine.