Re: Anyone using AIT for data backup?

I pondered long and hard about long term storage and as Bob has said, the technology on which you based your storage on may not work or exist in 5-10 years time.

So my rationale was to use something that would have the best chance of maybe being there in later years. So I thought of the word 'consumerism'. The more of a product that exists the more likely it will be supported in some way or another in the future. So it all came back to simplistics - optical storage; namely Blu-ray discs. Not the fastest approach but on a standalone machine who cares. And whats more the cost of the 25g media has dropped so much over the last year. I just purchased a 100 BD-R discs for $200 so soon I bet the discs will be $1 each.

As consumer electronics advances so will the Blu-ray format evolve so I predict it will remain backward compatible. Have you ever tried to put a 25 year old CD into a Blu-ray player? Guess what... IT WORKS!!! So, if you get my drift, what you do with Blu-ray today would more than likely be able to be accessed in 25 years.

Then take that one step further; 50gig Blu-ray discs are becoming more freely available and then when they release the backward compatible 'Orange-ray' (hypothetical) with 250g capacities you can invest in that technology and use it for your 'Blu-ray' archives. I remember way back in the early 90's I use to back up on CD's (640 meg) when the discs were $10 each, and I can still read the data on those with my Blu-ray drive. Me think it AMAZING!

Currently I store 'Media managed' FCP projects complete on Blu-ray which equates to about a half hour program on 25gig which includes every single component of the show which will enable me to re-version at any time; and they are HD programs! But I am also assuming that FCP's evolution will enable backward capabilities. Also I backup all my camera stuff, in my case XDCAM BPAV folders, onto Blu-ray as well as a single HDD.

The only thing I see making optical discs obsolete is solid state storage but I still think Blue-ray or some sort of 'ray' will exist for a very long time.

Baz

What would I do without the 'UNDO' button!!!!