Jack wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> The client is an engineering/consulting firm. They have tons of
> drawing and picture files saved on SBS. And they do not want to resize
> the pictures at all. Disk quota policies are not suitable for them
> either.
>
> The SBS' 400GB data partition is kind of full. I will installed 2
> mirrored 600GB hard drives to create a 600GB data partition tomorrow.
> But I am concerned that the 600GB new space can be quickly filled up
> too.
>
> They have lots old files that can be archived to release space from
> SBS, I think it can be up to 200GB. How do you archive them if you are
> in my position?
>
> Here are some solutions I can think of
> - Burn them onto discs
> But this can be a lot of work and discs can be scratched
> - Transfer them onto a USB hard drive
> But hard drives are fragile, it can be damaged. The contents on it
> can be deleted or modified accidentally.
> - Setup a NAS box to hold archived files
> But it can be stolen or damaged.
>
> Any one can shed me some lights?
>
I don't believe there are any magic answers you don't know about. One
option that pushes the problems away onto other people is to pay someone
else to hold them for you. In the long term, a fairly expensive option
for the amount of data you have. You didn't mention how long a term you
mean.
Otherwise, it's a choice between hard drive and optical disc, as you
say. I don't think tape is now considered a good archival medium. Hard
drives do have a need for interfacing, and while SATA is a nice shiny
new technology now, so were MFM and RLL twenty-five years ago. Try
finding an interface today. Hard drives are compact and cost-effective
in terms of storage, and fairly easy to keep offline but connect when
necessary. ESATA is probably the way to go if that is your choice.
Optical discs may have a problem with long-term reliability, though I
don't think there's much data either way yet. I have no problems so far
with ten-year-old CD-Rs. They are small, even Blu-Ray, but you didn't
say how big individual files are or whether they are compressed. They
are fairly easy to store and locate if properly labelled and indexed.
It's likely that even old-fashioned CDs will be readable in future
optical drives for a few decades to come.
You also didn't mention the type of file: many drawing files are text
files of some kind, which can be enormously compressed without loss. A
random chosen DXF file of five megabytes compresses (BZip2 format) to
less than one, another 210KB DXF to under 17KB. AutoCAD files are not
text, and do not compress much. Pixel-based pictures may or may not
compress well without loss, depending on whether they are photographic
or have large regions of solid colour. If many of the files are small,
use of an archival file format (tar, zip etc.) will eliminate the wasted
space between even incompressible files, but at the cost of greater loss
from a corrupted file.
Oddly, for long term archival of visual material, it's very hard to beat
paper. Obviously if an old drawing had to be modified, someone would
have to re-enter it, but a single tear or mark doesn't kill the whole
thing. As long as it's kept in the dark, dry and out of fires, it should
last for hundreds of years. Engineering drawings are often hard-copied
onto polyester, for which there is less of a historical record, but
should be OK for a few decades, at least.
Finally, of course, don't just keep one copy, and preferably keep one of
the copies off-site.
--
Joe
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