I plan on offering a data archiving service targeting independent filmmakers. The users will put all of their data onto external hard drives, and mail them to us. We then archive everything to LTO tapes and mail everything back to the user. We plan on offering packages where the user can obtain as much redundancy as they require. They can have one set of backup tapes for their home, another set for off-site/office, and maybe a third set to give to a trusted associate for safe-keeping.

Today's fimmmaking generates gigabytes upon gigabytes of data. Now that an IT-centric workflow is the norm, it's quite easy to lose everything. Burning everything to DVD is inefficient, time consuming, and risky. Copying to hardrives is also a bit risky since moving parts are involved and the probability of failure is high. This method can also prove to be cost prohibitive.
We plan on archiving all types of data for our users. P2 data, RedCODE, Andromeda RAW takes, DV captures, and entire project assets and directories.

The user should be able to rebuild an entire project without re-capturing or re-ingesting. We'd essentially be taking a snapshot of their directory structure, including the source material and any other material generated in post such as sound, artwork, composites, etc.

What would the value of this service be to you- the community?

Here's a model:
1) The user ships their external hard drives to us via priority mail with insurance.

2) We back everything up to two sets of LTO tapes. One primary backup plus a mirror.

3) We send eveything back insured and in staggered seperate packages so as to minimize risk. For example: We send the hard drives back first. Once the user acknowledges reciept, we send them the tapes. That way, all the eggs aren't in one basket.

4) Due to the fact that many people are not in a position to reimage their data from tape after a loss, we'd include one free restoration with the service. The user would send a set of archived tapes to us along with blank external drives and we would rebuild the project for them and send it all back.

I expect shipping both ways shouldn't be too expensive, so we'd probably make the user responsible for shipping the drives to us, while we take care of shipping the drives and archive tapes back to them at no additional cost other than the initial base-cost.

What would you be willing to pay per 400GB of data to be archived?

Looking forward to hearing your responses.

Thanks.

Layi, I just finished an HD doc that uses over 9 TB of footage that will go to Nat Geo or Discovery. Just so I'm clear you would want me to ship you over $7000 worth of storage, leaving me with little or no storage for other projects and risking the loss or damage of those drives while in route to you? Then you will archive them and send me an LTO tape. Now in order to use the LTO tape I've also got to buy an LTO drive. Does the LTO drive work with Macs because that's pretty much the hardware of choice for independent production companies?

I'm trying to think of a circumstance in which shipping you my drives is worth any amount of money. Your model would work in LA or New York where a courier could pick up and deliver the drives but try telling FedEx they owe you $150K because they lost your RAID array.

I'd think about this a bit more if I were you.

Hello Rick. Thanks for the reply and congrats on finishing your documentary.

While it's true that shipping such a large amount of storage can be cumbersome, we believe that as long as our users follow a few guidelines and best practices, everything should go smoothly.

Here's a model:

Do not send us your RAID array. Create a mirror for us to archive from by copying your data to large external hard drives. NEVER send us your original master data. Always send a mirror of it. That way, you are not insuring intellectual property per se. You're insuring hardware.

Secondly, you do not have to buy an LTO drive. If and when you experience a data catastrophe, we will reimage all of your data for you onto external hard drives and send them back to you. The LTO tapes are simply your insurance policy, allowing for peace of mind. You simply have the undestanding that the data is all there, and if anything goes wrong, it can be recovered. In addition, there will be multiple copies of the tapes in play, allowing for data redundancy.

Another option would be for us to keep an additional copy of our clients's LTO tapes onsite, so we can pull, re-image, and send their data back to them instantly. This works well in cases where a client from several months ago demands immediate re-work with a quick turnaround.

So to be clear, you are actually only sending us a copy of your data, while we archive it for you and send a few copies of it back.

Our goal is a fault tolerant, low-risk solution at an affordable price.

Thanks again for giving us the oppurtunity to address your concerns and communicate our ideas more effectively.

Ok, I'll help you out here. Nobody is going to want to send you their drives. or buy other drives just for the purpose of sending them to you so you can put it on tape. IF that was the case they would just buy a tape drive themselves and have it for all their future projects.

Here is where you can fix this. YOU buy 10tb or maybe even more in external hard drives. You send those drives to your client, they put the project they want backed up to those drives and send those drives to you. You then send them tapes with their project on it. You could also charge a very small fee and you hang on to a copy as well.

Hi Louis. That is definitely an option we'd be willing to provide. However, it does seem a bit more cumbersome and time-consuming. Too many postal round-trips.

But the customer is always right, and I agree that it should be allowed as a bonus option if the user so desires.

Thanks for the feedback.

Do not send us your RAID array. Create a mirror for us to archive from by copying your data to large external hard drives. NEVER send us your original master data. Always send a mirror of it. That way, you are not insuring intellectual property per se. You're insuring hardware.

I've got to vote with Louis on this one. I'm already using 9TB of storage for my project and if I had an extra 9TB laying around I'd archive it myself and wouldn't need your service.

You also said the sending your drives to the client "seem[ed] a bit more cumbersome and time-consuming. Too many postal round-trips." Cumbersome to you because now you're risking your drives. Also, I'm no mathematician but it adds up to the the same number of postal trips as the client mailing the drives to you with much less risk for the client.

Hmm. You raise a good point. Not many users would be able to easily ship their data, and likely don't have the required hard drives to do so. I disagree, however, that if one actually had the available diskspace, they'd be able to use it as an archive. Hard drives are not a suitable archiving solution.

I agree that it'd be a good idea to give the user the option to request that empty drives be shipped to them before they send their data.

Thanks for the input.

These days everything is pointing away from tape... why would you think anyone is interested in a 50+ years old technology?

How about offering to simply store the data on your highly reliable servers instead and upload/download via fast internet... Seems like that IS already beeing offered...

I disagree Ervin. Every organization that archives their data still uses tape. The government, Amazon.com, your bank. They archive to tape.

I think you're confusing archiving with storage. Yes, everyone uses RAID/servers for storage. But to archive, a fault-tolerant medium is needed.

Other technologies older than 50 years:
film
television
computers
books
etc

Citing age of a technology as a reason not to use it isn't very compelling.

Thanks for the feedback.