I'm constantly toying with the issue of online vs. archived, offline data on optical media. In general, I have the space on my server to store almost anything I could want (well over a terabyte free still) but this in no way means I want to do so. For one thing, backups are slower and more annoying when I see hundreds of files backed up that don't really make sense.
Now I'm in Iowa and the recent destructive tornadoes are somewhat well known around. This leads me to the various issues. I keep all the data on my server backed up to three separate 1TB drives and are working on spreading them around. So, this data is highly backed up and more or less safe. But now take my offline DVD files. I will use my recent college year. I keep a School folder in My Documents with a folder for each class. Much of this data is vital to me for many reasons. But since I am essentially guaranteed to not need it again, I simply archive it. When I archive it, I typically burn two copies and keep the second somewhat offsite. But the real question becomes is this acceptable? Again, I know I need better offsite habits but...
Take a folder I have of Vital Audio. These little waves have been sitting on my desktop, annoying me for quite a while. It contains audio that under no circumstances can I lose due to the importance. In general, I will never need to listen to it. But if it's not on the server, then it's not as well backed up.
So the big question is how does everyone actually handle this issue? With the vital audio, I don't mind having it online and ready to access but if I'm not careful, I will end up with gigantic portions of such data usage. DV video I also make a huge point of encoding to DVD and burning. Official home DVDs are stored on the server and their own two hard drives in addition to two physical DVD copies but this is because I have a standard, set format, and my policy is to store our DVDs. I don't necessarily have a policy, or dedicated root folder, for vital audio. It comes down to the root folders. If I don't have a good place there, then it ends up in my documents or desktop folders, which annoys me because I often go through and clean up.
Lastly: I recently setup a cassette tape digitizing procedure and have digitized a huge stack of old tapes. I decided it was easier to just digitize everything and throw them away. Many of them are hand recorded but still many are just music (including a song over and over...). 4 DVDs to back these up (16.4GB) I absolutely want to keep them in wav format.
The real key is with something like this, I would like it online but the effort to do so seems high. It's almost as if I need a second network storage drive for this type of data. I like keeping Titanium (server drive) clean and as efficient as possible. It's a tough question...!
Author
Topic: Keeping Data Online (Read 1355 times)