Re: filmscanners: Best digital archive medium for scans?

["Florian Rist" <florian.rist@stud.tu-muenchen.de>]

Hello Mark,
on Mon, 6 Aug 2001 19:01:11 +0100 you wrote:

> Basically, I am looking for a long term (20 years+) storage medium to
> archive my scans on. I don't have faith in CDR and tapes are also prone to
> long term problems so the only solution I can see is a magneto optical
> disk.

I totally agree, I suppose the best long term back up media are 
MODs.

> Another problem is that it is all well and good to have a bomb proof 
> medium but it is no good if no one makes the hardware to read it 
> in a few years time.

Sad, but true.

> So is there a clear cut winner out there? The two affordable options I 
> am looking at are either the Iomega Optical drive or the 
> Panasonic DVD-RAM.

I don't know the Iomega drive, but I assume that it's a proprietary 
drive using Iomegas own media, data format, drive, interface ... 
Right? In that case I'd never get the drive.

Personals I don't think the DVD-RAM will bee supported in a few 
yeas, so I'd not get a DVD-RAM drive.

> [...]
> Any advice on this matter gratfully received!

You have to chose a media used by the big companies, 
universities, etc. to backup their data. Such a solution will be much 
more expensive than the Iomegea thing, but chances will be better 
you can get a new drive to reed your archives in 20 years.

I'd recommend a 2.6 or 5.2GB 5.25" MOD drive by Sony, HP or 
Maxpotix. Get the SCSI version of a high quality drive and uses 
good media, store them in a proper environment and never throw 
away the hard- and software you used to cerate the archives. Use 
simple data formats (TIFF) and files systems (FAT), not the latest 
fractal image compression format and NTFS2.


cu
Flo

PS: I use a Sony 5.2 GB MOD (F551) to archive my data and a 
DDs4 tape to do daily backups.

PPS: I have a Maxoptix 2.6 GB MOD (T5-2600) for sale. 
interested? The drive is in perfect condition.