Neil Young on digital audio: You're doing it wrong

Good, then there's not a problem and there won't be a moment when you need to prey.

 

What do you think a cloud is? It's nothing but hard drives on a server.

 

Uh, they guy whose name is on the masthead of the site we're on...

 

Our best guess was intermittent data loss due to tape flaking and dropouts, possibly even a scratch. Not fun.

 

I have had backup drives fail on my a lot more than ones in constant use. Having said that, I recommend using Green drives that run cooler. they probably last longer.

 

That's the point: analog may deteriorate gradually over time, depending on several environmental factors. Digital is unpredictable. It can go belly up at any time.

Imagine what it would have been like if Fleetwood Mac had been able to record "Rumours" digitally, and their multitrack failed. But, because it was analog, they had warnings, and was able to save the basic tracks.

 

Yes I agree that nothing is secure but I didn't say it was secure I said I would agree it would be more secure.

 

Um, yeah. I know that.

I'm sensing you're trying to make some kind of point here.

 

It can go belly up at any time?

You're really posting some insightful stuff here.

And with redundancy, I really don't worry. That is the whole point behind everything I've posted in this thread. Though you seemingly haven't noticed.

 

I still don't understand why anyone should listen to a 69-year old life-long rock musician in regards to sound quality. What's his high frequency upper hearing range? I would be surprised if it's over 11 kHz.

 

I am. You're waxing on how great the cloud is, but not only is it impractical for uploading masses of audio and video files, but data can still be compromised, damaged, or lost. One may as well run one's own server.

 

Belly up...hard drives can die without much, if any, warning.

I'm not one of those alarmists trying to incite fear of digital, i'm only saying that one should be realistic about it and not trust it too much. Redundancy is the key to digital.

 

If only I had said this exact same thing about 10 different times in this thread already.

If only I had stated there is risk involved with everything several times in this thread already.

 

Yeah, a musician buddy of mine who is around that same age has his digital studio set up running so hot on the high end that it's almost painful to sit and listen to.

 

After my initial posts in this thread I realised that here at work we archive to tape. I asked our IT guy why we use tape rather than HD and he said that 1) tape lasts longer 2) its quicker and 3) cheaper. He also said that if you have a bad spot on a tape, well you have a bad spot on a tape & you can still get it to play (which you've mentioned). But if a HD has a problem, you've probably lost the entire HD. Of course you might also lose the entire tape back up in some cases but generally speaking you're better off with tape.

So I'm re-evaluating my early opinion on what would be better for long term storage.

The manufacturer of the unit we use at work (which I forgot the name of) was contacted by the 'Avatar' team to consult on back up issues.

Ultimately though, as you said, nothing is secure. Everything has a shelf life < infinity.

 

Sounds like your company has been around for awhile. Thus the reluctance to change, existing equipment/procedure in place. Can't imagine a newer startup going this route.

 

Digital tape isn't something a consumer will be able to afford using, though. That's strictly for commercial applications.

 

Agreed. But if it was affordable on a consumer level I'd certainly look into it.

 

Complacency doesn't exist in our IT department or the company in general. At least not based on our IT budget spend.

Budgets are under pressure for pretty much anyone, especially in my current company, so if there's a cheaper way of doing something we'd be looking into it. But you have to remember that it's just not about how cheap it is. You need to weigh that up against other considerations like how secure it is, speed of back up/access, etc. I can probably do a lot of things I do now a lot cheaper but what I save in one area might be outweighed by what I lose in another area.

If tape back up was good enough for 'Avatar' I think it's good enough for us. Or do you think Avatar was a new start up stuck in the past?

Actually thinking back, every company I ever worked for had tape based back up; both large and small.

Also tape back up units do fail and do need to be replaced. So it;s not like we've never had the opportunity to revaluate things. Maybe things might be different the next time we have to consider it as technology changes all the time.

Even the sound post production company I used to work for backed everything up to tape. They had HD back ups obviously but everything was still backed up to tape and this is recent rather than 1980-whatever.

 

How big are peoples' music libraries? Does anyone here seriously have tens or hundreds of terabytes of music? Because that's where tape makes sense.

 

I stand corrected. Upon research, yeah tape is still the most efficient backup for large amounts of data in business. But we're talking enormous amounts. Which is not cost effective for small business or individuals.

 

Maybe. But it had better be dirt cheap. External HD's are really cheap, with tons of storage.

 

Going rate here is 40% higher than the mainland in general. The point was made that's it's no more likely that a hard drive would fail than it would be a relative would lose a box of photographs. The point I was making is that, although it's certainly possible a relative could lose a box of photo's, it's unlikely to happen. My grandmother still had pictures from the early 1920's when she died in the 80's. However, it's an iron clad guarantee that hard drives will crap out. Each and every one of them. I doubt any hard drive will survive 60 years.

 

Fair enough.

The going rate is commensurate with your cost of living, which I why I said it's relative. Even if replacements parts are needed.

But again, you seem to be overlooking the primary point of digital.

Redundancy.

It's more convenient and less expensive to make digital copies than physical copies. As is having off-site copies.

As for your example of your aunt, while fair enough in certain regards, almost everyone will be leaving leaving these things (pics, music, etc.) to generations FAR more tech savvy than mine, and I'm assuming yours (not sure how old you are, I'm 43). So while your example kinda holds up, generations like mine that were still relatively young enough to adopt this technology, and all those that came before us, are a dying breed. I can only imagine someone reading this thread 25 years down the road snickering to themselves thinking, "man, those old fossils really had no clue!"

 

Sorry, we're a cross purposes. I meant were the media files that were neglected on the hard drive due to the lack of checksum copying saved?