Interesting opinion piece in the latest issue of eventDV: http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/Rea...ArticleID=11541.

Good luck.

Dennis

Interesting article Dennis, which pretty much backs up what us "TapeHeads" have been saying....

From the article "While the geek inside us lusts after whiz-bang gear, the responsible person must look at everything required to make it work."


Rich

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Whoa! Easy on that "tapeheads" stuff poncho if you please. Someone might get the idea we identify ourselves with that cheesy movie with Tim Robbins in it. The movie wasn't all that bad I guess (it wasn't that good either) but geeze it's got Tim Robbins in it. People will think we're complete morons if we ever stick up for tape again. I mean it's Tim Robbins for pity's sake. The guy is a total wacko.

Yep. That's what you call the "money quote".

Good luck.

Dennis

OK, then well I'll just say I'm a "Tape Aficionado"....



Rich

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Tapeophile? Tape connoisseur? Tape devotee? Tape nut? Tape buff? Tape hound? Tape fan? Tape champion? Tape guru? Tape maven?

Ain't Thesauruses great?

Good luck.

Dennis

Thanks guys. I think tape has a lot to offer too. But anything associated with Tim Robbins is... well I'll just stay away from that.

The author's 'defence' of tape boiled down to this:

1. Tape doesnt really have dropouts any more.
But then, HDD doesn't have any, so this is hardly an argument for tape.

2. Users shouldn't 'be impatient' and want real time data transfer.
This user will always prefer real time transfer over time-wasting transfer. Again, not a compelling argument for tape.

3. Tape camcorders are cheaper than HDD camcorders.
True, for the moment. Though probably not for much longer.

4. HDD backups have a limited shelf life.
But so does tape. Or at least, some of the tapes that I have used.

5. HDD standards will change.
Yes, but not very frequently. And the PC standard is by its nature an open and largely backwards compatible standard. I don't have a single digital archive from the past 20 years that I can't access on my current PC.

6. Tape is a versatile storage medium.
Yes. But your camcorder uses one and only format. So the fact that it's capable of containing other formats is a moot point.

In all, I thought all the arguments - except price - were kind of weak. And price will only be a valid argument for a couple of years at best.

I liken this article to the long melancholy bellow given by the last brontosaurus as its head sank below the surface of the tarpit ;-)

I believe you have missed the points made by the person who wrote the article Virt. There are distinct problems with other forms of storage at this time.

Optical is well known to fail in as little as 3 years. I can attest to this fact as I lost data from about 200 CDR's. They were Verbatim which is everyone's choice for quality now. I don't believe they were as popular when I bought the ones that failed but they were certainly not considered some off brand or store brand. This fact alone makes optical a very bad choice for many of us. It is an unproven method over long periods and what we do know is bad.

Hard drive storage boils down to price at this point. Plus it is also another unproven technology for storage. I've never had a hard drive last more than 5 years and many barely make it 1 year. But that was under everyday use so I don't know if it applies to hard drives just left unused as storage.

Memory cards are also impractical at this time because of price. And again it is an unproven technology for storage over time.

The real issue is whether optical is a better long term storage medium than tape. I've been severely burned by optical so I'm not anxious to place complete trust in this technology. Maybe the newer versions of this technology will be more stable. Maybe not. I just know that I have cassette tapes that are 30 years old that still play just fine and they are analog. Heck I even have some 8 tracks laying around that are as much as 35 years old that will still play.

There is no perfect long term storage medium at this point. If I have something important I will store it on optical and DV and some things are either VHS or cassette. I'm not about to throw away my old VHS tapes that I recorded my children on when they were very young. I have the video on DVD but I also keep the original. I try to cover all of my bases. I have some very important stuff on cassette also as well as reel to reel tape and even 8 track. I've been doing this a long time. The more chances you have to keep something the better off you are.

As for instant access and all that I am like everyone else in that I prefer optical or electronic storage. I'm just not going to trust either for long term storage. I'm also not going to use either format until they start recording in a format that isn't so compressed. I just can't see having a camera that produces video that is hard to edit. I'm sure I could spend a lot of money buying a hard drive recording system that doesn't compress the video but they cost a LOT of money at this point. It's money that could be better spent elsewhere IMO.

At this time the clear leader for consumer or even prosumer video is tape. Hopefully that will change sometime soon but I'm using tape in the meantime.

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Does this mean you've never used floppy disk or any of the other optical devices he mentioned like Zip, Jazz, etc. over those 20 years or that you updated and upgraded as became necessary?

Like you, I don't have any digital archives from way back when that I can't access now but that's because I transferred files when devices became obsolete. I believe that's the point of the article.

Good luck.

Dennis

I do actually have floppy drives and a Jazz drive that are still working. But my main archiving strategy is to copy the stuff I wanted to keep across to two rack-mounted hard drive (one as backup). I recently changed over those drives to higher-capacity drives, which as you know, get cheaper and cheaper as time goes by.

Having said that: given the many thoughtful responses above, I am now going to recant on my position on this and agree with you.

I've realised that my present approach of converting tape to hard disk, then archiving on hard disk, isn't the smartest strategy. Really, I should just buy lots of tapes, and store those tapes.

I'm about to buy an HC-3. I was thinking that perhaps, given the new Sony HDD models announced yesterday, I should wait because HDD to HDD transfer is more convenient. However, in light of the archiving issue you raised above, I am going to go with the HC-3 and buy lots of tapes.

So, thanks for your thoughtful responses, and I hereby haul the author out of the tarpit ;-)

It still hurts when I think about my experience with my Sparq drive. I bought one of the 100 meg models and transferred all of my Zip Drive data to the new drive. I sold my Zip and all of the disks I owned so I had all sorts of data backed up to my new Sparq drive. About a week later the drive failed and destroyed 2 disks. That 200 meg of data doesn't seem like much now but I had a lot of stuff backed up to those drives including a lot of personal stuff like photos etc.. I didn't realize that the drive was destroying the disks which was pretty bad. I wasn't satisfied with just one set of lost data. I had to lose almost half of the data I had at the time.

Needless to say I haven't owned another magnetic type drive like that. I still remember copying all of my remaining data to floppies too which was a giant pain. I did find a tape drive not long after that which was very reliable and held 400 meg (Travan TR-1 with the QIC-80 tapes). I eventually set that drive up as a backup for a network at a roofing business. It was still working a couple of years ago when they finally upgraded to a CDRW setup and that's been probably close to 10 years ago when i first bought that drive. Tapes do seem to last.

You just had to bring up the SparQ drives

I have two of them.... Yet another lesson for me about jumping on new technology even with all the great reviews.


Rich

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Those SparQ's were a good idea but the actual thing stunk to high heaven. That wonderful grinding / click of death noise that meant the end of your data was a pretty common thing with the SparQ and the Zip. Once you had one disk go bad it would destroy every disk that was put in the drive and the bad disks would destroy every other drive they were put in. What a great product it was. PC World named the Zip one of the 25 worst tech products of all time after it became obvious that the click of death was a pretty common thing. They should have owned a SparQ is all I can say. It was worse.

Syquest actually made pretty good stuff before the SparQ. They were so anxious to get their stuff out cheap that production quality was just awful. They paid the price for their screwup though. They went bankrupt just a short time after releasing that drive.

They actually still sell SparQ drives if you can believe that. My guess is they fixed the problem. Obviously they came back from the bankruptcy.