A story about backup

[wilcal]

Since there was a thread in Basic Support about

"Looking for recommendations on backup"

I thought I'd share with everyone a project that
I was involved with about 20-years ago. Again a
short resume' about myself taken from the above
thread:

I could write a book and probably should. I left
school in 68' ( Computer Engineer ) and promptly
entered the world of computer data storage and backup.
Then it was an unbroken string till Sept of 09 when
I retired from my last assignment. And yep it's
always the question "what would you recommend
for a backup". 40++ years of doing that taught
me a simple answer:

"It's not the backup stupid, it's the restore"

In 92 I was working for a small but very High Tech company
in Massachusetts that offered high end backup solutions.
My function was Salesperson/Engineer. We received a
call from the DC Comics Division of Warner Brothers.
They were/are located in Manhattan NYC and yes indeed this
is the DC Comics of Superman, Batman and Wonder Women fame.
DC Comics goes back to 1934. So here's the challenge.
They had two warehouses on Long Island filled with literally
millions of hand drawn artwork. They wanted to scan all that
artwork and commit those scan files to a media that they
could count on to be readable for decades in the future.
2050 would work just fine. That meant to back up files on a
media that could be read over 60-years after it was written.
I got a chance to visit their offices at 1700 Broadway NYC
a couple times and that was clearly a highlight of my career.

Turn your thoughts back to 1992 and what would you use?

Many thanks still for the input I got from the Engineering
Staffs of Verbatim and 3M. They were most helpful. One
stake in the ground was the fact that the original Edison
Cylinder phonograph ( 1899 ) still exists today and we
can still play and enjoy the media that was created for
that technology. So looking at what was established digital
media at the time what would would be available, and
reliably readable, in 2050?

The Red Book ( CD Standard ) was by 1992 fully established
and is still a major player today. Even the newest of
Laser Disk players ( BluRay ) indeed can read the data
off a Red Book CD. And likely as I saw it there will still
be machines available well into the future that will be
able to read the data off a Red Book CD.

What of the media. During the process of creating a CD
a Glass Master can and usually does get created. Also
playable copies of the master created can be on a Glass
substrate. The cost to create the first glass "Master"
varies by supplier but at the time that was in the $500
range. So first "Master" glass disc $500. The second is
only a few dollars. How long do these last? 3M indicated
that the age of the pyramids is a good yard stick.
Creating a Glass Master is a masking, not burning,
process.

Degradation of CD media, glass or plastic, is from the
outside in. So if you only store lets say 600MB on
the about 700MB disc then you could assume that the
disc would last a very long time.

Storage. On edge, in a dry "office" environment is best.
Simply rotate the media once a year or so to counteract
any flow of the glass over time. Review the availability
of any new media which the files can be copied too.

I can't tell you what happened to my recommendations
at DC Comics as our product(s) were not CD Mastering.
But, I'll assume somewhere in the DC Comics offices
in NYC is a safe containing several hundred glass CD's
with millions and millions if pics of Superman, Batman,
Wonder Women and many more. All of that for the
enjoyment of our Great Great Grand Kids.