Post by darktimur on Oct 14, 2017 14:19:06 GMT
LMW Archival Project
What is this project about? Unfortunately, often times the found media can become lost again because one forgets to preserve the found media. Here I (and perhaps other people as well) try to prevent this from happening again.[spoil="My backstory (if you care
)]Long before I discovered LMW I was working on my family archive project, which includes various photos (mostly scanned), VHS rips, electronic documents and so. Although for many it seems quite an easy thing to maintain, its really not, as there are many problems that are not easy to point out, such as how can someone make sure the data is not corrupted, how can we know that one version of archive is newer than the other, how to store pictures or videos losslessly and how to cut them is necessary. It also turns out that many times I have to contact various organizations and ask them for data necessary for the archive. Long story story short, maintaining such an archive is quite a big hassle.
Then the problem of where to store data came up. I copied the archive on several PCs and laptops and uploaded the full copy on the Chinese cloud called "Pan Baidu" (I don't care really if they see my childhood photos
). So far its been 2 years and one of the laptops broke, and I'm pretty sure there are more to be broken. Pan Baidu, although offers the tremendous 2TB of space can also sabotage after a while because of many reasons (such as that I am not Chinese, or because my data is worthless for the Chinese agencies, or even because or a hardware problem on their side). So things can happen, and I decided I need a long-term storage for that matter. After doing a really long research I decided to go with the LTO tapes. Since my archive takes about 110 GB, when choosing what standard to use I chose to use LTO version 2 (or just LTO-2 or even LTO2) tapes. I bought a barely-used LTO-2 streamer (a VCR in the world of LTO), and a bunch of brand-new tapes (20 of them) off Ebay so I could send copies of the archive to my relatives.But the problem did not stop here. The LTO gear is really server-orientated, and thus there are lots of problems when connecting this gear to the personal computers. It turned out that I can't just connect a streamer to a computer via SATA or whatever; I need a SCSI card. To make things worse, there are even more underlying problems. The SCSI card has to have a s certain number of pins on its output, and most of the SCSI expansion cards are not even PCI compatible (i.e. ISA cards). I gotta say, though, that some of the LTO gear which i was lucky NOT to buy is really deeply server-orientated; so deeply so that to connect such gear its rather easier to buy an Amiga computer and connect a streamer though some converter. So I was lucky that I bought at least a SCSI compatible streamer
Anyways, I put my hands on a working 68-pin PCI-compatible SCSI card . I also bought a 68-pin SCSI cable made in, and shipped straight from Germany. I connected it all though (which is, I gotta say, quite a difficult although educational process) and now its all ready to work. I backed up my family archive just fine.
Around that time I already knew about LMW, and I accidentally also discovered that not only there is centralised archival of the found or partially found media, but also there are already cases when the previously-found media became lost because people forgot to preserve it. And so I thought perhaps I could help tackle this issue.
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What can I offer? I can write a backup of the LMW media to the LTO-2 tape(s) and send them to you. I also can write any other archival data of your interest (Such as your family archive, for instance).
F A Q (plz read before banning me lol)
* What is LTO in a nutshell
* It is a technology that allows to store digital data on the magnetic tapes. They are very expensive (compared to HDDs for instance) and pretty much only used in the server maintenance for means of backup (for example, database backups or website backups). Although Hollywood began to use these tapes for movie backup.
* How much data can be stored per 1 tape?
* Normally 200 GB, but in the compressed mode its 400 GB
* How many tapes do I need
* If it's below 400 GB, just one. Otherwise more (i.e. 401-799 GB is two tapes, 801-1199 is three tapes). Basically, its calculated by this formula: floor up((how much data in GB)/400)
* Why should I get an LTO tape if I might as well store my stuff on USB/external hard drive/my laptop/whatever
* The problem is that data rots quite quickly. USB's can die quite randomly, quickly and irreversibly (PRO TIP: Don't store your assignments on USBs). Hard drives, however, are far more reliable, but they die relatively fast as well (in around 5-6 years). But data stored in hard drives rots constantly. Mavbe you even noticed a folder on your hard drive called "found.000" or "Lost & Found" with the files within? Well, this folder contains files the operating system have found yet does not know wehere these files were originally. This is the case of rotten files. You can read more on the Wiki page or here
. Compared to all other storage types, LTO's data does not rot for 30-50 years if properly stored
* Why you use LTO-2 tapes if there currently are newer standards
* Originally the LTO gear was bought for family archive backup. The gear is expensive (it really is), and LTO-3 or LTO-4 gear cost exponentially more expensive (2 or 4 times more expensive). Since my family archive is around 110 GB, this is more than enough for those needs. I may buy a newer standard kind or streamer if someone donates me an amount of money for a newer streamer, or if I 'earn' (if this word is really applicable here) the necessary amount
.* How much does it cost
* 50 AUD (around 40 USD) + Shipping
* What is included in this price
*
1) 15 AUD - tape cost
2) 10 AUD - Internet download expenses (I expect around 100 Gigs per one requiest)
3) 25 AUD - man-hours. If you think this is too much, think again, because all the media from LMW have to be downloaded manually, not to mention your media you want to archive
* Hey isn't LMW all about c h a r i t y? Are you trying to earn money of our pure LMW wiki?
* Well if you think I wrote this post for some 25 bucks think again. It will likely take more than a day to have one tape written (which itself would take for about an hour); I would not only have to write data on a tape, but also download everything off the internet... manually, but also verify the integrity of the data. I'm pretty sure one can agree with me 25 bucks for such a service is indeed charity lol.
* What are the problems with LTO?
* There are several I could think of:
1) Data does not rot for 30-50 years, but if only stored in good condition. Otherwise it would not last that long. But even if the tape stores for more than that this does not mean data gets necessarily corrupted, it's just than after that the information might become corrupted. I would personally re-write the tape once every 10-15 years.
2) You can not know if the data if really on the tape unless you have a streamer. (I.e. like you can't know if data is really on a CD unless you have a CD player). I can, however, send you a writing log or a directory listing if you wish.
* What gear do you own
*
1) LTO-2 streamer - HP Ultrium 448 (made in Hungary!)
2) SCSI Card - Adaptec 2940UW
3) SCSI cable from germany
4) x20 Imation LTO-2 tapes
* How do you ship?
* I am located in
* How do I pay?
* Preferably via Paypal, but you can also send me money on my bank account. Probably more options can be discussed privately.
* How do I contact:
* PM me on LMW or on Discord (LMW Discord chatrooms) - my nickname is Dark_Timur. You can also write me an email on Dark_Timur@yahoo.com . The most preferred options are perhaps Discord and email.
* Hey I have a better idea! Why not you store data on BluRay/CD/SSD?
* The main objective is store data as long as possible. If you have some points to make I'm happy to discuss this on Discord. After all we are in the same team!
[spoil="Todo later"]
* Why to archive - explaination
* What to archive - explaination
* Pictures
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