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A friend of mine (no, really) has about 40 years of collected sound effects, all on MO discs (750mb size I think) which he uses profesionally in film/tv etc. I concerns me that he has no back-ups.

I know little about MO disc, but I have a decent DAW, and he is out-of-work ( no $$), so I want to work out a trade with him:

Transfer his library to new medium
Make back-ups for him
Keep a copy for myself

Q:

Is it necessary or recommended to transfer his library to a newer/better medium than MO?

Besides an MO reader, what hardware/software in addition to what I already have, will I need ?

Is it even possible on my modest system?

Which medium is best?

Obviously a quality product is essential . Here are the basics I own:

XP home
(custom built PC)
P4 3.0c
2 gig good ram
3 HD's
RME 9632 hdsp + all daughter boards + WC board
Pioneer 107 DVD r/rw
CD r/rw
100 gig free HD space

Cubase SL 2.2
Wavelab 4

Any comments appreciated 8-) ,

=RR=

Comments

Big_D Sun, 12/19/2004 - 07:24

I would suggest one of these

(Dead Link Removed)

I have a friend who does Video for a living and he saves a copy of the video on one of these for his archives. Each unit has the clients raw and edited versions on it should he ever need either. He builds the cost for the unit into what he charges his clients. CDR & RW's are not holding up as expected (some are unreadable after only 3 years) and these units have a much longer shelf life. If it was my sound effects collection $150 would be pretty cheap insurance.

Hope this helps. :D

JoeH Sun, 12/19/2004 - 20:49

Yes, Big D has beat me to it, almost word for word; I couldn't agree more.

HDs are the way to go, at least until something better comes along. These days, you can get silly-stupid-cheap HDs now, with 120 as the low end now. (I'm old enough to remember 1 gig HD's costing - believe it or not - $1000. That's right: A thousand dollars per gig. That was early 90's. Amazing how far that's come along.)

It's less than a dollar per gig now, and still falling. 120, 160 and 260 HD's are getting commonplace.

I have a few clients that give me enough repeat business to justify buying a dedicated HD for them, and as Big D mentions, simply building the cost into the price of the project. I have several 120 internal drives for the grunt/day to day work, but they of course fill up fast. In addition to several external firewire HD's, I came up with a bit of a cheap solution from CompUSA: a firewire drive caddy with a removable lid, that I can pop open, and install or replace drives as they fill up or need to be moved. Cost was $25. Whatta deal!

When they're offline, I use white surgical/gaffer tape and put a strip on the top of the HD with the name of the project(s) so I can tell at a glance what's on them. In addition to my CDrs., DVD's, DATs and DA-x8 tapes, this is quickly becoming my method of choice; it's faster, easier and will hopefully last long enough till the next mega-change comes along.

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