#cintrexav

How many times has your hard drive crashed, computer stop running, or you get an error that your memory card has gone bad?  Everyone has lost data at some point due to technology failing.  There is almost no way to guarantee that you equipment will never go down, but following the the simple rule of 3, can help keep your important content around and stop you from pulling your hair out when your next piece of technology does fail.

The rule of 3 is simple and isn’t a new concept for people in archival and preservation circles.  It’s short, easy to follow and looks like this:

The Rule Of 3 or (3-2-1 Rule)

“Make 3 copies of anything that you consider valuable, in 2 different formats, with 1 of those versions offsite.”

Seems simple enough, so why do so many of us continually lose our data files, irreplaceable photos, and digital videos?

As a society we are always adding to our digital collections and its in our nature to capture life’s most valuable moments, but too often we neglect to do anything else with it once its recorded.

In a previous blog we wrote about why you should digitally preserve, this one explores why following the simple rule of 3 is just as important.

Losing your Content:

We have all heard stories about people grabbing photos, wedding albums and videos, or other important content out of their houses in an emergency.  They do it because those records are some of the most important instances of their lives, and they are irreplaceable.

Everyone has content that means the world to them, but wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about always losing it?  That is where following the simple rule of 3 comes into play.

The rule might seem complicated to some users but is actually really easy to do, and we can walk you through it:

Say you had baby photos in an album,  your first step would be to digitize the photos to have data files of your physical copies.  Now once you have created the digital copies, the next step would be to place them on 3 different formats:  lets put them on Data Disc, a flash drive, and on a storage network in the cloud.  By doing this you have ensured that your most important memories are preserved and now you are complying with the rule of 3.

Place your important content on 3 different formats

How easy was that?

Essentially, what you have done is created back ups of your album, placed them on different formats, and created an offsite storage in the cloud.

Different Formats and Offsite Locations:

Now when choosing the formats for your content there are many options and it really depends on what you have access to and how you will want to retrieve it in the future.  Your formats can be anything from DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, memory cards, external hard drives, flash drives, LTO tapes and more.  Whatever you choose make sure it’s a format that you know you will be able to use when recalling the content later.

For offsite backups, the general rule is to have a copy of your content in a place that you can access, that is not with the existing copies.  Cloud storage networks are a popular choice because you can access your files from anywhere, but there are other options out there.  Using a professional service like LightJar to protect and store your content, placing a backup in a safety deposit box at a bank, or even giving a copy to a family member or friend.  These all work and are all great ways to ensure that you have a copy that you can get to when you need it.

The Rule of 3 preserves your legacy

You never know when your next piece of technology or equipment will fail but it can be certain that at some point you will lose something that is very valuable to you.  It’s frustrating when it happens but by following the rule of 3 you can rest assured that you have not lost it for good.

Whatever you formats you decide or where you place your offsite backup, the important part is that you have decided to follow the rule of 3 and are being proactive in preserving your most important content.  If your families digital legacy is important to you then you should really consider following this one simple rule.

At Cintrex AV we would just like to take a moment to thank all veterans and their families in honor of Memorial Day. Your bravery and sacrifices will never be forgotten.

We came across this cool story of what one town did for their wounded veteran and we wanted to share it. 

“Marine Corporal Juan Dominguez lost both legs and his right arm in an explosion in 2010 while serving in Afghanistan. On April 27, 2013, the community of Temecula, California came together to give Dominguez and his bride Alexis their dream wedding.

Everything for the event from the reception venue and rehearsal dinner to the entertainment, photography, flowers, cake and makeup, were donated by various local businesses to the young couple.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSpOkCKT0oA

We also wanted to say a special thank you to our very own video editor Ian Molina & his wife Sarah Molina, who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend!

Cintrex AV regularly archives video files to both LTO-6 and LTO-5 tapes.  We use Ultrium tapes for both archiving and delivering files to our customers and for internal company storage.  Internally, Cintrex provides 90 days of backup storage on all of our completed customer projects.  This means that we need to be able to keep large amounts of video data on-hand, especially in the 90 days following the holiday season.  To to this, we utilize LTO tapes as a supplement to several network connected Drobo storage systems.  We’ll often back up multi-terabyte jobs directly to LTO tape, saving our spinning disk storage for jobs that we may need to access more actively.  We use Hewlett-Packard LTO tape drives, and format the tapes with either HP's StoreOpen (LTFS)  or Tolis Group's BRU Professional Edition software.  We use StoreOpen from both Windows and Mac workstations, while BRU PE is currently Mac specific.

Different versions of LTO Ultrium tape have different native and compressed capacities.  Because we typically store only video content on LTO tape, the hardware compression provided by the tape drive has little to no effect.  This means we can store about 2.5TB of video on an LTO-6 tape, or about 1.5TB on an LTO-5 tape.

When archiving content onto LTO tapes for customers that primarily use Mac OS, we prefer to use Tolis Group's BRU PE software for tape formatting and archiving.  BRU PE offers more robust verification and restoration, and is much faster and more capable of handling jobs that are ‘large’ both in terms of total bytes stored, as well as total number of files.  Jobs requiring us to store hundreds of thousands of files on each tape can be completed much more quickly with BRU PE than with a LTFS formatted tape, and the integrity of every file written can be verified automatically.  When we return a completed archiving job to the customer, we include a data DVD or USB Flash-drive along with the LTO tapes.  This extra storage media contains a catalog of what’s been archived on the LTO tapes, as well as a copy of BRU PE restoration software if appropriate.   We also now provide cloud storage for these two items, enabling our customers to access their tape catalogs whenever/wherever they might need.  If restoration of files contained on the tapes becomes necessary, the customer will simply need access to a compatible computer and LTO tape drive.  Because LTO is an open standard, any compatible (same generation) LTO drive can be used.  This gives our customers the flexibility to restore files in-house, or with any vendor they choose.

If our customer uses a primarily Windows environment, we archive their files using HP's StoreOpen.  When mounted on either a Mac or Windows computer, the LTFS formatted LTO tape appears identical to any other attached hard drive.  This enables us to use any Windows or Mac software to copy files onto the LTO tape, or reverse the process when restoring a file.   If restoration is needed in the future, HP's StoreOpen application can be freely downloaded, again giving our customers the flexibility to restore files in-house, or with any vendor they choose.

For our internal Cintrex LTO archiving, we employ a networked HP LTO-5 tape drive.  This allows us to write to tapes from any workstation on the network, and store completed jobs for future editing work or long-term storage.   We prefer LTFS formatted tapes for internal backup because LTFS is fast and easy to use when archiving smaller numbers of large files - the drag and drop functionality suits our internal workflow well.  Restoring a video project from LTFS formatted tape is also simple to do from any station on the network.  The life expectancy of the R/W LTO-5 tapes used by Cintrex is estimated to be 200 complete tape rewrites.  We began using LTO-5 tapes for internal backup in January 2012, and have not yet experienced a tape failure as of March 2014.    

Netflix replaced Blockbuster.  New Apple iPads and MacBooks do not have a disc drive.  Video editing software from Final Cut Pro and Adobe Creative Suite are not upgrading Compressor or Encore (the programs to author DVDs and Blu-ray Discs).  Cloud storage with iCloud and Google Drive and other providers, is becoming ever popular.   The question being asked by some is whether the disc is dead, is it going away?

Two answers to this question. Yes and Maybe. 8mm and 16mm home movie film contains one-of-a-kind irreplaceable content about your family. If you want to digitize it so that family members can again view and share earlier generations’ recordings, then the answer is most definitely YES. However, if the film was not properly stored and handled over the years, it may have been damaged or suffered deterioration, and repairing this damage may be outside your family’s budget to convert and transfer the film to DVD, Blu-ray Disc or Data File format.

Everyday Cintrex AV scans and converts 8mm and 16mm film from the 1930’s – 1980’s. Most of the film is still in decent shape, but sometimes the film has been damaged and this can impact the quality of our film transfer.

Reasons we might not be able to transfer your film:

Mold & Mildew - These types of damages occur if film was improperly stored. The mold & mildew can cause damage to the quality of the picture on the film. The film might look extremely faded or be too brittle to unwind off the reels.

Vinegar Syndrome - This is caused by a chemical reaction combined with heat & moisture. You will know if your film has vinegar syndrome by the distinct odor! The film will also start to shrink and curl up in a tube shape rather than laying flat. In bad cases the film is not flexible and you will not be able to unwind it from the reel.

Pulled Perforations (perfs) – This type of damage is usually caused when threading a projector improperly. If every perf is torn or damaged, the film will not run through the projectors smoothly.