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• If you’re not using Final Cut Server: In this case, you need to gather all of your program’s
assets manually. It’s usually best to move everything to a particular set of volumes in
preparation for archiving, but the most efficient way to do this depends on the amount
of hard disk space you have and how your media is organized.
When deciding how to archive your program and its media, you have two choices.
• Archiving to hard disks: Copying all of your program’s assets to a hard disk can be a fast
and economical solution and is an excellent way to back up your assets in the short
term. A particular advantage to hard disk backups is the ease with which you can
retrieve assets.
However, hard disk backups may not always be the best long-term solution. The data
on hard disks stored for a year or more without being started up can begin to become
unreliable. Periodically starting up each archive disk and reading all of the data on the
disk can prevent this problem, but this approach requires diligence. Also, disks are
physical mechanisms, and there’s always the chance of mechanical failure. Using a pair
of mirrored hard disks for your backups provides additional insurance against losing
valuable data to disk failure.
If you need to archive your project for longer periods of time, there’s another choice.
• Archiving to tape: Many facilities archive their project assets to Linear Tape-Open (LTO)
tape. LTO drives store data on tape cartridges that, when properly stored, are considered
to have a lifetime of 15 to 30 years. It’s common practice to create two tapes for an
additional level of safety, and the result is an extremely reliable long-term backup
solution.
There have been several generations of LTO tape technology available from several
manufacturers. The current standard is LTO-4, with a maximum uncompressed capacity
of 800 GB per tape. In Mac OS X, LTO tape drives can be written to using third-party
utilities, and they’re also compatible with Final Cut Server.
Tip: However you decide to back up your media, for the greatest level of safety, it’s
ideal to have two sets of backups, including one that’s stored offsite in a secure location
in case of fire, theft, or natural disaster.
116 Chapter 7 Output and Delivery