>> We'll open up our questions for both speakers just in my [inaudible].
I think the microphones are in this.
Any questions?
Yes.
>> Hi, this is Doris Hamburg.
Both talks were really great.
Thank you very much.
Thinking about preserving and archives, and these -- let's see, the more and more storage
that's in one small amount, how do you see the best, aside from backup, backup, but do
you think it's the -- we want to keep putting our data in smaller and smaller confines,
so to speak, or is -- should we be considering other scenarios?
>> Yeah, I'll take it, or chance with it.
You know, when you think about 35 terabytes in a single cartridge, you get a simple byte
error and you might lose 10 bucks.
I mean, there's no recovery for that.
And a hard disk drive or a tape, a high density storage tape, if you bring it to an archivist
and you say, "Can you recover this?"
there is no such thing as recovery so there is no answer other than redundancy.
>> I just want to add, one of my nightmares is the Terabyte Tape Monster.
When our engineers first started telling me, "Oh, we're going to be able to store a terabyte
on a tape," that actually wasn't a good moment for me [laughter] for the same reason that
Ron just said.
A catastrophic fury at the beginning of that tape is just not good.
And so -- and I should have probably said this -- if you can have multiple copies and
spread it out on technologies, that would be what I would recommend.
>> Hi, I'm Seth Decado [assumed spelling] from Ensy [assumed spelling] State.
I'm over here [laughter].
How reliable is cloud storage?
I don't know that much about it, so...
>> Well, currently today if you noticed in the 99.999, I think that two decimal places
away of the reliability that you currently have in our electrical system.
So I think the rule of thumb is if you're moving data, and I don't care whether it's
in a single drive or from one storage box to another, you're putting data at risk.
Now there's lots of error recovery systems in place, but you have to hope the probability
is they're all working at the same time.
Is it good storage?
Well, I don't know at this stage of the game that I would invest in putting a major archive
on a cloud, you know.
One of the things that cloud people don't talk about today is what means of backup they're
using.
I think they're so involved in selling the new technology and trying to make it happen
that they're not considering backup.
But if you're an archivist, then I mean that's what you've got to be worried about.
[ Background Sounds ]
>> Question for both of you.
Ah, it worked [laughs].
Thanks very much for giving us some -- a really good overview of the risks involved in storage
media.
That's mostly what you were focusing on, as well as environmental issues, redundancy backup
and all of those mitigation strategies.
What about the risk to format obsolescence?
>> I consider obsolescence to be the media, the hardware, the software and firmware, as
well as the format.
So those all need to be addressed, and I recommend to my science management staff that that be
considered within a five-year plan.
They typically don't want to deal with any of them at any time.
They just think [audience laughter], "I do my science.
I put it away and I'm onto something else."
But even five years could be too long for some of those, but it's a good time frame
that at least they have an idea that they need to deal with all of those.
Firmware not quite so much, but probably my nightmare of media had been four-millimeter,
that we determined there were at least six firmware implementations of the four-millimeter
drives.
So sometimes that comes into play also.
So yes, I recognize your point, and in our area it's at least within a five-year period
you need to address that.
>> How do you guys address it?
How do you guys address it?
>>It depends a little bit on the observational records themselves.
If it is born digital, that's one area that is a little bit different.
If it's scanned - we're actually scanning all of our aerial photography, which is eight
plus a million frames.
That's projected to take us 10 years.
And we did community research and selected TIFF format.
I think at some point we'll have to reevaluate that before we're done scanning.
So we do try to look at community-wide uses.
For our satellite data we're using geoTIFFs.
We're embedding the geographics into the TIFF editor.
If you can read the geoTIFF, you can still read the TIFF.
So we've gone through research with our user communities.
>> I have -- I have more than one questions if you don't mind.
So one question I have for you is on the data log is that you showed that the curves for
between -- to 2010, 29 to 2011, they were sinusoidal and it looked like their highs
were consistent at the same time.
So was it the summertime, or was it just -- is that what it is?
>> May through September.
>> Okay, because I too, when we were doing similar studies, yeah, we found during summer
correlation of the highs and lows.
Although we have air conditioning systems, it was quite fascinating to see consistencies
all across.
The one question I have for Ron is you're sure that 35-terabyte, possibly the next generation
tape to be on that physical device -- as small as you should.
That another key thing is about how do we manage heat mitigation?
Because as you know, in the older generations where we would have cooling systems and huge
servers and all and everything is getting compressed, and you're getting the small devices
and then there is all kinds of CPU competitions taking place at the back end.
So how do you handle that?
How is the -- how is the industry handling the heat issue?
>> Question number one, I don't think IBM is going to tell me when they're planning
to release the product so I don't know that I can help you with it.
I do know the good part of the technology which I didn't mention was that the new technology
in this 35-terabyte cartridge is barium ferrite.
And we have experience with that, and we know what a good archival medium it is so I was
glad to see that.
In terms of cooling, I don't know whether you know it, that the -- when this version
of Intel products came out, the computers were running so hot that they were building
and selling cooling systems for your desktop computers.
I think you're going to see more of that.
There's, you know, technology steps that have been put in place, the use of MEMs, which
is microelectromechanic devices, things like that will be going into the new generation
technology so -- but you'll be paying for it.
>> Yes [audience laughter].
>> Hello? Yes, My name's Andre Sito [assumed spelling], and I am a Russian reporter here
in Washington, DC.
I was recently listening to a presentation by this Internet girl, Vint -- Vint Gunn -- no,
from the [Inaudible].
And he mentioned the notion of digital Valin which intrigued me just as an interesting
word combination.
I started thinking about it, talked to some friends, and they told me, "You know what?
It's a huge problem everywhere in the world including Russia, so if you can look into
it --" So this is what I'm doing.
I'm trying to look into it.
From what you just described, I understand there is no digital Valin at this point.
My question to you is are we looking for a digital Valin for something that will keep
forever and ever, regardless of the migration from format to format, from hardware to hardware?
Are you even looking for a solution like this, or are we doomed [laughter] to be forever
migrating from one to other, the other without end?
Thank you.
>> I have a suggestion for you, and it's more philosophical than it is practical.
There's a very good lecture series online.
It's called "TED Series".
If you haven't seen it, you probably should.
And there are two or three pieces in which I could [inaudible] -- "The Future Is Theirs"
-- well, actually makes a projection of where it's all going and what he believes it's coming
to in terms of digital storage.
>> You know, you know, I mean, it's all right to talk about this in philosophical and futuristic
terms, but you -- this gentleman works for the government.
You work for probably government clients or corporate clients who are practical people.
What I'm asking you about [background sounds] -- what I'm asking you about are practical
solutions.
>> The -- I should tell you, without any question, I think everybody knows it.
With budgets tightening up, people aren't spending too much time on archiving -- or
money on archiving.
So it's -- I think the archiving business has taken a back seat in the last couple of
years, which is one of the reasons I honestly think that, you know, not too many of the
people who build drives and tape storage devices think too much about archivists because it
represents a relatively small part of the market.
But in terms of storage and growth, I don't see any end to it.
I mean, I see Moore's law, you know, continuing just about every field of storage devices.
But you know, you can also ask, "What's the improvement in terms of error correction and
error -- you know, error processing?"
I think that's coming along.
Unfortunately it's not keeping pace with the advancement in technology.
I don't have a solution for you.
Sorry about that.
>> Could I ask a question of John?
I was...
>> I'm going to address this one first a little bit more.
>> Oh, okay, yeah.
>> I also don't have a practical solution, but in keeping my eyes open there are optical
media that are proclaiming to be thousand-year stability.
It's a little hard to prove that [audience laughter], but I mean there are things that
are being introduced that may have validity.
And I also wanted to share something I was talking with these two gentlemen at lunch.
There was a large user community of observational data that several years ago seriously -- and
they manage their own satellites -- and they seriously considered down-linking the electronic
data, writing it out to film, and dumping the electronic data itself.
And so when you would need to use an image in electronic form, you would re-scan the
film.
And they were considering that because of the records management storage cost and the
fidelity of the film would be much cheaper over the long term.
They decided not to go down that route, but it was quite an interesting discussion that
they considered this very seriously, to go back to film even though we started electronic.
>> My question goes back to -- this is Kitty Nichols from the National Archives Conservation
Lab.
You talked about doing digital scans of your aerial photos, and I'm -- I want to ask if
you're considering keeping the aerial photos as one of your copy sets that is persistent,
or if you're not.
There's some talk about digital preservation copies, but sometimes it seems like a contradiction
in terms.
>> And we don't have to deal with that because once it's scanned and verified, we'll be sending
all the film to the National Archives [audience laughter].
So I don't have to address your base point there [laughter].
Our scientists, who we actually -- to determine our scan rates we invoked a panel of six scientists
and gave them 34 geographic locations across the US, the Lower 48 and Alaska, and then
gave them seven-, 14- and 25-micron scans.
And it was quite interesting.
The outcome that we got, and one of the side opinions, was that they felt that they would
not have a need to go back to the film if we could give them an adequate digital scan.
So while that won't affect the ultimate disposition of film because that will go to the National
Archives and we are sending it there, it was interesting those scientists had already made
that leap because they could utilize this with another image and very quickly overlay
them versus the film.
They'd have to scan it themselves or put it on a light table or it just -- and the processing
time in projects now is such that they're under such time constraints they need that
quickness.
So I don't know that I'd say our scans replace the film, but I'm not sure that all users
will take the time to go back to the original source if they feel the digital is of adequate
representation.
>> If there are no further questions, I'd like to conclude the session.
We have a break -- short break -- and we can continue our questions with the speakers.
I'd like to give our thanks.