Whoever has not experienced the tension of losing information contained in a computer, is because he has not yet entered the digital world. Machines, by their nature, fail. The important thing is to be forewarned so that these dysfunctions do not affect our work.
Audiovisual materials in digital format are, today, the majority in publishing and production houses. Therefore, they are usually captured, recorded and manipulated through computers. With the adoption of technology as the basis of the business, professional video studios must simultaneously consider a strategy of safeguarding information, or backup. Here it is not only a question of making manual, irregular and timeless copies of archives, but of creating a concrete plan that guarantees, at all times, that there is an acceptable version of all the materials with which you are working in a safe place.
Building a backup strategy encompasses many aspects. First of all, you have to determine the frequency of copying, which will be directly related to the speed at which the information is updated. If the study generates hundreds of megabytes daily, it is best that every 24 hours you have a backup of the material incorporated. But if you barely correct small details of a single video a day, the task can be spaced out more.
On the other hand, if the information is critical for business continuity, it is recommended to make more than one copy and keep one of them in a physically remote place, to prevent catastrophes such as fires or floods. Of course, this is more expensive (you have to use a larger amount of storage media) and takes longer (each additional copy has its delay).
Another essential point to consider is that of information retrieval. If the need for backup arises, the data must be able to be recovered quickly and efficiently. If not, the whole strategy will have been in vain.
Hardware and software
From a technological point of view, for a backup strategy you have to invest in two key elements: storage hardware and automation and control software.
The first refers to the media where the backup copies will be kept. To date, the most widely used medium is tape, in particular DLT technology. They offer up to 500 GB of storage per cartridge, can be easily transported and have a very small size. On the other hand, they are usually more expensive than the other alternatives that we will describe later.
If the idea is to work with small projects, an economical and very easy to handle alternative is that of the CD or DVD. The limitation of these storage media is their low capacity (700 MB per disk the first, less than 5 GB the second). As, in general, the world of video and television is characterized by its large files, this alternative should be practically discarded, except for very specific situations. Other options are external hard drives (faster than tapes for recovery, but more difficult to transport) or storage networks that we have timely discussed in Ser Digital.
The software, on the other hand, offers essential functionalities so that the backup is a true strategy and not a one-time situation. These products, which abound in the market, allow to automate the task of backup copies, for example, so that every day at a certain time, or every week at a predetermined time, the systems generate without the need for human intervention a complete copy of the selected materials.
On the other hand, as in all "sensitive" disciplines linked to technology, it is always advisable to consult an IT specialist to advise on the implementation of a plan involving policies, software and hardware. Because backup is a strategy that deserves to be copied.
