“Storage is Cheap” and Other Lies: “Hard Drives” by Michael Muni CC-BY-NC-ND Moving Image Digitization at MLibrary Lance Stuchell, University of Michigan Library Mid-Michigan Digital Practitioners Meeting. August 2, 2013

A/V Digitization at MLibrary Digitization of Special Collections material Audio: Uncompressed BWF master files 1 original audio object ≈ 5 GB storage Moving Image: Uncompressed preservation master Compressed production master 1 original video object ≈ 40.4 GB Storage

A/V Storage Estimates

A/V Storage Estimates TB/Year

Initial Costs Estimates Value Storage: $250/TB per year

Initial Costs Estimates Value Storage: $250/TB per year Tape Backups: $1,825/TB per year

Initial Costs Estimates Value Storage: $250/TB per year Tape Backups: $1,825/TB per year 2013: $32,450 2018: $245,325 2023: $485,200

Reaction

Current Costs Estimates Value Storage: $250/TB per year Tape Backups (MLib): Equipment costs - Cheaper most years

Current Cost Estimates

Current Cost Estimates

Current Cost Estimates

Total 11 Year Storage Cost $569,368

Current Cost Estimates

Current Cost Estimates

The New Normal “Optimistically, for the rest of this decade the rapid decrease in cost per bit of storage that has been a constant of the last three decades will be much slower; it might even stop.” David S. H. Rosenthal, et al., “The Economics of Long-Term Digital Storage” 2012. http://www.lockss.org/locksswp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/unesco2012.pdf

Looking Ahead Assuming steady pricing Instability in per-bit storage ITS storage costs may not fall at same rate Long-term costs of cloud are not known Amazon costs have not decreased at HD rate1 Glacier charges for storage AND transfer Tape storage for preservation copies? Economies of scale Consortial solutions? 1 Rebecca Pool, “Is cloud storage the answer to preservation?” Research Information, 2/14/2013

Ramifications Preservation Appraisal and re-appraisal Some moving image material is not retained in uncompressed formats Appraisal and re-appraisal What are we keeping and for how long? How fast are we digitizing it? Costs of starting up

Storage Takeaways HD costs are no longer predictable Budgets often focused on digitization costs Ignoring significant and ongoing storage costs Storage costs are community wide problem Question of scale Best practice may not be possible Backups can cost more than primary storage Long-term archival storage ain’t cheap! http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1120

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