1. “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

2. 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

3. A/V Storage Estimates

4. A/V Storage Estimates
TB/Year

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

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

7. 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

8. Reaction

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

10. Current Cost Estimates

11. Current Cost Estimates

12. Current Cost Estimates

13. Total 11 Year Storage Cost
$569,368

14. Current Cost Estimates

15. Current Cost Estimates

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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!

20. Thanks!!