Just wondering what others are using for job archiving?
We've been using Retrospect and DAT tapes for years and it is generally
very good. We move jobs that are ready to be archived to a common
"Archive" folder.  It takes a minimal of operator time, perhaps an
hour every week or two to organize 10-20 Gigs for archiving. Then
several hours of actual writing to tape. Retrospect catalogues each
file as it writes it, so if the backup gets interupted in order to pull
back another job, it can easily be restarted and it knows where it left
off. Occasionally the drive needs to be replaced, maybe every 2 years
or so. Its pretty fool proof which is a big deal to me.

We recently received a Powerfile DVD jukebox with  DVD-RAM media
which we were instructed to use. (No-they don't ask us what we want
to use). I have several concerns about this setup and wonder what you
think about this and how does it compare to your setup?

Some problems I see with this are:
1. The media is not permanent. Files can be moved, edited on the
DVD-RAM and deleted, its treated basically like a slow hard drive.
2. The Media Finder X software that was supplied (unregistered
shareware) allows you to catalogue the disks, but it seems that after
each writing session you have to recatalogue the entire DVD collection,
takes forever.
3. If you search the catalogue and then drag the results to your
desktop, it MOVES the files (they are no longer on the DVD)!!! How's
that for a permanent archive!
4. Mac OSX is terrible at updating and showing actual size of folders
and disk space that is available so it is very cumbersome to copy files
to the DVD. You have to determine how big each job folder is, then find
one of the DVDs with enough space and copy it. If a single job is too
big for a DVD, you need to split it up into smaller folders before
archiving.
5. I suspect it will take 2-3 days to copy all of the files to disks,
rather than the hour or so that it takes now to organize the files then
let retrospect write unattended.
6. They apparently spent 9000 bucks on this stupid system!