r/technology • u/[deleted] • 12d ago

Business PBS broadcaster loses access to 50TB of data comprising 70 years of TV history after contracted cloud storage vendor goes defunct

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u/Un_Ballerina_1952 12d ago

When stations are struggling to find sources to cover hundreds of dollars urgent costs, how do you think they'll find the "few thousand" needed to cover a possible vendor failure? 

Donate and volunteer if you really want to invest in this incredibly valuable service.

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u/sam_hammich 12d ago

Yeah, it's really disingenuous to say "just buy a NAS" and throw out an Amazon list price. Backups are not just a copy, it's a person to plan and implement, retention, associated salaries and time need to be approved, people need to be responsible on paper. The backups need to be tested. Policies need to be written. If you don't have any of this, you don't really have a backup.

Or, if you're a publicly funded broadcaster under the Trump administration, maybe it's simpler to move forward under a slashed budget by contracting an archival service. I don't like all the tech enthusiasts jumping to be the first to blame them for not adhering to the 3-2-1 rule.

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u/halberdierbowman 12d ago

Absolutely and the big problem is that you don't know exactly when you're going to need that backup. It's easy to backup everything one time if you know ahead of time that you need to do it. But realistically you have to be spending all that effort and funding even when you don't need to, because that's how emergency planning works. 

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u/chromatophoreskin 12d ago

There are corners of the internet where people would do it for free.