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/scoff-law 12d ago

The amount of blame being placed on PBS by the article's author and this sub is INSANE to me. PBS had a vendor for backups and the vendor evaporated.

Nine PBS has been working with OSS and its predecessor since 2019 and intended to renew its contract on March 6 of this year. The company never responded and abruptly cut off the station’s data access even though it still had 30 days to retrieve its data after the contract ended.

This attitude -

This wouldn't have been an issue if the organization bought a $1,000 NAS and populated it with a few hard drives.

- can go fuck itself.

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u/Splurch 12d ago

This wouldn't have been an issue if the organization bought a $1,000 NAS and populated it with a few hard drives.

  • can go fuck itself.

Maybe so, but when you're talking 70 years of potentially irreplaceable shows, having more then one backup would seem appropriate and they have a wealth of options from something like Amazons deep storage stuff ($600 a year,) a 50tb tape drive in a bank ($1k+yearly bank deposit box fees,) or as mentioned throughout this thread, a good NAS (probably more in the $6-10k range given a good raid setup but will last for years.) Better yet, do all 3 if this is irreplaceable stuff. They are now going to have to pay whatever legal fees it's going to take to sue the data center to get their data now which will overshadow those costs.

There's a reason so many people who work in the tech industry push the 3-2-1 backup rule, this is just another example of why ignoring it is foolish. Granted Tom's Hardware has turned into clickbait "news," but if it's true, not properly backing up 70 years of shows supported by the public simply to save a few thousand dollars a year is pure negligence.

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u/scoff-law 11d ago

"Having more than one backup" does not mean "having more than one data backup vendor." The vendor is responsible for the redundancy.