Hi people!
I’m asking a question here for the first time, so don’t bite me if I do something inappropriate!
Anyway, to get to the point:
I’ve been by one of the managers of a small company to think of a way for them to get rid of their paper archives.
So I’ve been thinking like this:
First they are going to need a scanner to scan all the paper documentation and store it on computers. The access needn’t be fast, so removable media are acceptable.
Second, they are going to need some way of having access to the scanned files for at least seven years that is cheap to implement.
I’ve fixed the first part with a giant multifunction printer which can scan about 20 two sided A4 pages a minute.
Now for the second part. Here computers last for about 4-5 years so even if I assume the there won’t a hard disk failure, single computer can’t last long enough to meet minimum time length needed.
Next problem is that the company is in a small town in the middle of no-where. The companies IT staff consists of only two guys and they are basically real life versions of Bastard Operator From Hell and Pimply-Faced Youth. Unfortunately, those two guys are the only IT people in the town so replacing them isn’t an option. I’ve mentioned this because if I’m going to find a solution, it needs to be simple enough for companies other employees to use.
So I took into the account the unwillingness of the companies IT sector and unreliability of commonly used storage media and got as the result DVD-RAM. It’s easy enough to store scanned documents on it, it has error checking built in and should last long enough.
Now what I wanted to ask you:
Are there any other alternatives to DVD-RAM? Is there anything important I’ve missed?
