POLARISX3  finally a light-weight archiving application that spans data across multiple dvds! i've been looking for this app for maybe 10 years! I used to be a long time retrospect user but that product went down the toilet years ago. I migrated to a small time app called 'impression' for far too short a time because the developer dumped the project and no leopard support, so needless to say i've been in a holding pattern for a couple years.... enter ArchiveMac

ArchiveMac has all that i'm looking for, and NONE of the bloated proprietary junk i don't want. I could theoretically retrieve all my data using open source tools years from now if i have to (try doing that with retrospect). But thats a last resort, since ArchiveMac has a great restore ability.

in todays world everyone keeps squawking that hard drives are the only way to backup.. but live backups are not the same as ARCHIVING, its totally different, i don't personally want my old digital camcorder dv files sitting around taking up all my hard drive space.. why? because i already have them mastered as a playable dvd, but i want to keep the raw source files but offline, somewhere on a shelf where if i need to get them down the road i can. A lot of people are afraid of the longevity of optical media, i say as long as you don't buy no-name garbage, you'll do 10 years easy if you store them properly. I've been doing this for 12 years now and i'm not losing data..

if you'd like a dollar for dollar comparison of hard drives to optical media just look at the price of a 100 pack dvd spindle these days.. $19.99 thats 450 gigs of space.

try and find me a 500 gig drive on newegg for 19 dollars. Optical media is still where i'm staying for Archival purposes anyways.  
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