Data archiving is not something most of us want to think about, but it's a reality that all filmmakers have to face today. The demand for lower compression and higher resolution material is increasing, meaning that we all eat through hard drives much faster. On the bright side, archiving is getting easier and more affordable all the time. The LTO tape format has become the standard for data archiving in our business, and the new LTFS (Linear Tape File System) makes it easy to use. One downside of an LTO deck setup is that it is usually tied to a full computer workstation. That's where mLogic's mTape comes in.

Many productions today consider the archiving of acquisition media something to be dealt with after completion of the work. Other projects consider the backing up of original data onto additional hard drives as their archive. These, however, do not utilize the organizational and long-term advantages of a proper archival system.