However...

We do remember:

Which factors determine the archive costs?

i.e.:

$ The complete housing costs of the archive.
$ The work structure and the overall personnel costs.
$ The raw materials, for instance tapes etc.
$ The available equipment/machines.

Then - if we want to review the situation clearly - the most important question is really:

$ what are the actual storage costs in relation to the overall cost projection of the archive?

Again, the example figures are derived from an existing archive and are rounded off only for the purpose of illustrating the related ratio.

The other costs of the complete archive are as follows:

$ The personnel costs; f.750,000 a year.
$ The remaining costs related to the safety copy archive; the overheads of a complete company; the purchase of raw materials such as tapes and forms; costs of archiving documentation system; costs of a computer system; office equipment; equipment write-offs etc. are approximately f.580,000 a year.
$ The technical costs, such as write-off s, maintenance etc. of the audio equipment are f.150,000 a year.

A total of f. 1,480,000 a year.

Taking the storage capacity of 12,500 hours of information and considering that this information is the final product of the archive, we can calculate that the remaining costs for one hour of information are:

1480000/12500 = f.ll8.40 a year.

As the cost of R-DAT tapes and machines are about the same as for analogue tapes, the costs of running the R-DAT or an analogue archive are about the same. If it is assumed that, with holdings with a duration of 12500 hours, the analogue archive is full and the R-DAT archive holds copies of the same material, then the R-DAT archive has the capacity to increase its holdings by 12,500 hours each year for 36 years. This increase is clearly excessive and the potential life of the R-DAT archive will be greater than 36 years before any additional space is required.

Therefore, the remaining costs for one hour of information in the case of R-DAT are:

1480000/12500 = f.118.40 a year.