dermdoc,
A few things. That is a lot of space even with TIFFs. And, TIFFs aren't always larger than PDFs, it depends on what you are using both for and compression, et. al. I would definitely recommend pdfs.
I have no idea why, but I have spent at least the last three hours looking for a way to solve your problem, although I am not sure it will work on a big scale. Part of that was because the software I found is one of those tease download for free software that is not only limited in how many times you can use it, but also limited at the point of actually using it. I am sure there are other programs that are more expensive and, in my way of crazy thinking therefore better. But, anyway:
http://www.verypdf.com/tif2pdf/tif2pdf.htm#dlThis program states it willconvert tif to pdf and pdf to tif and lots of tifs to one pdf and lots of tifs to lots of corresponding pdfs AND EVEN directories of tifs to directories of pdfs. But, when it was about to convert, it wanted me to put quarters in the slot. So, if you want to try it, I will let you give it a shot. I must admit I damn near paid for it just to try it out.
OK, so say you go to the folder of patient 1000 and there are 30 tif files there. And say this software or another allows you to convert all of them to pdfs. You then have the problem that the links are gone. Well, here is the fun part. You open Administrative Options and go to the 3rd button from the bottom on the left. I simply went top to bottom. Step 1 through Step 3. It even gives you a report. Then try as you may, all of the pdfs are there, but they are not signed off, and you can't sign them off. Except, you can if you use the Sign-Off Imports button just under the Missing Imports Utility.
Caveat: I tried this on two files, and it worked beautifully. Whether or not it would work with 25GBs of data, I don't know. I guess I would try on one folder at a time and, if it did, you could just move along down the row.
There is also this nifty little site I found that has sample tiffs for download. Don't ask me why I found it or used it, but it was a near experiment for downloading the tiffs and then converting them to pdfs to see the size difference. For anyone bored, the marbles tiff is pretty cool and would make great wallpaper. The pediatric patients would wonder why the marbles are sticking to your monitor and not falling off, but they grab the monitor enough as it is
http://www.fileformat.info/format/tiff/sample/index.htmAs to uploading the Imported Items to AC, I am not sure it would be such a good idea. That is an awful lot of data to send nightly to AC server world. I know they used to save by size, but now I think they keep 30 days, and I am sure your allotment would expire. If you upload to a place like Mozy, you would be able to just send the new stuff which would make much more sense. I have a separate backup for the Imported Items and it backs up with the server, but it seems it would make more sense to back it up to the external hard drive. Either way, you could back it up locally with AC. If you use an eSATA connection and back up to a 1 or 2 Terabyte Satadrive, you will get 3GB/s transfer speed, of course which doesn't translate that way in the real world. You certainly wouldn't back it up in ten minutes, but it would be the fastest way other than hard drive to hard drive within the computer and even that is dependent on SATA cables and some other bottlenecks. I backup to SATA2, and it is blazing fast.
Another option on top of backing up locally or online depending on your server would be to use something like a Mirra Backup where it backs up constantly. While you may get a performance hit on your AC if it backed up all files, if it only backed up imported items, you would probably be OK.
www.mirra.com which is now owned by Seagate.
I still don't get where you got all that data unless you are taking digital photographs of your patients. At this site, I have been here three years and only have 6GBs of data, although this is purely PDFs. All of your pictures and signatures go to the Data001 folder.
Good luck. Nice to have you aboard.
