Judge clears Nine PBS to retrieve 70 years of archival TV data — court rules station owns 50TB of data in Iron Mountain servers after host went under

There’s light at the end of the tunnel for Nine PBS. We reported last week that the station lost access to 50TB of data representing 70 years of TV history. The issue was that its cloud storage provider went out of business and access to this important set of backups was abruptly cut off. In the meantime, a judge has cleared the way for Nine PBS to retrieve its archival data and programming from Iron Mountain Data Centers.

Let us refresh your memories of this case by sketching out a timeline of how we got here, before discussing the latest ruling.

2019: Nine PBS began using Open Source Storage (OSS) as its cloud storage provider.
2019-2025: Annual cloud storage contract renewals occur without incident.
February 2026: Nine PBS wanted to meet with OSS about contract renewal but couldn’t get in touch.
March 6, 2026: Without any new agreement inked, the existing contract expired on March 6, with the terms allowing 30 days for the customer to retrieve their data. However, OSS seemed to cut off access to Nine PBS cloud data without any warning or any grace period.
March 13, 2026: Nine PBS learned that OSS saved its cloud data at physical servers housed in Iron Mountain, Colorado. So it wrote to request that Iron Mountain preserve and return the data. However, Iron Mountain doesn’t confirm or deny that it holds this data.
April 16, 2026: Nine PBS filed suit against OSS, and new OSS owner James Tramel confirms the data is secured at Iron Mountain.
May 2026: Tramel stops responding, later claiming he was defrauded into buying OSS.
June 2026: Nine PBS obtains a default judgment stating it owns the data in question and has the right to possess it. Later the same month, Iron Mountain admits it possesses the data. However, Iron Mountain decides to block any access as it says OSS owns the physical servers.
July 28, 2026: Nine PBS files a lawsuit against Iron Mountain, the data center provider for OSS, seeking protection against data deletion or modification.

Nine PBS - "70 years of our organization’s history" in danger

The latest development in this twisting and turning case of Nine PBS’s lost data seems like good news for the station. On August 12, 2026, a Denver judge established a process that would allow Nine PBS to retrieve its 50TB of archival data from Iron Mountain’s Denver data center.

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The outlined framework includes appointing a third-party vendor, such as a former OSS employee, to assist in the retrieval of the data from the hardware in Iron Mountain. This must be done within 30 days. Moreover, Nine PBS must pay the current and overdue storage fees that OSS missed, and any physical devices the third party takes off the premises must be returned to Iron Mountain after data retrieval. Lastly, Nine PBS must verify no other ex-OSS client data is accessed, and indemnify Iron Mountain against any corruption of data owned by others.

Both Nine PBS and Iron Mountain are requested to provide progress updates on the data retrieval process by September 14. Hopefully this will be a lesson learned by Nine PBS, and it will swiftly implement a proper 3-2-1 backup of its irreplaceable data, so any cloud provider error doesn’t cause such a calamity in the future.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

13 Comments Comment from the forums

Gino188

What's crazy is that 50 TB isn't a huge amount for modern computers, especially for 70 years worth of stuff.

Even the 2 HDD I got on my desktop add up to 28TB.

Still seems like someone should have just bought 4 HDD (before the RAMpocalyse) and just downloaded that stuff and stored it in some closet.

I wonder if they even had money for a real IT department tho. Even in Canada people are arguing to defund our CBC.
Reply
txfeinbergs

Gino188 said:
What's crazy is that 50 TB isn't a huge amount for modern computers, especially for 70 years worth of stuff.

Even the 2 HDD I got on my desktop add up to 28TB.

Clearly you realize you are not even close to the norm here. Most people don't even have 1 TB according to the latest Steam survey:

"According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the most common category for Free Hard Drive Space on Windows PCs is 100 GB to 249 GB, accounting for roughly 23.5% of users."
Reply
Scott_Tx

The IT department probably took their drives home to store their waifu collection on.
Reply
hwertz

txfeinbergs said:
Clearly you realize you are not even close to the norm here. Most people don't even have 1 TB according to the latest Steam survey:

"According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the most common category for Free Hard Drive Space on Windows PCs is 100 GB to 249 GB, accounting for roughly 23.5% of users."
Well sure. I must confess I have about 24TB myself. But, the thing is, even at RAMpocalypse pricing, 18-20TB HDDs are like $600-700 a pop without looking for a deal (some are closer to $400.) When I got my 18 it was $280 'refurbished' (but the model had only been on the market a month so I knew it couldn' be used much) and under $400 new. Just saying this is like $2000 worth of storage even at RAMpocalypse pricing.

PBS does tend to have a tight budget, so I can totally see them not spending the $2K. I'm not going to question their IT, sometimes best or even good practices are just out of budget. But I'm sure they will now LOL.
Reply
USAFRet

txfeinbergs said:
Clearly you realize you are not even close to the norm here. Most people don't even have 1 TB according to the latest
And a major TV network is not "most people"

I myself have over 100TB directly, locally, available.
Reply
usertests

txfeinbergs said:
Clearly you realize you are not even close to the norm here. Most people don't even have 1 TB according to the latest Steam survey:

"According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey, the most common category for Free Hard Drive Space on Windows PCs is 100 GB to 249 GB, accounting for roughly 23.5% of users."
The point is that it was (before price hikes) in the ballpark of maybe $1,000 to store 50 TB. Not very much for an archival enthusiast, much less a PBS station.

I doubt Steam Survey would be picking up somebody's media/archive NAS anyway. What does it detect, the boot drive or the drive that Steam itself is installed on?
Reply
USAFRet

Alex Gorlat said:
It is not the first time when cloud storage evaporates. If you store files directly on recordable drive or you set-up an “instant backup” support, you save your files with 100% assurance. The advantage of recordable drives is that they can be always connected to computer because the previously recorded data cannot be modified. Modern Recordable Drive technology supports the “cloning” procedure – instant backup of the “instant backup”. Even if something happened with one drive (every drive will die sooner or later) you for sure will have its copy with all your files. Modern Recordable Drives do not have restrictions on the size of drive, size of files or number of files. They can be installed on any other modern data drive: HD, SSD, memory stick. You can see it on YouTube (search “Modern Recordable Drive”).
"instant backup" or clone has its own issues....mainly, what happens to the primary drive also happens to the instant backup.
Accidental deletion, corruption, malware...

What you propose is not much much different than a RAID array. Which must always be accompanied by a real backup situation.
Reply
USAFRet

Alex Gorlat said:
You can see it on YouTube (search “Modern Recordable Drive”)
So that we may avoid any utube nonsense, please give us the short description (and link) of this “Modern Recordable Drive”.
Reply
we_are_theBorg

Even at RAMpocalypse pricing an entire local 3-2-1 backup with 20% capacity overhead including NEW business NAS hardware overhead would be less than $10,000. I promise you that they've spent many multiples of that on lawyers fees to reclaim this data, and probably spend multiples of that monthly just on compliance costs, let alone probably some significant amount on the cloud service that failed.

The cloud is just other people's computers folks.

I build redundant NAS systems for small production companies that pale in scope to any broadcast station, and even individuals and sole proprietors bottom out around 40TB on geographically disparate NAS units. Personally I have a 120TB primary array and a 60TB secondary array on my primary NAS, a 90TB array on my local backup, and 60TB collocated in a different state... and that's just for my own stuff.

I hope everyone is allowing this to be a learning experience.
Reply
we_are_theBorg

Alex Gorlat said:
It is not the first time when cloud storage evaporates. If you store files directly on recordable drive or you set-up an “instant backup” support, you save your files with 100% assurance. The advantage of recordable drives is that they can be always connected to computer because the previously recorded data cannot be modified. Modern Recordable Drive technology supports the “cloning” procedure – instant backup of the “instant backup”. Even if something happened with one drive (every drive will die sooner or later) you for sure will have its copy with all your files. Modern Recordable Drives do not have restrictions on the size of drive, size of files or number of files. They can be installed on any other modern data drive: HD, SSD, memory stick. You can see it on YouTube (search “Modern Recordable Drive”).
Fascinating! I'll be sure to take a look. Since you're obviously a VERY astute and credulous person, I'm sure you'll be eager for the unique opportunity to purchase a magnificent bridge over the East River in NYC that I'm considering letting go of for a particularly discerning buyer. 🧐
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