Physical Media Tracking

Through a workflow your facility defines. freispace supports multi-step ingest pipelines with automatic triggers and notifications, so an item moves through named steps — offload, QC, whatever else you add — with step dots and offload status (Completed, TBD, Failed) visible from the list. A typical run looks like this.

1. The drive arrives at reception, is scanned in or created with Add new media, and appears under Received.
2. Base information goes on the record: owner, asset type, capacity, the project it belongs to, and the password if the drive is encrypted.
3. A photo of the label and any paperwork are uploaded to Images and Documents & Files.
4. Launch workflow starts the facility’s ingest pipeline and the item picks up the first step.
5. The offload runs and the offload status moves from TBD to Completed — or to Failed, which is equally visible from the list.
6. The file list is recorded against the item and carries the time it was recorded, so the Contents tab answers what was on it.
7. QC and any further steps follow, each step change firing its own notification.
8. Anything odd goes in the comment thread with an @mention — “Drive was missing card A004” — so the note lives on the media item.
9. The drive is dispatched back to the client: location updated, a new version captured, and the deliverables written to LTO as their own media item, LTO-26-1000.

The steps are named by the facility, not by freispace. What stops an item sitting between two people is the trigger and the notification at each change.

Each media item opens on an Overview tab, beside Contents and History, with the client’s external number and the internal freispace number barcoded at the top.

• Base information — owner, version, asset type, capacity, and the created and updated timestamps.
• Current usage — the project the item belongs to (P208 Crimology), the ingest step dots, State: Received, Location: Client, the password if the drive is encrypted, and Offload: Completed.
• Additional information — a description, user-defined custom fields (e.g. "Last virus check") and metadata.

On the list side, tabs split All, Received and Expected, while Columns, Filters and Export shape the view and Add new media creates an item. Location and state are recorded fields, not detected ones. That is why custom statuses matter: each facility can organize its own media lifecycle in its own words.

The same record either way. Workflow steps are defined by each facility, so the chains below are examples a post house might build, not steps supplied with the module.

• LTO tape — write → verify → shelve
• Hard drive (bare) — receive → offload → QC → return
• Flash drive — receive → offload → dispatch
• USB drive — receive → offload
• Camera card — receive → offload → verify → wipe

Asset types come from a set vocabulary in the product, and capacity is recorded as used of total rather than discovered by freispace.

It gets versioned. For media in circulation freispace keeps a version history of what was on the drive at each handoff — the item header shows Current (v3), with earlier versions selectable. Location and state update on dispatch, and the comment thread keeps condition notes attached to the item rather than to an email.

This answers the risk a Head of Post actually carries: a client drive comes back three times in a year and nobody can say which pass held which cut. Versioning is built for that case — drives that move in and out keep a complete history of what was on them at each handoff.

Around it sits the rest of the record. Earlier versions stay under the History tab. Threaded comments with @mentions hold the human detail, Images take label and condition photographs, and Documents & Files take the delivery note and the QC report.

In the product: version 3 of M10000, at Location: Client, with “Drive was missing card A004” on the record where the next person will find it.

A returned drive with a disputed contents list is an argument about chargeable hours, and a much shorter one when there is a dated record of what went out.

Physical Media Tracking sits in the sidebar under Resources, beside Sites & Rooms, Staff and Storage Servers. In farmerswife the equivalent feature area is called Media Library. The naming here is deliberate: this module tracks the media itself and an inventory of its contents, not files as assets.

Because it is one module of the freispace platform rather than a separate application, a media item is assigned to the same project your bookings, tasks and invoices already hang off — P208 Crimology in the screenshots. The full capability list is in the launch announcement.

• The schedule the media belongs to — resource management
• The plan the ingest sits inside — project planning
• Who runs the offload and signs off the QC — task management
• What gets charged when the job wraps — billing and invoicing
• Where passwords and client data are held — GDPR compliance and EU hosting
• Moving off an on-premise system — farmerswife alternative and ScheduALL alternative

Media records leave freispace through the Export control on the media list; schedules, plans and invoices have their own export and sharing options.

$500 per month as an add-on to a freispace subscription. Like everything else on the platform it is priced per facility rather than per seat, so the figure does not change with the number of people who use it or the amount of physical media tracked. The pricing page carries the current figures and terms.

The published bullets for the module are these four:

• Manage and track physical media (e.g. drives, cards, LTO)
• Scan in & out operations
• Track media workflows step by step (e.g. offload, QC)
• Dispatch media & track locations

The module requires an active freispace subscription and is not included in any tier. The figure is flat and monthly, and does not change with the annual billing toggle that applies to the plans themselves. There is published pricing for every plan and module, and the whole feature set sits alongside it.

Decide your asset types and custom statuses, create items for the media currently on site, and let numbers, barcodes and contents lists build as media moves. Nothing has to be backfilled before you start: archive tapes can join the library the next time somebody touches them, rather than in a migration weekend.

Past a few dozen drives and tapes, a spreadsheet fails in four familiar ways. Two people edit different copies. There is no record of where a drive went when it left the building. The contents column was accurate the day it was typed and never again. And finding which drive holds one deliverable means opening every sheet.

1. Audit what is physically on site.
2. Agree the asset types and the statuses that describe your own lifecycle.
3. Create the items, label them and scan them in.
4. Run one project’s ingest through a workflow before rolling it out.

The items you need on day one are the ones physically in the building, and the library grows as media moves. Ask us about bulk import before you start — what transfers depends on how your sheet is structured.