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Might Flash Memory be a Viable Backup Medium?

Posted by Cliff on from the keep-away-from-strong-magnetic-fields dept.

General Books asks: "Rather than fuss over mechanical failures and damaged media, why not use flash memory for backups? We maintain about 100 servers distributed to customers' sites. Each night we copy a backup of critical data (generally less than 128MB) to removable media in case the hard drive fails. We have experienced high failure rates with CDRWs and so now I am considering some sort of flash memory like a USB key drive. They are solid-state and you can get a 128MB device for $20. They seem ideal to me, but I can't find solid evidence. One question is how would they endure a lightning strike (perhaps not as good as an optical medium)? Admittedly, there is a wide variety of CDRW drives and media but don't they all seem risky compared to a solid-state device? More info about my circumstances: We have no network for backups. A second hard disk is not viable because it could not be rotated offsite. Tape drives are relatively expensive and overkill for our volume of data."

8 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Questions by mugnyte · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So let me think this through... you are trying to store small amount of data on individual items. Why? Once in storage, are they kept apart fro one another?

    I think a RAID will suffice. Locally. If you need to keep it on the cheap, pump your small amount of data to 3 other simple boxen offsite. I mean, for small amounts of data, there's no reason to muck around juggling the physical medium. One can duplicate that data faster and more reliably than boxes of little memory cards with scribble on them.

    If you need to go cheaper, try floppies! W00T!

    mug

  2. Rotating HDDs by Breakerofthings · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or why not get yourself a few of those neato caddies that hold a HDD, and allow you to swap them out (internally; I am not talking about external enclosures) they are available for IDE, and the more expensive ones (claim to) allow hot swapping, even (I cannot personally verify how well the hot swap feature works or doesn't ...). I have seen them that even allow you to lock them in place with a key; how cool is that?

    Much cheaper in the long run, in terms of media costs, at least for large quantities of data. Especially if you score some inexpensive smaller drives (like a surplus batch of 10 GB or so)

    Hell, if you went all the way and just put an inexpensive RAID controller in there, it might pay off in the simplification of your backup procedures ... i.e. just pull a drive, and put a fresh one in, let the card rebuild it for you; backup your whole system if you like. Restoring doesn't get much easier than that, either.

    Here is one made by 3ware
    Here is one made by Promise
    There are plenty of other, cheaper ones out there, too

  3. Been there... by shadwwulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I work for a university as an educational content developer. We are in the same situation in that our whole codebase doesn't break the 100 meg mark but needs to be kept extremely safe given that it represents months and months of man hours.

    We had a lot of bad luck with CDRW's and ended up dropping that idea and moving to a dual backup system. We do intremental backups to CD-R's and make two copies. Secondly we push the content to an FTP site that is elsewhere on campus. The FTP site is backed up seperately onto tape as added an precaution.

    Just my $.02

  4. How about... by EaTiN+cOfFeE+bEaNs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    one of these perhaps?

    --
    No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
  5. Re:I've had no luck with Flash Media by cloudless.net · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe I ask what kind of flash media you use? I have been using flash media for years, including 2 SD cards, 2 MMC cards, 3 MemorySticks, 2 CF cards, and 1 SmartMedia card. And I have never experienced any problem with them.

  6. Re:I've had no luck with Flash Media by invisik · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have one of the M-Systems 16MB USB keychain jobs (admittedly a few years old now) and 90% of the time comes up empty when I move it from computer to computer. Same host OS, different host OS, doesn't matter. I let the machine (2000/xp) install it's own drivers while 95/98 machines I download the drivers from M-Sys. Do I need to flash my flash device for some updated firmware or any idea why this thing bites? I should get a newer one and try it back to back....

    Thanks for any info....

    -m

    --
    http://www.invisik.com
  7. Re:I've had no luck with Flash Media by xanderwilson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Memory Stick, SD card (2 brands Lexar and SanDisk), and I want to say SmartMedia for the camera. I've also used one of those keychain-type USB jobs. Memory Stick was probably the most reliable of the bunch (though not without problems), but none of my current stuff uses Memory Stick.

    Alex.

  8. Paper by jayrtfm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    you can always Print out the info. If you're really worried about lightning you can use a laser printer and marble