Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Company Offers Disaster-Proof Storage For Records

Posted by simoniker on from the whoops-dropped-it dept.

Makarand writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that a Utah company, Perpetual Storage, is offering disaster-proof commercial storage space deep inside a granite mountain for companies looking to store their most important records. The company claims that their vaults are protected and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast. The vaults have gained popularity recently after hospitals, government agencies and universities have started using them to keep their computer records safe."

5 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Do we want to keep data that badly? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps a nuclear winter would be a good time to re-evaluate our social standings on something other than the size of our bank accounts.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
  2. Any force known to man? by kfg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like when the sun goes all red giant on us? How about a supernova or getting nailed by a decent sized black hole? What about gravitional collapse of the universe into a primeval atom?

    Man knows some pretty awesome and irresistable forces, chief among them, in terms of data persistence, is Rose Mary Woods.

    KFG

  3. Who has the keys? by mattjb0010 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The company claims that their vaults are protected and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast.

    But not including company employees.

  4. Hmm by JanneM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Perpetual Storage -> "Long term storage"

    "Disaster-proof" -> "Disaster-resistant"

    "any force known to man" -> "most forces known to man, in reasonable amounts and not too close, and assuming no help from a disgruntled member of staff"

    Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  5. Safe from what? by phr1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    That mountain might protect the vault from a nuclear airburst, but what about someone driving a nuke (or ordinary fertilizer truck bomb) into the vault? They could probably powder everything inside pretty good, and collapse the tunnel enough so that stuff wouldn't get dug out again for a looong time.

    Also, while the mountain may protect your stuff from any kind of physical catastrophe like meteors or mad bombers, it will do nothing to protect it from frothing lawyers and government agents (SCO, RIAA, BATF or whatever) or plain old industrial spies with briefcases full of cash, seeking access to the stuff from the people who run the facility. The perils of putting your goodies in someone else's care in a publicly known location are the same as those of storing your backups on someone else's computer over the net (and the obviousness of that peril is one reason why the net-backup business didn't do so well).

    If you want to keep something really safe, protect it well and don't tell anyone where it is. Also, if all you're trying to protect is data, rather than physical artifacts, you're better off replicating it all over the place than trying to bomb-proof it at a single site.