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Ask Slashdot: Best Offline Storage Method For Large Archives?

Posted by Soulskill on from the stone-tablets-and-a-sharp-chisel dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I have a collection of large projects (Indesign files with associated images), which are typically 40GB to 60GB each. In this current climate, what is the 'best' method of archiving these? Spinny magnets? Solid state drives? USB? Tape? Blu-ray? All have pros and cons and price considerations. If I remove the price issue (my data is important to me), does this change the choice?"

6 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Large removable disk on the low end, tape highend by mlts · · Score: 4, Informative

    BD-R disks are an idea, and relatively inexpensive, but your best bang per buck would be large removable disks in the 2-3 TB range. The reason I state "disks" plural is for obvious reasons.

    I would also use a program like WinRAR with a recovery record, or one of the PAR utilities used for USENET to store your files in. This way, you can tell if there was file corruption, and have a good chance of recovering from it.

    For serious stuff where money is less of an issue, I'd consider a LTO-5 tape drive and multiple tapes. Tapes tend to last longer than HDDs because they have very few moving parts.

    Don't forget to see about copying your archives to new media every couple years. It isn't uncommon to be able to pop a 10+ year old tape or HDD in and pull off the contents... but it isn't uncommon either to find the HDD clicking, or the tape full of hard errors.

  2. Bare Drives via Hot Pluggable Trayless SATA by bynick · · Score: 3, Informative

    Screw tape... you pay $2,000 USD for the drive, $50+ per tape for a couple of hundred gigs. Go with bare drive external: Install a trayless SATA bay for 3.5" hard drives... this will run you $12. Buy some bare SATA drives.. these run $50 for 1TB and are available up to 3TB. I buy bare drive hard cases for about $3 each. My Intel ICH10R on-board RAID controller supports hot-swap -- so in effect it's a big 3.5" floppy.. that's right. If your tape drive breaks, you're out another two grand. This is far less expensive, faster, higher density, and random access. In addition, you can boot from it. Want RAID0? Install two trayless SATA bays for a total of $24 and back up in pairs.

  3. We really need..... by pcjunky · · Score: 4, Informative

    Eternally Yours, The case for the development of a reliable repository for the preservation of personal digital objects.

    http://explorer.cyberstreet.com/CET4970H-Peterson-Thesis.pdf

  4. Tape/climate control by triffid_98 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can't argue with Tape. It's been proven to last since the 1960's if kept in a climate controlled space (dry/cool). Just make sure to keep a spare tape drive handy (just ask NASA), because spare parts for 40 year old tape drives are surprisingly difficult to locate.

    Optical isn't even close, assuming you're talking burned discs. Taiyo Yuden claims a 70 year shelf life, but they have only been around for what, 8 years tops?

    Hard drives are an option if you've built a redundant array, but even with that you're still going to be out of luck if you burn up your raid controller.

  5. Re:Rotational media by lucm · · Score: 3, Informative

    > and a _good_ storage controller such as a xyratex.

    I would rather run Windows Home Server on a RAID-0 of IBM DeathStars installed in a HP Pavilion than deal with a Xyratex.

    --
    lucm, indeed.
  6. Re:Rotational media by Keruo · · Score: 4, Informative

    > Online storage makes no sense.
    In storage, online means the data is connected and instantly available(harddrive etc) vs offline(dvd,tape etc)

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.