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Ask Slashdot: Best Medium For Personal Archive?
An anonymous reader writes What would be the best media to store a backup of important files in a lockbox? Like a lot of people we have a lot of important information on our computers, and have a lot of files that we don't want backed up in the cloud, but want to preserve. Everything from our personally ripped media, family pictures, important documents, etc.. We are considering BluRay, HDD, and SSD but wanted to ask the Slashdot community what they would do. So, in 2015, what technology (or technologies!) would you employ to best ensure your data's long-term survival? Where would you put that lockbox?
... have always worked for me.
Personally, I have three external hard drives encrypted with TrueCrypt that I rotate and keep in a fire safe at an offsite building. I rotate them monthly. Cost is a little high, but it fast, easy and convenient for me. Your circumstances are likely different enough that you will need a different approach. But generally, my archive set is large (3+TB) and sensitive (taxes, bank statements, account numbers, passwords, etc) so this solution works best for me.
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Every year, I just back up my files to an external hard drive and put it in my safety deposit box in the bank. If my house burns down, I still have all my photos (long since scanned in all my old film stuff), documents, and even music. I've got the last several years in there so it would take three or so drives not working to really lose everything (after I lost everything at home). Usually I spend a little extra money to make sure I have small external hard drives that don't have wall worts to power them as they'll fit in the safety deposit box easier and I won't have to keep track of the wall worts either. In the past, I suggested my parents do the same with a flash drive and my father scoffed when I mentioned keeping on in the safety deposit box. Of course, his computer got hit with the encryption malware and they lost everything including the flash drive we back up everything several years earlier because they can't remember where it might be.
It's an open format, so its usability will penetrate deep into the future.
I've already converted my entire porn collection to Base64 encoding, and printed it out on archival paper (acid-resistant for obvious reasons); I've grown so used to it, that sometimes the alphanumeric text is enough to make me extend my coffee breaks.
I just tell people the boxes filled with reams of paper are my late grandfather's WWII anti-NAZI code-breaking attempts.
I happen to like 2TB internal laptop hard drives (2.5").
Pros:
-High capacity
-Small form factor, will fit in most safes / lock-boxes
-Slightly more shock resistant than 3.5" drives.
-Fit my hard drive dock/drive duplicator
Cons:
-Slightly pricey because of the large capacity
Keep the anti-static bag it comes in and toss a few zip-lock bags around it for a little bit of water resistance. If the data is worth anything to you, keep a local offline archive and one at a friend's house. If anything sensitive is on it, pick your favourite encryption (truecrypt is still my goto).
Got to have 2 different media in 2 different locations away from the computer to be fool proof against all the vagaries of time. HDD is hard to beat and cheap. Blu-Ray is good and the newer denser disks coming out might work out OK, but we won't know for years. Hence, LTO tape has lots of adherents.
Your best bet is to pick more than one. You have a better handle on your needs and recovery point objectives than anyone here. Pick two (or even three) strategies that fit your needs and utilize both. Finding out you picked wrong usually happens at the very worst moment. Duplicating your efforts adds an awful lot of cushion.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Um, no. Blu-ray is more scratch resistant than DVD. And the best storage for long-term backups is always off site.
Code, documents and pictures --> Printer.
Videos --> DVD
Music --> CD
Other --> USB Drive
Put the physical items in a waterproof bag.
Put waterproof bag in strong box.
Dig hole in backyard with kids.
Put box in hole.
Cover box with dirt.
Cover dirt with young tree or other large bush bought at local gardening store.
Come back twenty-five years and dig out treasure.
I wouldn't put anything in a lockbox. Such media will be tested very rarely, and when they do fail, it's likely you won't know until it's too late.
I'd rather use a hard drive, hooked up (NAS or mini-pc, maybe) to a network and capable of rsync. You could place it somewhere in your home, or, if available, another secure location with Internet access. Run daily or nightly automated backups.
Remember that magnetic and other computer media needs a higher level of lock box protection if you are thinking of heat/fire. Believe it or not the computer media can get damaged and rendered unusable at lower temperatures than the paper will. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
The first problem, you don't said how long you want to preserve the data without transfering it on another support!
Because, the longer you don't use the support the more you have these problems :
with HDD, the mechanical part, even when not used risk to jam. Happen for me to a HDD stored in a safe in a Bank
with SDD and other flash drive, especially when not in use, the data (electric / magnetic gate) evaporates
With opticalDisk, except some old cd made in real gold, the data will fade aways is in contact with light.
with magnetics tape, the problem will be the same as the flash drive, the magnetics elements will evaporates.
And with all these technologies, you will need the hardware to read and connect them.
You today are able to find a computer with a 8 inches floppy drive or even a 8 inches floppy drive or a computer that have the ide connector to connect the 8 or 5 inches floppy drive ?
My solution, is to backup and copy often. I transfert my backup support every year or two to a new kind of backup support. First tape and CD, then DVD, then BR, Then HDD, this year TB SSD are cheap enough to be in my near vision for the next backup. And I keep my older backup.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
You copy your hard drive every 3 months, but didn't recopy your optical disks for 15 years. And to you, this is 'proof' that HDD are superior?! OK, got it. I suggest reburn every 5 years on optical. You get a fresh disk and a chance to consolidate CD to DVD, DVD to BD etc.
The USB 3.0 sticks are pretty fast and 128GB sticks are getting cheaper all the time, with cheap 256GB units on the horizon. They are light, small, have good retention, and make it easy to divide your data types into separate physical units so if you only want to retrieve the family photos you don't need to pick up the tax returns and such as well.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
He didn't really ask for cheap. He asked for the best chances of survival. Unless the lockbox is airtight and humidity/temperature controlled, your cheap DVD media could degrade over time.
The jury is out on how long it would take for optical media to degrade to the point of data loss, as many tests seem to yield varying results depending on the quality of the media used, but depending on the kind, (writeable vs rewriteable, etc), the general consensus seems to be that the survivability of most optical media in average room temperature and humidity is several decades, (citations obviously would be handy, but I'm not up for finding them). Archival grade optical media is your best bet if you head down this road, and it's not necessarily cheap.
Flash media may be even more volatile than optical media. Without power, minute leakages over time will lead to the loss of data, possibly within months or just a few years. (Again, citation needed.... I have the flu, so research this yourself to confirm... this is just a guideline for investigative consideration).
Tape media may still be a good bet, and probably better than magnetic HDDs. Tapes are small, store lots of data, and are pretty resilient.
I wonder how long they require/expect the data to last for? Years? Decades? Generations?
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
So, basically, your solution is to make up a story about having a backup system that exceeds any rational person's in complexity, redundancy and cost in the hopes that everyone else will believe it and worship your e-peen.
I'm not the first and probably not the last to suggest you take a look at M-DISC. http://www.mdisc.com/. Also, with any optical disc storage you want to make sure to store them vertically. Gravity can do surprising things when given enough time.
I have DVDs that I've burned as a teenager kept in a nice, high-quality soft "archival" binder for the last 18 years. Nearly all of them, of varying quality/expense, are unreadable due to degradation.
OTOH, I've got old 500MB harddrives that read/work just fine and are just as old. I'd expect sealed HDDs to be as good as it gets - tape is nice, but maintaining a supported/working tape drive was always difficult (used to have one). But, unlike every other type of storage, harddrives are actually capable of warning you of an impending failure. (I've been *saved* by S.M.A.R.T. at least twice, over the years.) Add some rudimentary RAID, and you're probably good. The only way I can think of to go further is to use two/three, and cycle them between your PC(often/all the time), a nearby firesafe(When you are heading in that direction), and a safety-deposit box (seasonally?).
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
External HDs are cheap these days.
Set up a robocopy script to backup to an external. drive Periodically backup to a second external HD.
Periodically cycle the external HDs into your safe-deposit box at the bank.
Accept that every few years your external HDs get cycled out due to age.
Don't try to make some permanent archival solution which will rely on technology in the future working ... keep them active and in the air. Two local copies, and possibly as many as two remote copies.
I think your specific medium over the long term is less meaningful when you can buy a 3TB external HD for under $100 .. especially if archiving those files actually is valuable for you.
Nowadays, it seems like redundant, offline backups for stuff you deem important enough is fairly easy to do.
The advantage of a robocopy is it will only copy what's changed, so your static data doesn't add too much.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
IMO the best (but not the cheapest) option would be to use personal NAS server with some level of mirrored RAID. Configure backup from all machines/data you wish to backup to the NAS server. Then sync it with cloud provider. Of course when picking cloud provider do check to have strong data encryption, 2F authentication, account/data access audit and DO backup your encryption case (in case you loose it there would be no way to acces your data) - just print it in plain text form and store somewhere safe.
If you do it right everything would be automated and you won't need to do any manual actions with it. Just monitor its status. And do test recoveries from time to time.
And YES - I've noticed you are against the cloud which is in my opinion silly. Decent cloud provider's DC will by much more secure (as in physical security, data mirroring) than any homegrown solution. What you are afraid of? If you are afraid of automated attacks like malware they will target your personal machine anyway, not your backup, backup is not the weakest link here. Also any profiled attacks on your person will target your client machine. So what is your practical point against using cloud storage?
Also worth mentioning that NAS server is not mandatory in such setups. Just it speeds up things a little and gives more control. Also it provides the "oops" factor protection (like incidentaly deleting something - which is satistically the most often case to need backup recovery anyway).
Still if you oppose to use cloud just exchange cloud option for offline media stored offsite (like safe at your friends house or bank). Which media to use is entirely up to you. As you haven't stated what your need are (like how much data, how often it changes, what would be your preffered policy as weekly, monthly etc.) I can't recommend anything. An uneducated guess would be to use external HDD drives in enclosures and rotate them. Or for the cheapest option BlueRay discs.
I have DVDs that I've burned as a teenager kept in a nice, high-quality soft "archival" binder for the last 18 years. Nearly all of them, of varying quality/expense, are unreadable due to degradation.
OTOH, I've got old 500MB harddrives that read/work just fine and are just as old. I'd expect sealed HDDs to be as good as it gets - tape is nice, but maintaining a supported/working tape drive was always difficult (used to have one). But, unlike every other type of storage, harddrives are actually capable of warning you of an impending failure. (I've been *saved* by S.M.A.R.T. at least twice, over the years.) Add some rudimentary RAID, and you're probably good. The only way I can think of to go further is to use two/three, and cycle them between your PC(often/all the time), a nearby firesafe(When you are heading in that direction), and a safety-deposit box (seasonally?).
It's hard to ignore spinning disks if your archival requirements are in the midrange (2-4TB) where optical media would take up far more room. Just keep an extra drive around for spare parts in case you lose a motor or something.
Even with "scratch resistant external media", I use 10% of the disc space for redundancy and recovery by using Multipar. It's a PAR2 compatible program that handles subdirectories. I've also bought but haven't used in recovery mode ISOBuster, a program that can handle the internal disc structures to try to recovery from corrupted media.
I have manually changed files and parts of files and had Multipar recover the originals; I have not yet physically scarred a CD/DVD/BR to see if it's recoverable via ISOBuster. It's supposed to work, though.
Fair (not archivable quality discs) BDs cost $0.50 for 20GB effective or $25 for 1TB, this is comparable to hard drive prices. They'll handle drops better and if one goes bad, you "only" lose that media (20G) vs terabytes. It's much slower, smaller, and write-once, though.
(OMG -- 20G is "small"?? I remember having things fit on a single 256KB 8" floppy. Much better than paper tape, though.)
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
I'm putting silver bullion into my lockbox.
Well, recordable Blu-ray discs use an inorganic dye, so they should last longer than DVD-Rs and CD-Rs. The manufacturers typically claim a lifespan of 100+ years.
If you search you'll find there are "Archival Grade" CD-Rs and DVD-Rs. Read the specs, but some are rated at 100-300 year retention life.
You can buy a 1TB thumb drive (Kingston HyperX Predator), but it will cost you around $1K.
You can buy thumb drives for $20 per, but they'll be 64GB, maybe 128GB if you're lucky and don't mind dodgy manufacturers.
You can buy a "1TB thumb drive" for $40 or so on eBay, but you'll find that it "redundantly" stores the last few gigabytes you wrote across the entire drive. In other words, it lies about its capacity, and just trashes existing data once you exceed its real capacity (likely 8GB or less).
Of course, if you're just trying to save "important documents", you probably don't need anywhere near a terabyte, or even a gigabyte.
Print all of your text documents on acid free paper in triplicate and store them in climate controlled facilities around the planet. Maybe even keep an extra copy on the Moon just in case. All of your digital files can be uuencoded before being printed out.
If you're really paranoid, you can encode everything into the DNA of some organisms and then distribute them throughout local and deep space with rocket ships and comets!
How much of your information needs to live significantly beyond your personal lifetime? My guess is you need not consider storage that will live beyond your children, who might have some need to review your papers for personal or practical reasons. Your grandchildren might like a handful of pictures, nothing more than than.
If your information is actually valuable (its creative or philosophical or similar) other people will look to its preservation.
I tend to split stuff up. For my profession life as a programmer I use github and one other git based storage. Anything worth keeping I'd migrate to whatever replaces git. For personal life I keep backups of photos and videos on local and networked (cloud based) storage. For tax stuff I just have a fireproof locker.
I imagine in 20 or 30 years the only stuff of value will be my movies and photos and written personal documents. After I'm dead none of that stuff will meant much to anyone, unless my son wants some pics of our dogs when he was young. And he'd be the last one to care about any of that stuff.
Try not to let possessions become too important. You are going to have it all taken away from you eventually.
Peace, or Not?
Moore's Law is only partly your friend here - storage keeps getting cheaper rapidly, but that also means that not only do devices become obsolete, but the interface specs and data formats also become obsolete. You probably don't have an 8" floppy drive anywhere, or a working 5.25", or the right kind of cable to plug the 5.25" drive into, or a Bernoulli drive, or a 9-track tape drive (800, 1600, or 6250dpi), or the Sun cartridge drive, or anything to plug those MFM drives into, or SCSI-1, or probably SCSI-2. You might have something that can handle IDE / PATA, or an old laptop with PCMCIA, but even those are getting scarcer. If you can connect to that old disk disk drive, you can probably load a virtual machine running NetBSD that'll have drivers for the file system format, but maybe not; you certainly don't want to risk having Windows "update" the format. You might think that FAT 8.3 format will stick around for a long time (and maybe it will for reading, but it's rapidly getting replaced with FAT16, FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, etc.
Leave aside the question of whether you can read a 20-year-old version of WordStar or WordPerfect format file (unlike my late-70s nroff files, which would be readable if they weren't on a 9-track tape I've probably lost.) You can probably read that 4-year-old TurboTax file, but if you need to get tax data back from when you bought your house, you'd better have everything on paper.
Just for physical format alone, you need to copy stuff every couple of years.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It took my friends months to find working 8" floppy drives they could take to Guatemala to decode the files the police and army had created during the dirty wars there. I don't want to have to buy a 9-track tape drive to read the one 9-track tape I have (if I find it again, and if it's still even readable.) (I gave away the Sun cartridge drive along with the Sun-2.)
Much more reliable to copy the data every couple of years to some current medium, knowing that Moore's Law means that it's not going to cost much and the only problems will be data formats, not media formats.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks