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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?
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.
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).
... have always worked for me.
Here's an even better solution: Since this exact same question has been asked on Slashdot multiple times, and the topic has been beaten to death, just look in the archives and see what everyone recommended last time. Hint: The consensus recommendation was to pick at least two different media, and store them in a least two different geographical locations, then migrate to different media as technology improves.
The submitter is leaving out most important information: How much data? Storing terabytes is different than storing gigabytes (which will fit on a thumb drive). How long? The submitter says "backups" not "archives", which implies that long shelf life is not a priority, but many people use the terms interchangeably.
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???
... have always worked for me.
Here's an even better solution: Since this exact same question has been asked on Slashdot multiple times, and the topic has been beaten to death, just look in the archives and see what everyone recommended last time. Hint: The consensus recommendation was to pick at least two different media, and store them in a least two different geographical locations, then migrate to different media as technology improves.
The submitter is leaving out most important information: How much data? Storing terabytes is different than storing gigabytes (which will fit on a thumb drive). How long? The submitter says "backups" not "archives", which implies that long shelf life is not a priority, but many people use the terms interchangeably.
OK hotshot, how sure are you that the medium those *wonderful* answers are stored on hasn't deteriorated, resulting in us looking back on bad advice?!
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!