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Ask Slashdot: Best Medium For Storing Data To Survive a Fire (or Other Disaster)
First time accepted submitter aka_bigred writes Every year as I file my taxes, I replicate my most important financial data (a couple GB of data) to store an offline copy in my fire-rated home safe. This gets me thinking about what the most reliable data media would be to keep in my fire-rated home safe.
CDs/DVDs/tapes could easily melt or warp rendering them useless, so I'm very hesitant to use them. I've seen more exotic solutions that let you print your digital data to paper an optically re-import it later should you ever need it, but it seems overly cumbersome and error prone should it be damaged or fire scorched. That leaves my best options being either a classic magnetic platter drive, or some sort of solid state storage, like SD cards, USB flash drives, or a small SSD. The problem is, I can't decide which would survive better if ever exposed to extreme temperatures, or water damage should my house burn down.
Most people would just suggest to store it in "the cloud", but I'm naturally averse to doing so because that means someone else is responsible for my data and I could lose it to hackers, the entity going out of business, etc. Once it leaves my home, I no longer fully control it, which is unacceptable. My thought being "they can't hack/steal what they can't physically access." What medium do other Slashdot users use to store their most important data (under say 5GB worth) in an at-home safe to protect it from fire?
CDs/DVDs/tapes could easily melt or warp rendering them useless, so I'm very hesitant to use them. I've seen more exotic solutions that let you print your digital data to paper an optically re-import it later should you ever need it, but it seems overly cumbersome and error prone should it be damaged or fire scorched. That leaves my best options being either a classic magnetic platter drive, or some sort of solid state storage, like SD cards, USB flash drives, or a small SSD. The problem is, I can't decide which would survive better if ever exposed to extreme temperatures, or water damage should my house burn down.
Most people would just suggest to store it in "the cloud", but I'm naturally averse to doing so because that means someone else is responsible for my data and I could lose it to hackers, the entity going out of business, etc. Once it leaves my home, I no longer fully control it, which is unacceptable. My thought being "they can't hack/steal what they can't physically access." What medium do other Slashdot users use to store their most important data (under say 5GB worth) in an at-home safe to protect it from fire?
Oral tradition. Seriously wtf
Drill a small hole into a fire-resistant safe where your power and SCSI/IDE/SATA/USB/ETH cables go, then put your drives in there. Won't be easily stolen and will likely survive a house fire. Googling the terms "fire-resistant safe" revealed dozens of good options.
>Most people would just suggest to store it in "the cloud", but I'm naturally averse to doing so because that means someone else is responsible for my data and I could loose (sic) it to hackers, the entity going out of business, etc.
Simply strongly encrypt your data before backing it up to the cloud, you will be at no risk of hackers or anyone else gaining access that way. If you can't find a cloud storage service that you trust/trust won't go out of business, you can make your own cloud using Amazon's AWS system. The levels of security at the facilities and redundancy mean your data will survive anything short of nuclear Armageddon. Personally I'd just go with the local encryption option.
I've commissioned a stone mason to carve a backup of everything I have into solid blocks of granite. Since the type of information varies (text, photos, videos, etc) I've had the Mason translate everything to its raw binary state and carved in bit by bit (Ha! See what I did there!)
These are stored in my living room, which is causing some difficulty in negotiating living space--but I feel that it's worth the sacrifice.
Sure, he complains when I edit an existing document. He's hired an assistant just to keep my grocerylist.txt file up to date in the archive. I wanted to switch it to an XML structure, but I let him win that battle.
As a recovery strategy in the even of a fire my plan is to outsource the data entry to an Indian firm and take advantage of global time zones and cheap labour. I expect to be back up and running within 7.2 years in the even of a catastrophic event, if my calculations are correct. The best thing is I've eliminated all risk of media becoming obsolete: my last archive was on a Syquest Ez 135--never let it be said that I haven't learned my lesson!
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
OK, this is not a serious solution, but the way a company I worked for years ago managed this was hilarious. One of the managers put a server in the boot of his car and had it connect wirelessly to the file servers when it was parked in the office car park.
Because he had to reverse his car in to bring the wifi into range, the joke "I'm just backing up the data" got played every time he did it. Suffice it to say, the joke got old pretty quick.
Better idea: Encrypt the data, stick it on SD cards, and then mail them to random people. Be sure to email yourself with their addresses just in case you ever need to get the data back. Imagine the thrill they'll get from receiving a brand new 64 GB SD card in the mail for free!
Then again, maybe that's not such a good idea. But it is still more reliable than cloud storage. :-D
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yeah, just not one stored in Hatton Garden, London.
Can't beat safety deposit boxes for storing your rare earth magnets either.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC