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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?
There are fire rated NAS devices like the ioSafe 214 which has Synology guts.
Better check the documentation on your safe. Many are not designed to resist heat. They provide an oxygen sparse environment such that paper won't burn. Thats why you have to let them cool off afterwards, if you open them too soon the oxygen from outside hits very hot paper and it lights on fire. This is fine for paper but not so good for plastics and magnetics. Best suggestion is one or more off site storage locations, such as a bank security box or a professional storage facility. How many is determined by how much you want to spend and how "twitchy" you feel.
There are a line of fire proof safes out there that have ports that allow you to run cables into the back so you can store hard drives or SSDs or whatever in the safe... in the event of a fire, the insides of the safe should be fine.
So... that is what I would do. I'd get some external drives, buy a data safe, and then put that next to the server where upon at given intervals the data is backed up to the externals in the fire proof data safe.
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If you plan on having the medium survive your house burning down, it'll either have to be something really exotic(CNCed cuneiform tablets?) or something boring inside a sufficiently fireproof safe (which can get costly; but are a well recognized product category).
Fireproof safes (actually fire resistant) are not what you want to use for storing electronics or cd/dvd/bd media.
You specifically want a fire resistant "media" or "data" safe.
The difference is that "fireproof" safes are intended to prevent paper from charring/burning, so their design allows for internal temperatures that are high enough to cook your electronics. Media/data safes maintain a significantly lower interior temperature (and humidity), which safeguards your relatively fragile electronic hardware.
And it's not just enough to avoid high temperatures, your safe needs to be sealed against gasses.
In a home fire, you have all types of corrosive and unpleasant chemicals that are created from burning plastics, toilet cleaner, etc.
Those chemicals will generally attack any metal and plastic that they come into contact with (YMMV).
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That's what bank safety deposit boxes are for. Offsite, hard to break into, more or less fireproof through sheer mass, even if the building around it burns. Ask the bank about how thick the walls are, though. Class 3 is recommended (12 inches thick concrete), with additional outside fireproofing.
Just make sure whatever you use is in a waterproof container. A friend had a fire at their bank and the safe deposit contents were soaked. Water apparently got through the small gaps in the front due to the high pressure.
Truecrypt volume on an external drive kept in a Tupperware container in a safety deposit box that's a duplicate of the one you keep at home in a safe. It's not an Italian Job I'd be worried about it would be someone in authority deciding they needed to have a peek. Chances of a fire at the bank AND at the home at the same time are pretty far fetched. Can sub friend's home for safety deposit box easily enough and maybe even do an exchange but use a locked box so said friend doesn't decide to use it to store his p0rn!
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"Offsite, or fireproof stuff. Your choice."
No, fireproof is no substitute. If you really value your data, multiple copies, at least one of them off site is the only way to go.
But, now we are talking about fireproof... that's not an absolute concept. The fireproof is rated for temperature outside, max temperature inside (or delta from outside) and time to stand it. First aka_bigred has to know is the rating of his vault: any support that can stand the internal temperature rate is valid; if the fire goes outside the rating, think of it as lost (you might be lucky though). I can attest recovering data from DAT tapes on vaults exposed around the limit of its rate.
....to do it yourself. I cut sentence short there. Slashdot should implement an edit button.
Most users don't know it, but Slashdot actually has had an edit button since 1997.*
It appears after you click the "Preview" button and has the label "Continue Editing".
(* It's actually an anchor, but you get my drift.)
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Put descant in the tupperware box, otherwise moisture can condense over time, especially if temperature varies (A/C fails, fire etc.) You only need a tiny amount of moisture from the air in the box to ruin your drive by causing a short somewhere on the controller board.
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