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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?
is the only safe solution.
A couple of BD-Rs stored in a safe deep deposit box or over at a relative's house.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Seriously, why go for some kind of difficult or expensive solution when low tech is cheaper and safer. It doesn't have to be the cloud, it could be encrypted and stored in your desk at work.
And for the really paranoid, two banks, located in different parts of the country (or a different continent).
Drill a small hole into a fire-resistant safe...
That deserves a "+5 Funny"!
I know this isn't what you asked, and I'm interested in hearing the answer to your question as well. But offsite is really the only safe alternative. Put copies on whatever media, then store them somewhere away from your house. If you have a place you feel is relatively secure at the office, put it there. Send it home with a trusted friend. Store it in your mom's basement (if you live elsewhere). Encrypt with a phrase you won't forget. Only a thermonuclear strike is likely to destroy all your copies, and if it does, I suspect you won't much care.
Tar up your files. Encrypt with GPG and a 20 character random passphrase.
Upload to a cloud service, and put on a USB drive at work and the house of a friend and relative.
Why bother trying to find storage media made of unobtainium that can withstand fire or flood or theft, when you can simply and easily make a copy and store it multiple times in multiple places immune to most loss events?
FTFY.
Multiple backups. Multiple media types. Multiple locations.
Just dig a hole in the back yard and place the USB key or whatever in a water tight container and fill it in. Encrypting it would be a good idea too, just in case the neighbors dog digs it up. For something simple, you could try an otterbox drybox. These are used for kayaking and diving and are waterproof. The only problem might be cracking during the winter. You might want to dig below the frost line or put insulation around it.
Another option would be to get an external shed and store stuff in there in a fire safe.
The most effective way for your data to survive a fire (or flood, tornado, lava, etc) is for it to not be in the fire. If you don't want to automate off-site backups then periodically drop a hard disk into a convenient bank safety deposit box.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Agreed. I use an alternative to all this: all my data is backed up on a small eeePC in my attic and send sent to a friend of mine through SSH. I have 1TB of data storage at his place, and I offer in return 1TB of data storage in my place for him to do the same.
Sensitive stuff is encrypted so I don't care if he can see all my files. The bulk of it is pictures/personal movies in terms of size. encfs works wonders for low sensitive data, the rest can go through TrueCrypt/keepass2 encryption or even PGP.
And it costs me zero (minus the 1TB I have reserved for him).
Write boring code, not shiny code!