Long-term storage

[Caydr]

If you had something you absolutely did not want to lose, how would you store it? A hard drive can fail or get bumped and never work again, flash memory has a read/write limit, online filestores can go out of business or crash, writable CDs have a limited lifespan even if they're very well cared-for... Is there any way to keep something that's irreplaceable?

The reason I ask is, I have 6 hard drives for a total of 1.5 terabyes of storage. 2x2 RAID 500 gb volume for my main drive, 500 gb internal drive for storage, and more recently a second external 500 gb hard drive for storage I'd like to keep portable. About 1.1 terabytes of that would be very difficult and time-consuming to replace.

[Nemo]

gmail accounts. lots of them. they're about 6gb each, in 10mb chunks. have fun. but they've got perhaps the best run server farm in existance backing them. let google server techs deal with replacing drives (which they probably have backed up at least three times over).

edit: or magnetic tape. lasts longer than you will if its cared for decently.

[SinbadEV]

In the good old days you would hack into the MIT and just store it on one of their tape drives... or at least that's what Kevin Mitnik did in Hackers 2: Takedown, The Kevin Mitnik story...

[KDR_11k]

In the good old days you would hack into the MIT and just store it on one of their tape drives... or at least that's what Kevin Mitnik did in Hackers 2: Takedown, The Kevin Mitnik story...

The movie is NOT called Hackers 2!

[DandyGnome]

The basic answer is redundancy, multiple locations (so natural disasters don't affect all you backups at once), multiple copies, multiple media types (so you don't end up with a bunch of data you can't read). There is no perfect answer but sending a hard drive and/or tape backup to a couple friends who live far away to put in their safe deposit boxes every so often would do a fair job, just make sure the backups are labeled well.

[Sleksa]

If you had something you absolutely did not want to lose, how would you store it? A hard drive can fail or get bumped and never work again, flash memory has a read/write limit, online filestores can go out of business or crash, writable CDs have a limited lifespan even if they're very well cared-for... Is there any way to keep something that's irreplaceable?

The reason I ask is, I have 6 hard drives for a total of 1.5 terabyes of storage. 2x2 RAID 500 gb volume for my main drive, 500 gb internal drive for storage, and more recently a second external 500 gb hard drive for storage I'd like to keep portable. About 1.1 terabytes of that would be very difficult and time-consuming to replace.

try dozens of BULLETPROOF, WATERPROOF, FIREPROOF USB-STICKS!!!!!!!!!!1111111111!523#¤&

http://www.everythingusb.com/pretec_i-d ... e_2gb.html

The moral of the story is that so long as hackers don├óÔé¼Ôäót come at your data with a .500 Magnum your data should be safe.

[Comp1337]

I keep my pron on a sepatarate harddrive
harddrives last really long if you dont use them much

[ZellSF]

Multiple harddrives in different locations is the way to go imo. That solution should survive most things, and the things it won't survive is stuff you won't survive yourself, so it won't matter.

[Erom]

Seriously, give it to Google, at least in the short term. Sure, the company _could_ go out of business or change it's terms, but you would have a chance to move to a different backup system, and in terms of protection against accidental loss- I guarantee that what they do to protect their data is better than anything you could do.

[Masure]

Web hosting sucks if you ve got large amount of data.

Best practice is to raid 1 or 5 to prevent HDD failure. But it doesn't help for viral/accidental deletion, house disaster, theft.

In addition, to be really safe, you have to use LTO backup. Backup type (dif, incr, full) and frequency depending on your requirements. The cartridges have to be placed in a fire/waterproof vault. And if you want a bulletproof backup policy, place another cartridge out of your home.

Backup only personnal work or media which you can't find elsewhere. You shouldn't backup all the media files like movies or music cause you can dl it again and again. For re-downloadable media folders, generate dirlisting text files and backup that textfile only. In case of loss, you know exactly what you have lost and it's easy to dl back. This strategy saves a lot of space to backup.

[CarRepairer]

I used to worry all the time about losing data and try to solve in my mind what would be the best solution, RAID, NAS, RAID in a NAS, CDs, DVDs, tapes. It was stressful to think about.

Finally I realized there's only one solution that's easy: Get a large HD and enclosure. A 0.5 terabyte hard drive = $100. Mirror your data onto it. Put it somewhere safe. Update it as necessary. If you're totally paranoid, get another. Put it somewhere else safe.

[Masure]

An E-SATA hotplug could be fine you're right CarRepairer

[Caydr]

2 gb for a usb drive... 6 gb for a gmail account... and I need to store 1.1 terabytes. Ehhh...

So what's that about magnetic tape? What's their capacity?

I have an e-sata external drive, however since Asus decided to include one single flaw just to make my motherboard imperfect, my e-sata port doesn't work. Retarded...

A pretty well known problem, too. It's a P5B-E.

[Masure]

There are different types of LTO drives. Check wikipedia here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

The capacit├â┬® is up to 800GB on a single cartridge

[CarRepairer]

nvm

[Felix the Cat]

2 gb for a usb drive... 6 gb for a gmail account... and I need to store 1.1 terabytes. Ehhh...

So what's that about magnetic tape? What's their capacity?

I have an e-sata external drive, however since Asus decided to include one single flaw just to make my motherboard imperfect, my e-sata port doesn't work. Retarded...

A pretty well known problem, too. It's a P5B-E.

I somehow doubt that you have 1.1TB of irreplaceable data.

[SwiftSpear]

Harddrives have spin failures... but the acctual magnetic disks hold data for insanely long times. MORE than long enough to make an occational redundant backup.

[Masure]

2 gb for a usb drive... 6 gb for a gmail account... and I need to store 1.1 terabytes. Ehhh...

So what's that about magnetic tape? What's their capacity?

I have an e-sata external drive, however since Asus decided to include one single flaw just to make my motherboard imperfect, my e-sata port doesn't work. Retarded...

A pretty well known problem, too. It's a P5B-E.

I somehow doubt that you have 1.1TB of irreplaceable data.

+1000

That's why I told him to dirlist the replacable data as a backup

[Sleksa]

2 gb for a usb drive... 6 gb for a gmail account... and I need to store 1.1 terabytes. Ehhh...

So what's that about magnetic tape? What's their capacity?

I have an e-sata external drive, however since Asus decided to include one single flaw just to make my motherboard imperfect, my e-sata port doesn't work. Retarded...

A pretty well known problem, too. It's a P5B-E.

I somehow doubt that you have 1.1TB of irreplaceable data.

porn collections are irreplaceable

[Machiosabre]

actually replacing porn collections is fun! there's nothing like spending a couple of days looking for porn when you have a ton of space.