Optical disks require a lot of work to write initially, and then write again every few years. I think hard drives are the way to go. RAID is nice, but I don't think that's necessary for offline storage. I'd just get a couple drives, write it twice and put them in storage. After a few years pull them out and copy them to new hard drives and use the old drives for whatever. Unlike optical drives, the work required to copy them only takes a few moments.
Cloud storage is another option, but then you're taking it on faith that your cloud storage provider will still be around when you need them in 10 years, which is a big gamble when you're dealing with a publicly traded dotcom.
Thanks for you input. The reason why I’m on this search was because back when I didn’t know anything about computers and data backups, my HDD failed when I was about 12 years old and I lost everything up to then and was traumatized.
The HDD’s I use seems to die pretty quickly (and unpredictably) so I was wondering if there were any better alternatives. I guess I’ll stick to HDD’s for now though.
They all die eventually, but there's little reason for a hard drive to fail if it's in storage. Even if it somehow failed, the platters are probably still intact, which means you can reinstall the platters into a working hard drive to get the data off. That's not easy, but at least it's possible unlike dealing with optical discs that have had the storage layer decompose.
I currently have an additional drive for my documents, music, and photos. I also use Carbonite. $5 a month. When a photo, doc, or music is added to my computer, it automatically is uploaded to Carbonite. My wife and I have both lost hard drives in the past. I use to back up or mirror my drives with software every night. Then one night my main drive had a corrupt file. The next time I rebooted it would not start. The backup file on the other hard drive had the same corruption. I hate paying $60 dollars a year but we have recovered my wife’s data for her computer twice when she had issues with her hard drives. I share the reluctance of some to let a company hold their data. But until a more reliable technology comes along I am going to have to keep using a cloud back up service. (you can get your data from your mobile devices also)
They have been making CD and DVD recordable media for a while. These were too small for my needs, so I decided to wait for the Bluray media which I now see is available.
Mdisc longevity is nice, but it still takes over 60 discs and $300 of discs alone just to make one archival copy, and that's before adding a few more discs for parity files. Add $50 for a drive. Think about all the time and effort it takes to copy all those discs and then copy them back to your computer if you need them.
You could buy two hard drives that will give you two archival copies and plenty of room for parity files and still have $150 left over.
These use gold and are expensive, but do not deteriorate and lose the data. Or so says the research. All of this tech is to new to really know what will happen to it in time.
This has always and forever been an issue. Storing film is no less risky. Slides, prints, however you cache it the risk is great. I may have some stuff that’s unreadable, haven’t checked EVERYTHING and almost don’t want to know…
No offense Ryan, but that “since I was a kid” line cracked me up! I’ve got clothes older than you! (might have clothes older than your parents) I’ve got EverReady batteries as old or older than your Grandparents! (paper wrapped, no they aren’t live anymore, )
I met a couple of big dawgs in the communications industry from your neck of the woods yesterday. In a room full of big dawgs these guys were sharp! Full suits and comfortable with it, while everyone else was sweating in their casual attire. Impressive. (And yes, they were eyeballing my 1DsMkII) I almost told them to look you up when they go home, figuring you can teach em something.
I currently have 288 gigabytes of data stored on Carbonite. Mostly digital photos dating back to 1999. Big majority of them are in Nikon raw or nef format. I also have them on one internal and one external hard drive.
Optical and technology hasn’t kept up with the times. The best way to back up flies on a hard drive is with another hard drive, whether it’s in the cloud or a bag in your closet. Geographical diversity is a good thing with your backups. I know professionals who had their backups destroyed or burned along with the originals because they were all in the same location. You may need to keep your family all under one roof, but there’s no need to keep all your bits under one roof as well.
I use the duplicate hard drive technique and keep one offsite in a safe deposit box for my family photos & movies. Using “the cloud” (Someone else’s computer) removes some of the tedium of keeping things in sync, but moves my backups out of my control.
I am inclined to still try the M-Disc 25GB Bluray solution simply because I only have to do it once. Otherwise, you keep moving files from one place to another as the hard drives fail. In the long term it will be cheaper also because I won’t be spending $100-$150 every couple of years for a new hard drive.
If you ask ten industry professionals you’ll get 25 different answers. I don’t think there is just one answer. Ten year lifespan is just simply too long. Tech moves too fast. I would say 5 years in a better time frame to focus on.
Here is how I attempted to solve the same problem for a photographer friend.
1. Purchased an external hard drive. Copied and verified the all of images. Placed the hard drive at safe location.
2. Purchased an external hard drive from a different manufacture. Copied all images on it. Its connected to his computer but turned off.
3. He got a pro account at imageshack link around $12to $20 a year. Unlimited storage. Uploaded all images there in private albums.
3. Got an account at backblaze link it about $60 a year unlimited backup. Computer and all external backups are backed up on backblaze cloud. ( please note the external drive needs to be on at least once a month so backblaze keeps it alive otherwise they think you erased the data)
Hard drives do fail. Two Copies are a good idea. Three copies are much better idea.
If you have the time take a look at Googles graphs on hard drive failures. Its very surprising.
What Hard Drive Should I Buy? < regarding drive failures. I never liked seagate. But you can buy cheap WD and have them fail quickly too. There is a rule of thumb I’ve heard, the 321 rule: at least 3 copies on at least 2 types of media with 1 of ’em stored off-site.
Edit: interesting, backblaze was mentioned one post up! This is data that they have accrued, assumedly from their own storage pods and the drives that compose them.
I just came here to post the same backblaze page on drive reliability. Fabulous data on consumer class drives. Especially since it seems to be the only independent reliability data available.
I’ve stopped considering drives other then HGST (Hitachi). Hitachi’s hard drive division, HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), is now a subsidiary of Western Digital.
It's a good thing you guys mentioned off site storage. That's something that hit home on 9/11. Sometime after the towers fell, I realized my savings might be wiped out too since the companies managing it were in those towers. Fortunately I found out later that all their employees made it out safely and there was offsite storage.
Hard drives are not a good way to store irreplaceable data, they are just not reliable enough, i have found a 75% failure rate within 5 years. Raid is a worse idea because one drive failure and your toast.
The Blu ray disks are probably a good idea but you do have a lot of unique data there, the more you can reduce it or keep it from getting bigger the cheaper your storage solution becomes.
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(And yes, they were eyeballing my 1DsMkII) I almost told them to look you up when they go home, figuring you can teach em something. 