I apologize if this isn’t the correct place to ask this. If not, just point me to the right place, please.
As per the title, I am looking into backing up files - pictures, movies, music, some documents - locally but with little to mo need of having the backup medium hot. I already have a few HDDs lying around but it reaches a point where is becomes bulky and takes up considerable space.
I’ve been thinking of memory cards because they are reasonably affordable and can be stored away easily. But how reliable are those?
I intend to make/save several backup copies.
No, avoid flash storage at all costs for any sort of archival.
The charge in the nand chips diminishes over time when they’re not plugged in. In my experience flash drives tend to lose their contents after about 5-10 years. Better drives will probably last longer, but they’re not suitable that.
Your best bet is to use the 3-2-1 backup system and update your backup medium periodically to stay current with technology.
3 copies 2 on different medium 1 stored off-site
There are others that are variants of this but this is pretty secure other than a world apocalypse event when you’ll have bigger concerns.
M-Disc format is probably the best form of archiving data long term. But the discs are not cheap and you need a “burner” for it too (
and a reader everywhere you want to read it) Edit: Correction, these discs should be readable by normal DVD and BlueRay players, but not all. There are DVDs and BlueRay discs with this format. If price is not the biggest issue and if you don’t want to archive often terabytes of data, this could be a solution to long term archival of important data.A quick look in Amazon (Germany) the cheapest option has a 6 x BlueRay spindle with each 100gb for about 54 Euros (at a discount). Just to give an idea; usually this stuff is more expensive.
I’ve searched my local market and what made me think twice about the MDisc is the ease of access to read/write drives for it. Even common DVD read/write drives are getting extremely expensive. The more common external drives feel fragile and the internal drives are hard to find and with very high prices, usually above €100. The concept and format is appealing but for what I intend to keep it feels excessive.
Hasn’t there been an allegedly scandal with one of the m disc sellers offering cheaper made products shortening the life span of the data?
I think it was Verbatim, but I’m not sure. Yes there was a “scandal” or “drama”. I don’t know the details. But just because one company decided to go that route does not mean the entire format is bad. There are other companies too.
I thought Mileniatta came up with the idea and verbatim and rite bought licence to produce but now it’s only verbatim making them? Are other players back in the game?
Interesting, thanks for sharing
No and they’re too expensive too.
You’re thinking about the premium memory cards, correct? I’ve seen high capacity cards going for higher prices than even SSDs but I’d consider backing up and replacing media more often instead of dumping that much money into a single medium. Security by volume.
The trouble is that the failures are correlated. As the cards get older, they lose data more. Also even the cheap ones are expensive compared to alternatives. How much data are you talking about? Your best bet is probably backing up to remote storage. Everyone wants what you are asking for, but the only good answer is a tape drive, and those are too expensive to even think about. I use borg backup with this: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/
I have 5TB there, very affordable and all encrypted.
I respect and understand the appeal of cloud storage bu i want my files at my home. No special reason, just do not feel the need or want to pay others to keep what is mine.
How much data? Can you keep some hard drives spinning? What is your budget? How will you do off site copies?
At present, I’d risk about 1TB, with the added “risk” of facing a sharp growth during this year. Core files are music, photos, some older films and series that are already hard to find.
I actively burned copies to disks some time back but a succession of events led me to just having multiple copies across several HDDs that I occasionally power up to check. I can afford to spend some cash on HDDs. On paper, getting some MDisks seems more than reasonable but my national market is cutting back hard on DVD/BR disks and even reader/burners. It is reaching a point where it feels it is already being viewed as a “professional” medium. MDisk burners are even harder to source.
I looked up MDiscs and they are pretty stupidly expensive but might be a reasonable bet. You might want to use something like PAR to make a backup, that gives you some redundancy without making extra copies.
From experience I can say leaving HDD’s powered down for long periods is asking for trouble. The lubricants in them get sticky and then the drives won’t spin up. Ideally you want to keep your HDD’s spinning all or most of the time.
I guess you could check ebay for an older generation LTO tape drive. LTO 5 isn’t a total relic yet, and it stores 1.5TB on a tape, which would give you a bit of headroom above your 1TB dataset. Tape and optical disc are about the only backup media with any durability.
If your media files are of public interest and not in copyright, you could upload them to archive.org which is free, and other people could access them too.
most flash storage is expected to be poered up once a month. unless you have a setup to reliably do that, then no.
No, hdd are better but archival dvd/bd is probably better.
That is what I’ve been thinking and I admit I’m partial towards HDDs. Regarding the achival DVD/BD, I see an increasing difficulty to find drives. External drives are flimsy and internal drives have incredibly high prices (€135 to €185). Also, most computer cases nowadays don’t even contemplate bays for it. Maybe it is a dying format?
Anything magnetic is not good for long term powered-off storage.
Agreed but the way things seem to be moving forward, it seems the MDisc (likewise DVD and BlueRay) technology may be moving towards extinction, as the drives are hard to find and expensive to purchase.
I just bought a drive. They are cheap and plentiful. They are literally used for multi-decade archival. They will go extinct eventually but you won’t be alive to witness it.
An internal drive or one of those external drives?
External. I also have two older laptop drives from different machines that converted to External.
If you’re really paranoid you can export the data to different media types including archival dvd and archival tape. Tape is unreasonably expensive for SMB/home use though.
