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Talking with an older photographer this morning. He wanted some info on long term media storage. He is currently using CDs and flash drives.
I did some research a few years ago and didn't find any one solution. CDs, external HDs, zip drive, off site server...
What is the best option for archiving/backing up computer info long term?
TIA [Beer]
Tape, but it can get pricey.
Redundent Hard drives / Mirror or raid.
http://backblaze.com
http://aws.amazon.com/s3 (requires some degree of technical experience)
http://edgecast.com storage service (ftp)
http://drobo.com <- local storage, make raid easy.
H.
Personally I'm a big fan of DropBox (www.dropbox.com), gives me access to my data from EVERYWHERE. That and I have Carbonite as well to do online backups.
Long term? Not gonna happen.
No matter what, you will have to copy the data from media to media over time. I've got tapes in my desk that I don't have a drive for, and can't even remember what software was used for the backups. DVDs and CDs only last a certain number of years. Hard drives can always die, online services can go out of business, etc.
Best thing I'd do now would be use 2 separate USB hard drives both with all the same data on them, and realize I want to replace them every 3 years.
My personal strategy is a local drobo with 4 disks for primary storage. The drobo gets backed up monthly to external 2tb drives that I rotate off-site. Important stuff (ie not music/movies) gets backed up to the cloud. Very important stuff (taxes, legal, financial) is in truecrypt containers on all four.
I also scan most anything useful I get on paper gets scanned straight into Evernote, where they turn it into a PDF and run OCR over it so that it's searchable. Important stuff from that gets into the TC containers.
I also use truecrypt whole disk protection on everything I can, since I have lots of PII on users from all the services I work on.
Remember, you always have one less copy of your data than you think you do.
H.
Online storage will not work for him. Dial-up is a bitch.
Some of the online options are new to me but it sounds like the same answers I came up with. Nothing is forever. Dropbox looks interesting.
Thanks!
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PC/MAC/*NIX Friendly
Optical Media (CD/DVD) is given a lifespan in the 30-100 year range if stored properly ( room temp low humidity in a case so on and so on handle as little as possible and store "off site" )....
I'm not sure you would need them to last much longer then that .. seeing as in 5 years or so you would probably change them to a newer better tech ( such as bluray or whatever comes next )
I have personally stored everything in my head. I do have a rental service if you are interested. Storage is somewhat limited. It does run at a premium price but unlike digital my mind can adapt. It is however subject to certain things such as alcohol, memory loss and other un-intended consequences due to life. If you are interested in purchasing long term storage in my mind please PM me.
glad this thread popped up, because I want to get some external storage for my documents and pictures and videos. byte sent me the newegg stuff but I am having a hard time getting around the cost. I think I would be happier with a 1tb or larger external drive and hope it holds out.
[Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang]Quote:
Originally Posted by sniper7
[Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang]
[Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang][Bang]
That's what I Sent you.
its an external drive that can be connected via network, USB or Firewire.
Don't be [Bang] too much. We don't want to damage that long term memory. [Coffee]Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
Definitely want firewire capable. USB2 takes FOREVER. 25min v.s. 3hrs on my last back-up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
you need to remember who you are talking to. I fly airplanes! You have to tell me things in computer stupid people speak![ROFL1]
Quote:
Originally Posted by sniper7
Box hold copies of things you dont want to lose
everyone share on network
use electricity and passwords
you buy, me fix for you
Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
[ROFL2]I still don't get it[ROFL3]
I backup duplicates of my important stuff. I use an external hard drive and DVD/CD's so that if my hard drive fails, I can always recover from the opticals. If your worried about hard drive failure, RAID is always nice but can be expensive
can someone explain what RAID is? I thought that was to kill insectsQuote:
Originally Posted by Trigg3r Happy
The world is ending soon.. who cares about long term storage? :)
RAID stands for Random Array of Independent Drives. Basically, it allows you to use multiple hard drives together. There is different kinds of raid arrays. RAID 0 and RAID 1 are common. RAID 1 is also known as a mirror array and is used for backups. Basically, whenever you save something, it saves it on two identical hard drives at once, one being an exact mirror of the other, automatically. Might also think of them working parallel. RAID 0 is aka stripe array. When you save or upload from the array, it pulls from all the drives at once, each one recording or loading a part of the file, and greatly increases the speed that files can be accessed. Problem is, if one drive fails, the whole thing goes down. Some setups are a hybrid of the two, and allows it to make a backup on one huge drive, or several drives, so if a drive fails on a RAID 0, replace the bad one, and basically do a recovery. Hopefully that makes a little sense. RAID 0 makes windows move alot faster, RAID 1 is great to make backups of important things. Just remember, if there is a fire, or so on, its all gone anyways. Burning his pictures to blueray discs, and storing them in a safety deposit box might be the only foolproof way for him.Quote:
Originally Posted by sniper7
What medium you want to use to backup your data really depends upon how much data you need to backup and how frequently you need to access it. For the average PC user that wants to backup their personal files you are best served with using USB Flash Memory sticks to backup your data.
If you are backing up 32 GB or less and don't need to access it frequently its more cost effective to use a USB Flash Memory stick. You can find USB Flash Memory sticks everywhere for $10 - $20 depending on how many GB you need. They are cheap enough to allow you to easily make multiple copies of your data on separate USB Sticks so you can store them in multiple safe locations. An additional benefit is that they are small and fairly rugged. If you store them in a climate controlled environment they will last a long long time.
If you have 100GB - 2TB worth of data to back up but still don't need to access it frequently then an external USB hard drive would work out the best. These can usually be found from $50 - $100 at just about any electronics store. These are usually pretty small and fairly cheap so you can make multiple copies of your data on separate USB hard drives and store them in different locations. Once again, if you store them in a climate controlled environment they will last a long long time.
Once you get past 1TB worth of data to backup using USB attached devices becomes painful because its connectivity speed is relatively slow. It takes a long time to backup 1TB of data over a USB connection. If you have multiple TB worth of data to backup the only realistic and time efficient way is to leverage RAID Disk Arrays or Tape Drives connected via SATA, SCSI, Fiber Channel, SAS, or GB Ethernet. But once you jump into this backup arena you are talking about spending many thousands of dollars in equipment and media. The cost of these type of backup solutions is usually unrealistic for any kind of home PC backup solution.
I use www.mozy.com just had my HD crash and burn and was able to use Mozy Restore Manager to restore all of my files. I believe it costs me $10/month for 2 computers
They are a bit spendy, but if you want the advantages of RAID with a "Green good, Red bad" level of difficulty, the Drobo has been good to me.
http://drobo.com
H.
what I was going to do since he is running win7 is set his automatic backups all to the same Mapped NAS.
this eliminates the "I got too Busy and forgot" Syndrome.
I use a "Time Machine" to backup my iMac and am I glad. Last week my 8 month old iMac took a dump. Apple couldn't fix it and gave me a new one today. When I got home I plugged in the Time Machine and in 30-45 minutes everything was restored. Good lesson learned!
The Windows 7 automatic full backups to an external hard drive works great. I've had to do about a dozen restores with it. The restore process is: boot off win7 dvd. Select recovery and it'll find the backup, confirm everything, and come back in about an hour to a complete restore of everything just like it was when it was backed up. All programs, data, settings, etc., exact. The key is, just make sure you're doing the backups.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChadAmberg
You may also map a network drive location and perform your backups there.
So that if you have multiple computers all on the same network you may put all of your backups in one location.
saves you from having to buy multiple external drives or having to shuffle a drive from machine to machine.
For the full bare metal restore with Win7, it has to be a local drive, since it won't bring up a network share to do restores from.Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte Stryke
Now, for individual files it works great though...
which we hope only happens once in a great while.Quote:
Originally Posted by ChadAmberg
Disconnect it from the network, connect the USB and go.
but as far as backups go, there is a reason they can be scheduled and automated.
fire and forget is the new "efficiency"