this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Anyone who thinks physical media on disc is a good way to preserve a work in perpetuity has never heard of disc rot.
Rip it, store it digitally, make periodic backups. Or obtain the IMAX film reel and keep it hermetically sealed for decades.
But don't you know. They put a do not copy sticker on the disc. That means that you super Dooper can't copy this disc or you'll be in trouble.
They also put "warranty void if removed" stickers on everything, yet can't legally void your warranty if you remove the sticker and open a device.
I have considered buying or building a second NAS and putting it in my parents house for offsite backup.
This is what I'm currently building.
Crashplan used to have a backup-to-friend option. Guess it wasn't selling their backup so they canceled it.
I'm working on the same thing using mini or micro pc with enough space inside for perhaps 4 SSD's. (Trying to keep power consumption down).
Running UnRAID, using the Tailscale plugin, everyone will be able to connect to each other, anywhere, over my Tailscale net.
Setup quotas, define how to backup stuff (e.g. Phone photos, etc), and it's your own Personal Crashplan in a box.
Can also run PiHole in unRAID. So now you have DHCP/DNS, ad-blocking too. Now I just need enough horsepower to run Jellyfin on the box...
Or just get an M-disc burner and burn discs that'll last a good hundred years.
To build on this: DO NOT USE AN SSD to store your data long-term! Solid-state storage has a very short, finite life-span. What you want to do is buy an even number of hard drives, plug them in long enough to copy your data to, and then unplug them and store them in a climate-controlled area. bout once a year, copy the data to a different hard drive, rinse, and repeat. Left untouched long enough, a hard drive will experience data rot. Used constantly, a hard drive will wear out. Used very sporadically, you preserve the data and the mechanical parts of the hard drive.
This is a pretty big overstatement.
This has not been true for years. SSDs are generally more reliable than HDDs except in write-intensive applications (and even then... It really depends on what exact models you are comparing). SSDs have a life-span mostly talked about in terms of TBW (terabytes written) rather than years for a reason, if they're powered on and not written too they'll last as long as or longer than a hard drive. (Note: Powered on regularly, SSDs can lose data if stored unpowered for a long time (months)). If you just have an archival drive you're not constantly erasing and rewriting data to, an SSD is a great choice. Reads also barely affect the lifespan of at all, so you can still access the data you want to protect (hell, write-lock the drive even and it'll last decades if powered on).
This is just plain silly. Yes, the mechanical wear of the drives spinning up and down means they'll die faster. But we're still talking MTBF measured in years. And replacing a hard drive that's barely used every single year? That's not just bad advice it's creating e-waste for no reason. Also note drives fail on a bathtub curve... If you have two good drives that lasted a year, you are increasing your chances of a failure by swapping them for two brand new drives... The best thing you can do for your hard drives is to not power cycle them constantly, any typical usage is fine. Also mechanical parts can actually wear out from disuse as well. Even archival services don't go to these extremes you're recommending.
If you really care about saving your data follow 3-2-1. 3 copies of your data (live, archival (external HDD or similar), off-site), two-different forms of media (HDD, SSD, cloud (yes cloud is an HDD or SSD but they have their own redundancy)), one off-site (in the event of a fire etc.)
Honestly 99.9% of consumers would be fine with a 2-2-1 scheme, 2 copies (live and off-site/cloud), 2 forms of media, 1 off-site. If you don't trust Google or don't want to pay for cloud storage, set up a server with redundant disks at a friend's house. Just keeping a second copy on a server with redundancy is plenty of fail over for most use cases. 3-2-1 is for data centers and businesses (and any cloud service you rent from will follow 3-2-1...) Let's not overcomplicate how difficult it is to keep data intact, if I tell someone to buy a new 12tb HDD each year they're just gonna give up on keeping it safe.
No, I'm not saying replace the drive annually. That would, indeed, be dumb. I'm saying copy the data back and forth between hard drives that are kept offline.
You'd be better off keeping the drives spun up. I've had more drive failures from drives not in use than powered up.
Mechanical stuff is just like people, it doesn't like sitting around doing nothing. Just like it's difficult for us to get moving after sitting for a long time, mechanical things struggle too. There's things like stiction in high-precision moving surfaces.
I don't trust drives that have sat around, I assume they're dead or at least the data corrupted.
You don't keep it completely powered off; you power it on occasionally, but don't keep it constantly running.
Parts that are constantly moving wear, and will eventually fail. Things that are never used can seize. You want to have a happy medium. But that's also why you want to have multiple mechanical drives that you're cycling through; if any single device fails, you still have your data backed up.
Honestly I'd rather just not watch Oppenheimer.
Even better, have a NAS with a raid array and data scrubbing for your primary storage, and periodically make backups to off-site storage (an off-site NAS or external hard drive are good options that don't rely on commercial cloud services).
Yea, I wouldn't rely on HD on a shelf. Source: I've had hundreds of hard drives over the years. Some that are 1 year old and dead, after sitting on a shelf. Some are 20 years old and still work (kind of a test at this point to see how long they'll still spin up).
There's a reason 3-3-3 backup is the guideline. From my own experience, you need data on no less than 3 different storages, not including the production data.
I've had situations where 2 of my Backups didn't work for some reason, either media failed, or data wasn't backed up though it was supposed to be, etc. That 3rd has saved me many times.
I'm pretty sure that I've got a failing E: drive in my home computer; I'm not even sure how long I've had it. Def. time to back everything up again. Pity I don't have a NAS at home...
How about SD cards?
SD cards are far worse than hard drives or SSDs for long term storage. They are useful for temporary mobile data storage and transit, but anything you want to keep long term should be transferred off relatively quickly.
Don't listen to what he said... But SD cards are generally not very reliable. They might be fine they might die on you silently after a week.
Higher quality ones are better of course, but the quality of flash in SD cards varies wildly. I wouldn't store anything on an SD card that I don't already have a second copy of somewhere. (If I want to preserve it and it would cause problems for me to lose it)