Backups and long term Storage

[Jersey Joe]

What's the flavor of choice for backup hardware/software/media these days?

Reports of CD media going bad after a couple years have me scared cuz I typically off-load my pictures to CD. Tape drives seem to have went the way of the Dodo. I'm thinking about external HDD myself but I'd like some other opinions. These pictures of my family will be very important 20 or 50 years from now... for me anyway(look...Daddy really DID have hair)

And what about the backup software? A simple drag and drop or more elaborate archiving wares?

If this is the wrong thread for this I apologize (still a board Noob).

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I burned a couple of copies Taido Yuden (sp?) DVDs in an attempt to keep my pictures safe.

I'm going to attempt to keep them at different locations even.

I did the same for all my documents and stuff that are irreplacable.

 

[n0cmonkey]

DVDs. If the data is still worth while in a couple of years, I'll reburn it.

 

[Tarrant64]

External HD's and DVD's really the most efficient way to go IMHO. They've tried comming out with new stuff(IOMEGA tape drives), but I'm not so sure how well those are going to become useful. Right now, stick with DVD's and external HD's. Whenever the new media comes out and stuff changes(who knows...25gb, 50gb, 1 terabyte cd/dvd(wow!)), just be sure to move your stuff over to keep up with ever changing technology. I don't see DVD's and external HD's becoming 'not' useful anytime soon.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Oh yeah, tapes are still _the_ standard.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Oh yeah, tapes are still _the_ standard.

I'm not sure if you were trying to really be facetious there, but tape-based backup really is still used *very* widely in production server environments.

These days, you would probably use some sort of SAN-based solution to back up to a storage array or server, and then do point-in-time snapshots and dump those to tape for long-term storage. DAT tapes in bulk are almost as cheap as DVD-R (and will last a very long time, which is questionable for CD/DVD), and autoloaders can back up a *lot* of data without needing any human intervention.

What I would recommend is that you burn multiple copies of your files onto CD/DVD, and then reburn them every 3-5 years or so. This also gives you a chance to consolidate onto higher-capacity media (such as Blu-Ray/HD-DVD, which should be available in a few years).

External hard drives are a good choice for a home user that has to back up several hundred gigs of data, though. Whatever your choice of media, I strongly recommend multiple backups, including at least one offsite. You won't be happy when your home burns down (or floods, collapses in an earthquake, etc.) and all your data is gone.

 

[jldash]

For my personal stuff, I backup to my little file server and I archive to DVD. Like a previous post, If things are still worth keeping, I will just reburn in a couple of years. So far so good.
I feel safe when my mission critical docs are on at least two different machines and one burned copy.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Matthias99

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Oh yeah, tapes are still _the_ standard.

I'm not sure if you were trying to really be facetious there, but tape-based backup really is still used *very* widely in production server environments.

These days, you would probably use some sort of SAN-based solution to back up to a storage array or server, and then do point-in-time snapshots and dump those to tape for long-term storage. DAT tapes in bulk are almost as cheap as DVD-R (and will last a very long time, which is questionable for CD/DVD), and autoloaders can back up a *lot* of data without needing any human intervention.

External hard drives are a good choice for a home user that has to back up several hundred gigs of data, though. Whatever your choice of media, I strongly recommend multiple backups, including at least one offsite. You won't be happy when your home burns down (or floods, collapses in an earthquake, etc.) and all your data is gone.

No, we're in agreement here. :beer:

 

[Zepper]

External HD or HD in mobile rack trays...

.bh.