Question What's everyone use to archive data these days?

[Red Squirrel]

I've always used CDs then when spinning storage got so cheap I just end up keeping lot of stuff on spinning disks + having backups on separate drives. But there is always the risk of accidental deletation or corruption that I may not notice and then it ends up overwriting backups too, overall it still does not feel like it's truly "archived" if it's just sitting on live disks.

So been thinking I need to start archiving on cold storage again. Just wondering what's everyone using for that these days, is optical media still the way to go? CDs, DVDs, Blurays?

The amount of data I want to archive is not necessarily that large. Pictures, code etc and stuff I like to archive for historical/nostalgia purposes.

I suppose having multiple copies does not hurt either, maybe do DVDs and hard drives?

I have a bunch of archived data on CDs as well that is probably pushing 15 years, crazy how time flies... so I will probably want to re-archive that as well.

 

[mxnerd]

Buy an NVMe drive along with NVMe enclosure with write protection feature?

Slide the switch makes the drive write protected.

Buy 2 sets and have 2 copies will make you feel more secure.

Unplug it and it becomes offline.

Amazon.com : NVMe enclosure write protection

 

[Red Squirrel]

Doesn't flash degrade rather quickly if not used? Or is it better now? But yeah that could maybe work.

 

[sdifox]

Burn blurays

 

[killster1]

Doesn't flash degrade rather quickly if not used? Or is it better now? But yeah that could maybe work.

i have some 5 year old samsung 850? evo's that i have been storing data offline and also going to recover data from it, ill let you know how it goes, for my backup i use spinners of course 2x5tb wd usb3 portable drives should run you less than 180. i use 16tb or 14tb drives what ever is cheapest and just keep a offline copy.

 

[mxnerd]

I actually have a 10 year old Samsung 1.5TB 3.5" drive that I still use as an archive.

This drive is only 5400rpm but incredibly reliable.

If you think your data is important, don't just have one copy. And better store them in different formats.

 

[UsandThem]

Outside of storing "can't lose documents" encrypted in the cloud, I use an "uh oh copy" 2.5" hard drive that I keep in my big safe when not being updated (about every 60 days), and 3.5" 5400 RPM one that is connected to the PC that is backed up on a more frequent basis.

 

[PingSpike]

I put most files on my unraid NAS. That has a parity disk. The stuff on there that I really want to keep is backed up on 2 rotating external disks once a week. The stuff I kind of want to keep but could live with losing is backed up onto one of those disks only. And then there's stuff on the main array I'd rather not lose but just isn't worth the effort to backup. Ransomware, accidental deletion or serious hardware failure might wipe that out but it should survive a single disk failure.

I haven't used optical disks for a long time. I find them cumbersome to manage and they also degrade over time.

 

[grant2]

I use 2 external magnetic hard drives, and rotate which one gets the latest backups. I am consider a 2-drive RAID enclosure. An enclosure would be more convenient to protect against a physical drive failure, but at the moment, I prefer having the option to keep my backups in physically different locations.

My smaller, critical files I also keep on the cloud (google drive sync). This has the added bonus of making them conveniently available e.g. on my phone.

Flash drives can start to lose data relatively quickly if they are unpowered. As in 1-2 years in warm conditions, and even faster if temperatures rise. (Yes, I understand any sane backup schedule would have be powering on the archive drive much more often than yearly, but the point of backups is to prepare for extreme scenarios, which may include forgetting to back up for a long time.)

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

New data suggests that enterprise SSD data retention can fall below a week, while client data can reach 1-2 weeks in extreme temperatures.

www.extremetech.com

This issue can probably be mitigated by using a RAID enclosure. But since I don't really care about performance on my archive drives, I don't see any significant upside and a big potential downside to flash drives.

If a solid-state storage technology is developed which can certainly retain data for ~5-10 years without power, then I'd jump all over it.

 

[grant2]

Ransomware,

Oh yes, I forgot: ransomware is another reason I rotate (version) my backup media.

Possibly my most recent backup might be compromised by ransomware (e.g. I unknowingly backup encrypted data) but it's significantly less likely I'll go through 2 backup cycles without noticing ransomware.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah this is about archiving, so cold storage. So flash probably not an option. I may just stick to optical media, and hard drives. Are tapes worth considering at all? They are kind of expensive to get into though but from what I understand they are the most reliable right? If I did get into tapes I would just use it as an actual backup solution then just have a retention schedule, like keep the yearly forever kinda thing. Then every 10 years I can always recopy to a new tape but still keep the original.

 

[UsandThem]

From what I've read over the years from others asking the same questions as you are, tape seems to be the longest lasting/most reliable backup media, but it not mass produced anymore and you will pay a good amount of $$$ to use it.

Other backup options like Blu Ray/DVD discs or hard drives are not that far behind, but significantly cheaper. You likely could replace them every 5 years (way overkill) and still save a lot of money compared to tape (both the media and the equipment).

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah think I'm going to lean to sticking with optical media, and hard drives. I like optical media for the read only aspect but I can still have a backup on a hard drive too.

 

[dlerious]

I use Mdisc blurays and DVDs, use dvdisaster to create ECC files.

 

[Muadib]

I'm using One drive to backup my document folder. I have a flaky 1TB Nvme drive in an enclosure that I was going to use as a temp backup. My unraid & Qnap Nases are in NC unplugged currently. I really need to fix that...

 

[mxnerd]

Forget about tape, it's the worst media.

It's remote memory for me now. The tape drive's magnetic head contacts with the the tape (or very, very close) and the tape wears out quickly. And it's extremely slow, since the software needs to search the files you want, and the tape drive needs to rotate back and forth a lot of time.

You still need to take out the HDDs and power them on once in a while. HDD's internal motor can get stuck if you left it in the drawer long enough.

You can consider cloud backups as long as you are willing to spend some dollars.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah the more I look into tape the less desirable it ends up being. I always figure it's the Cadillac since that's what big companies use but guess they have other reasons to use it such as having to be compliant with certain standards or whatever. My current backup solution consists of bare hard drives and a HDD dock. Given drives in the 1-2TB range are fairly cheap maybe I will just buy more of those, so I can start having a better data retention. Treat that as my archive. For the stuff that I absolutely want to archive even better, I can do DVDs too.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I use Mdisc blurays and DVDs, use dvdisaster to create ECC files.

Winrar with recovery records works too. Doesn't hurt to add an additional layer of ECC though.

 

[mikeymikec]

I have x number of drives that I cycle around for doing monthly backups, plus one as a yearly backup drive. I also have a drive on which I do multiset backups, on which I have say fifteen backups' worth of my documents folder, camera folder, etc.

If my concern was more about long-term unnoticed corruption, I think I'd have a string of drives that I do yearly-only backups on.

The more you narrow down the size of the dataset that you want to increase the intensity of backups for, the easier it becomes.

In my line of work this is incredibly cheap as customers who don't need old hard drives any more are happy to give them to me

I just saved a couple of years' worth of photos for one of my customers when he discovered years after a computer migration that the photos had become corrupted. He handed me two old drives, and the eldest had the uncorrupted photos on, despite it really labouring to give up the data, I ran NTFS recovery on a 10GB PATA drive. I was quite pleased with myself about that What I'm really puzzled about though is that all he needed to do to spot the corruption was to browse his Pictures folder with thumbnails on: A crapload of folders wouldn't show thumbnails. For me that would have been enough to spark an investigation. Admittedly embedded thumbnails (that weren't corrupted) would have been enough for me to miss it.

We have a zero tolerance policy for profanity in the Tech sub-forums.
I adjusted the problem word for one that is acceptable.
Don't do this again.

Iron Woode
Super Moderator

 

[Super Spartan]

I've always used CDs then when spinning storage got so cheap I just end up keeping lot of stuff on spinning disks + having backups on separate drives. But there is always the risk of accidental deletation or corruption that I may not notice and then it ends up overwriting backups too, overall it still does not feel like it's truly "archived" if it's just sitting on live disks.

So been thinking I need to start archiving on cold storage again. Just wondering what's everyone using for that these days, is optical media still the way to go? CDs, DVDs, Blurays?

The amount of data I want to archive is not necessarily that large. Pictures, code etc and stuff I like to archive for historical/nostalgia purposes.

I suppose having multiple copies does not hurt either, maybe do DVDs and hard drives?

I have a bunch of archived data on CDs as well that is probably pushing 15 years, crazy how time flies... so I will probably want to re-archive that as well.

I use program called SyncBack to backup all my folders/personal libraries to an external Samsung T5 Portable SSD 2TB. The program only copies/deletes the changes so everything happens within a few seconds to minutes depending on the changes.

See:

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've always used CDs then when spinning storage got so cheap I just end up keeping lot of stuff on spinning disks + having backups on separate drives. But there is always the risk of accidental deletation or corruption that I may not notice and then it ends up overwriting backups too, overall it still does not feel like it's truly "archived" if it's just sitting on live disks.

So been thinking I need to start archiving on cold storage again. Just wondering what's everyone using for that these days, is optical media still the way to go? CDs, DVDs, Blurays?

The amount of data I want to archive is not necessarily that large. Pictures, code etc and stuff I like to archive for historical/nostalgia purposes.

I suppose having multiple copies does not hurt either, maybe do DVDs and hard drives?

I have a bunch of archived data on CDs as well that is probably pushing 15 years, crazy how time flies... so I will probably want to re-archive that as well.

Interesting you should bring up this topic. My recently-started thread asking advice about selecting a "slim" laptop BD-RE BR, DVD, CD burner/reader re-examined the thought of optical backups. Maybe I should attend to some sort of project to consume a day's time, burning some DVDs or BD's.

I've got a server with four 3TB Hitachi spinners for a 12GB drive-pool. With the Stablebit software, I've duplicated some of the directories for redundancy. Then, I have daily backups to a 4TB 2.5" spinner. I could "archive" stuff to USB thumb drives, optical discs -- another external HDD. With all my care, I apparently lost the conversations I had with Charlie Manson when I discovered he was talking to a 17-year-old kid in an MSN forum and probably using the Corcoran Prison library computer for internet access and for lack of correctional supervision. . . . I had copies of his written work that was actually published online! I was able to show that "It was him!" Now -- it's just a story raising the suspicion that I'm a crazy old man.

 

[killster1]

Interesting you should bring up this topic. My recently-started thread asking advice about selecting a "slim" laptop BD-RE BR, DVD, CD burner/reader re-examined the thought of optical backups. Maybe I should attend to some sort of project to consume a day's time, burning some DVDs or BD's.

I've got a server with four 3TB Hitachi spinners for a 12GB drive-pool. With the Stablebit software, I've duplicated some of the directories for redundancy. Then, I have daily backups to a 4TB 2.5" spinner. I could "archive" stuff to USB thumb drives, optical discs -- another external HDD. With all my care, I apparently lost the conversations I had with Charlie Manson when I discovered he was talking to a 17-year-old kid in an MSN forum and probably using the Corcoran Prison library computer for internet access and for lack of correctional supervision. . . . I had copies of his written work that was actually published online! I was able to show that "It was him!" Now -- it's just a story raising the suspicion that I'm a crazy old man.

i doubt it was him, i worked in Corcoran prison with him in there, they made him wear nothing but boxers and was in isolation, he looked pathetic and didnt talk. But you can dream it was him wonder why someone would want to actually admit to idolizing him. scum!

 

[WildViper]

This is great timing.

I am in the same boat. I think my luck with hard drives pretty much sucks. I have used various HD manufacturers and without fail, they fail at some point. I do have data backed on multiple drives but it is taking too much time.


I am thinking of going the S3 route. Some of these things are photos and such that I hardly need day to day. Having S3 as my backup of backup is what I am thinking. Once a quarter I can upload the latest changes.

But, I can't find an "easy" way to do this via FTP or another service. I have about 8TB of data (lots of movies that I have burned from the old days from my legit DVD purchases + personal family videos).

Anyone can point me to a great write-up or tech to make this happen easily? And Red, why don't you consider S3 as well? I don't think it is that much more expensive on an overall basis.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I would not really consider a cloud service an archive. To me an archive is something that is cold storage, and physically with me in my full control. I already have a dedicated server I lease for my websites, so I do have backups that go there as well but I only consider that an extra backup and not primary.

I think I will end up just doing optical media + HDDs.

I need to go through all my CDs and basically re-burn them, and also store them on a couple HDDs and think I'll call it a day. Crazy to think that some of them are pushing 20 years now. I feel old.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

i doubt it was him, i worked in Corcoran prison with him in there, they made him wear nothing but boxers and was in isolation, he looked pathetic and didnt talk. But you can dream it was him wonder why someone would want to actually admit to idolizing him. scum!

Well, I wish I could show you what he wrote in reaction to a side-conversation I was having on that forum, in which I expressed my suspicions. Would they bar him from using the prison library? How much supervision was there -- this was back around 2002 -- for library computers? Would not one or more of those PCs have internet access -- ostensibly off limits to prisoners?

I wouldn't know. How much would you know? I wouldn't really know that either. But the responses I get, for the few times I tell the story, are predicable. I just cannot dismiss my analysis of the two printed writing samples -- the thread posts on the MSN forum, and the fragments published by some Charlie follower on the web. Of course, if writing samples were published by a Charlie follower, then the same Charlie follower might also have made posts to the MSN forum. But that's only one of at least a couple other possibilities, so . . .