BIZ: What's the best/safest method for long time storage of content?
 

i.e. Need to "store" all the photo sets and videos etc. I've purchased on some media that's still going to be accessable for a few years... Other than some huge hard disks and mirror it, is there anything else that's totally reliable?

Right now big remote disc's are at least getting cheaper. I have thousands of dollars in Seagate 300 gb remote drives. Shooting content I have to really be carefull to back-up my back-up's. More than 2 tb in video alone. You should see the humidity controlled room where my slides are stored .... at least those days are over.

tape drives

I must respectfully disagree with this. Tape is an incredibly unreliable media, for a couple reasons.

The machines that can read tapes are themselves subject to breakdown, software issues, firmware problems, and perhaps most importantly, obsolescence.

Tape is extremely fragile depending on environmental factors. In fact, tape, if not periodically "rolled", will decline faster.

If your storage goal is 5 years, tape may be okay. If your storage goal is longer, I strongly disagree.

Being an organic material, tape is subject to heat, humidity, breakage, and decay of many types and degrees.

2 mirrored file servers in 2 different colo spots with big raid 5 drives

dont assume that burned dvds can keep.. they are MUCH more unreliable than professionally burned disks!

Any other opinions?

Remote hard drives are getting so cheap, go that route.

Double sided DVD's... 28 gigs...

Also... if you store it on an HD... Power it down. The reason HD's die is they have a spin life of only a few years... So stop spinning it.

Welcome to GFY :thumbsup




:1orglaugh

This is true.

Just burn them on DVDs(at least 2 copies) and check them out from time to time... also keep a copy on an removable HD. You want to go cheap (dvds(10 cents)hd(100$)...

anything burned has a lifespan of < 5 years

DVDs from two different major brands stored in two different physical locations (ie. one at home, another at work, etc) - be sure to check the location of manufacture, since that can vary even within the same brand; economy no-name / bulk packs are often of lessor quality...

Do some research on-line of the various DVD brands / location of manufacture / quality, etc.

I have DVDs upwards of 5 years old and still quite readable. On a related note, writable DVDs, despite having a much higher density, are of a far more reliable design than writable CDs, which often tended to degrade dramatically within months.

Hard Drives are NOT suitable for longterm backup use for numerous reasons ... hardware compatibility, degradation over time, starting up a HD after it's been sitting unused for many years lead to catastrophic failure; DVDs tend to be more forgiving - often much data can still be recovered using simple tools.

As crazy as it sounds, magnetic tape can be a good longterm inexpensive backup medium, assuming a decent brand and is stored properly; two copies in two different physical environmentally controlled locations.

Other backup methods include paper - data encoded as small dots onto paper tape / sheets of paper; think scantron, but more advanced.

For content you shoot yourself and/or have purchased exclusively, the negatives will outlive most all electronic backup methods - see my comment above about backing up onto paper, which is likely the only one of the methods discussed so far that would potentially survive longer than negatives.

Lastly, read up on the approaches the U.S. Library of Congress and other govt agencies are using to archive data ... they have for more important data to lose than basically anyone here on GFY, so the methods they use are likely more than adequate for your needs.

Ron

I think everything is risky...we just use HDD's...tons of them...but again all is risky

That was refreshing :1orglaugh!

We don't talk like that on GFY. Might I suggest one of the following phrases in the future:

• Bull fucking shit, bitch.
• You don't know shit from Shinola.
• Stupid American cow. You believe what they want you to believe. You are a sheep and your president is an idiot.
• Shut the fuck up, douchenozzle.
• Nigga, please.

Shut the fuck up, douchenozzle! :)

dark bottles

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

i dont know if this is the best solution but i was thinking of picking up this bad boy called the "drobo"

http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx

looks sexy as hell

archival dvds or cds they last 300yrs.

i use buffalo terastation raid5 nas - and only power them up when i need them

plus everything duplicated on DVD

I got the archival cds for pics been using ext hd's for video.I fill them up and put them on the shelf. Im not worried really about 10 yrs from now for most of the stuff. Its not art its porn and by then it will be old shit no one will want to see.

I'm using hard drives for short to medium term storage at the moment.

- RAID5 array for basic redundancy/availability as my main "working" drives
- regular full and incremental backups to a second RAID0 array in the same machine
- regular full and incremental backups to a 1TB external drive

There's still a chance my data could be wiped out by a freak electrical spike if the external drive is connected at the time, or fire destroys the room. I'll be buying a second external drive to store/rotate at an offsite location soon.

You learn fast :1orglaugh


.

I use PirateBay.



lol....











But seriously, as far as mini dv content, the tapes are very reliable, especially if you keep them in a climate controlled area. I think they will outlast me.

In addition i keep a copy of the raw captured avi as well as several copies of the finished member ready videos.

As far as my SLR dig images, i keep a few copies on various drives, some spinning all the time in a PC and some on external drives.

In addition to everything saved above, my servers are all RAID1, so hopefully I am good to go.

Well I've got an external drive I've been storing stuff on but need to either get more or burn to DVDs... I just bruned my first DVDs this last week but am concerned about them going bad etc.

What's the best way to burn DVDs to have your best chance and a good DVD and long term access?