Yeah, but SATA disks are pretty cheap, I can have my data online and I don't have to worry about making backups The snag is course that it doesn't protect me from malware, mistakes and so on.... CF
Regular back ups on DVD-R/+R should be no problem as a short term measure. As Alchy says, you shouldn't rely on optical media for long term backup solution anyway. I think you guys are exaggerating dye rot - even if you only trust the DVD-r/+r for 1 year then that is far longer than the space you should be leaving between backups anyway and $/GB it is by far the cheapest option. It is also easy to return the data to a new drive when you need to replace it. If the data is really that sensitive and cost is an issue then either tape or an external HDD to do 1:1 drive copies would be the best option to protect yourself from drive failure IMO. Tape is pretty horrible to work with though. Of course, 200GB to DVD-R/+R is probably not the best solution here - ~22 DVD-R DL :lol: Edit: Barc0de: If your data is that sensitive then buy several tapes and keep them in separate locations. Never trust something so valuable to one tape/disc/whatever alone and separating them physically will protect you from fire/theft/acts of God etc.
Taucias, I actually follow that tactic on my rarer files, as I hide them inside CDs and DVDs that I burn for my friends. Each of my friends might unknown to them, hold about 1/4th of my important data and so on :lol: Hard-disks operate by having a very special and particular air pressure within the drive to keep the read/write head floating. Any disturbance in that mechanism, and the disk is not accessible with regular means. For this reason, I d rather work on the slow side with tapes, which are much more straight forward - the only pain in the ass with tapes is Shoe Polishing.
Are you looking at the same ebay UK auction as me? If so, I should've kept my mouth shut about tape backup I'd go with Firewire, but yeah. External HDDs enclosures are useful, and with USB2/Firewire you don't get much of a bottleneck. It's worth pointing out that it's still not a good idea to cart them around the place, though - enclosures don't protect that well. Even for mini HDDs, which are more durable, the third-party enclosures are really not that much protection and they will die on you if you drop them. At work they hit on a decent solution of sticking them in little rubbery bags, cheap and effective for data security.
Alchy , no offence, but living in the UK myself, I do check ebay nevertheless, i ll let u go for the auction, no need to keep the price rising
The top end I'm sticking in is £20, so if it starts going for more than that (and it should), go ahead. It's not for me anyway.
I m watching the item and will snipe if deemed appropriate. There's plenty of time left, and I think things will get predatory at the end, as usual on ebay.
I hit ebay on seeing this thread too. The HP one below seems even better, with 74GB per disk. Got me very tempted seeing that.
I like to imprint binary onto copper plates and seal them in a safe. Really for backups just have two in two seperate locations, under that you can use the cheapest stuff for backups so long as its two different things such as one being dvd+r and the other being a harddrive. Or you could put the data onto the drives and do a redundency RAID. Possibly a DVD with multiple sets of PAR files for recovery.
So yeah, this kind of sucks. Now that I'm taking really big pictures of my son (7 & 8 Mega Pixel) I'm looking for a way to store them long term. Very long term hopefully. I'm wondering if eventually BluRay and HD-DVD data disks will feature something more reliable. I've got a 300GB hard disk that's not filled up yet, but the RAW images are 6 megs a piece roughly. Not going to take long the way we take pictures.
GaijinPunch along with whatever method you decide, I'd advise you to get slides made as a back up. Real photographic ones. They might not be the best solution in terms of ultimate quality but they are a tried and tested one and will last for a very long time. You can get decent copies made from slides and the equipment is cheap and simple.
No matter what you do. There will always be a chance of losing that data. Best you can do is create multiple copies on different media formats to improve chances of archiving. There isn't a cheap 'backup and forget' solution. You will always have to spend money someday to transfer the archive into another media when the old one starts to end its expected reliable lifespan. people die, so does data if it isn't taken care of. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. HDDs aren't 100% reliable, and neither is everything else. There is always the chance of losing the data due to hardware failure and catastrophic event.
the moral of the story so far: Get yourself an HDD, a tape-drive and a DVD-R and see what lives longer, then repeat. :lol:
I just use RAID-5 for my archival drives & DVD-ROM + parity for important small things. Unless you can afford LTO (for the capacity), I'd advise against any sort of tapes, they're not worth it w/ HDs as big as they are nowadays.
calpis, the reason that I mentioned tape over HDDs, despite price differences in favour of Hard disks, is the fact that an HDD is entirely dependant on the pressure inside the casing, ie any issue with the pressure and you re stuck, because the head wont float as it should, destroying the HDD. On the other hand, the tape just exists, as a seperate entity from its reading mechanism, which makes it even safer. Keep it in an anti-static and shielded environment and tapes should provide backup for much longer than you need.
Tapes are reliable for long term storage but honestly it probably won't be long before you'll get Google to host your files indefinitely. Also I have seen HDs survive for weeks in lab without their case so all hope isn't lost if the seal is broken.
Best diagnostic tool? Your ear. I just got a PC back from being shipped internationally, and I heard a click of death. Plugged it in the new comp, copied all my stuff over. When I tried to format it a few days later, she was 100% dead. I saved my data just in time. Best place to store small amounts of important info? Flash drive. They're invicible. I've got a gig of info on mine, and its imposible to break it. I once bent it as it stuck out of a laptop by mistake, and whenever it was in a certain postion it would disconnect. Popped out the iron, turned out one of the 4 USB pins had cracked and disconnected at an angle. Soldered it back together, she works perfectly. I doubt she'll ever die.
