Hey guys, I just had a curiosity on the multiple ways of storaging stuff and how long would that hold, take backing it up to a newer storage after some years out of the table.
So how did this come in my mind, I was just reminiscing about how I used to play games with inserting a CD or Cartridge onto the device and how I miss that flavour.
I would like to do it again, I already like having my games dependancy free (praise mr goldmountain), and I am saving up some money to spend on hoarding possibilities. I would like to know what would have the longest storage life, would burning games into bluray discs be too unhinged or is something I am missing?
Thanks in advance in helping me out witht his brainstorm.
The storage medium you choose really isn’t as critical as making multiple copies, storing them in separate physical locations, and testing that you can recover the data when you need it. Diversity in the physical medium you choose is probably a good thing too long term. Archival discs aren’t really that long lived though. You could try, but unless you are regularly checking the discs and making additional copies, you’re going to loose data eventually. I gave up using discs as any kind of backup because it was too much hassle. Copying hard drives was much more straightforward and reliable.
Optical discs are the least likely medium to degrade by just sitting in a drawer for long periods of time. HDDs have lots of moving parts and SSD data degrades over time. If you find a disc and an HDD in a box after 20 years and wonder which will still work, my money’s on the disc.
Well, I’ve tried both (yes over twenty years) and writable optical discs have been pretty flaky in comparison to HDDs. I never suggested SSD was good for anything but temporary storage. But you’re totally missing the point about medium mattering much less than consistently making copies.
Contrary to what people suggested, I would advise against optical discs or tapes and would go with HDDs you check every few months. They don’t rot like optical media, the only thing you have to worry about are the motor spindles getting stuck and other mechanical failures.
It will also be the cheapest option. With tapes you need expensive drives and they change the version every few years. Tapes only are better if you store hundreds or thousands of TiB of data.
Which data so you want to save? Mostly games and media? If so, consider giving them to your friends and family to copy and enjoy, which some people call a ‘friend backup’.
Most recent iteration of optical media (Blu Ray) doesn’t rot. Actually older media didn’t rot either if stored properly. I still have 20yr old CDs and DVDs that are usable. And if you’re going to let something sit in moisture or dust or whatever, a HDD wont fair that well either.
All form of storage rot, just at varying rates and likelihood of failure after X years. Keeping the data active and checked is the only way to guarantee it will survive over time. But multiple copies across formats will probably be good enough for 99% of cases.
Something like Amazon Glacier is your best bet if you don’t access data often and are okay with paying a (per-GB) monthly fee. Otherwise, you may want to build a NAS PC with high levels of disk redundancy (RAID5 or RAIDZ2)
Always use ZFS if you want to use software RAID arrays. And never rely on RAID alone, also use some form of offline backup alongside them, and ideally you should also keep a spare ready to be used automatically in case of failure.
Which is why RAID doesn’t really make sense for small number of disks, only starts working out around 6-8 disks and up. If you only have 2-5 disks you’re much better off setting them up as backup rather than RAID, and only make small arrays if you absolutely must.
Some examples:
You have 2 disks: use 1 live + 1 backup.
3 disks: 1 live + 1 backup + 1 another backup, or 2 in ZFS mirror + 1 backup.
4 disks: 2 mirrored + 1 backup + 1 another backup, or 2 mirrored + 1 standby spare + 1 backup. Do not do RAID with 3 or 4 disks without a standby spare, it makes no sense, and even if you do RAID5 + 1 spare or RAID10 you don’t have backups, the RAID won’t protect against accidental deletions.
5 disks: this is where you can do 3 in parity RAID + 1 spare + 1 backup, or triple RAID1 + 2 backups for ultra safety, or RAID6 without spare + 1 backup (provided you buy another disk as soon as one fails in the RAID6).
Bluray would likely provide the greatest cost-benefit as of today. If stored correctly they should last for decades.
Otherwise, if money is of no concern, cloud service providers. Data is replicated across multiple drives and their filesystems have bitrot protection. Unless you stop paying, it’s likely your data would remain intact and accessible for just as long as a bluray. If it’s good enough for critical government and corporate data, it’s good enough for your data.
I would like to add. Don’t use drive/dropbox/etc unless you encrypt your data. Those providers have been node to re-encode/compress/delete content to save space or because of DMCA.
Depends what you consider “long term”. My suggestion would be a NAS unit with dual drive redundancy. And additional backup device as well. For consumer level stuff, Synology units with hyper backup are a good solution.
There’s a rule I was always told in A+. Either a hard drive is going to last you less than a year or it’s gonna last you five. Usually any problems with a hard drive you’ll see right away. However after the third year is when I’d start checking the drive. There are tools out there that can let you know when a drive is in the caution level and that’s when you should think about replacement. I’ve had hard drives like one I have to replace soon last me eight years with constant use as a Plex drive.
I didn’t know that was a thing. I just upgraded to a new pc but before my old hhd was nearly 14 years old. I’m still using it as a back up but wasn’t aware they could fail so quickly. I should get a new one for backups.
get a nas for you primary storage… SSDs raided for that sweet redundancy. . replicate that to another identical, stand alone nas. replicated that to a cloud provider. problem solved. kinda pricey.
but now that you mention it, i have a ‘bug out’ bag with 12 spinning rust drives with an old backup in case i need to leave the house in a hurry… but i admittedly rarely update it
just easier to grab the nas nowadays…
what i mean bv ‘stand alone nas’ is that is should should receive the same data, but not be dependent on any upstream device to re-serve that data
Sorry if my comment came over as criticising your approach, I just wanted to add that information if someone wanted to use it. What I wanted to say is: if you have a NAS, you need to have reliable cold storage which is not SSDs.
12 drives in the go bag seems a bit much, as I don’t think the weight to usefulness ratio would be great if you really needed to leave the house in an emergency.
yeah, i hear ya on the inefficiency… the 12 drives were just what i did with my old drives. i didnt really have a use for them, didnt really want to dump them so i repurposed them into an old foam lined pelican case. highly recommend those cases.
not really realistic with data density approaching ridiculous.
For me a single 2TB 2.5 inch external HDD in a shockproof case and a 1TB SSD contain all of my most important data (mostly scanned documents and personal media like photos, phone backups and letters). I have a Syncthing folder which syncs to my phone and is mirrored to the SSD once a week, while the HDD is used as a restic target. I don’t want to lug around 3kg of disks when my house is on fire, war breaks out or an axe murderer chases me.
Discs aren’t very suitable for long term storage. Really the only thing truly suited for long term storage of digital media is archival tape. Which isn’t cheap or accessible. The only accessible solution is to keep it alive in a raid and keep rebuilding as disks fail over the years.
Well let’s look at some actually verifiable data. I have optical discs of all generations (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R) going back 20+ years that are still fine. They don’t spontaneously decompose or anything. As long as they’re properly stored I see no reason for them to stop working for another 20 years.
I have azzo verbatims that were tested after burn for pi /po /pie errors that went bad after 15 years despite being stored in black cases in a temp controlled room. It’s not like the entire disc is gone but there are a few unrecoverable errors.
I do sample them every few years out of curiosity. They mostly contain very old software and game kits from the late 90s and early 2000s so the data is only interesting for historical reasons. I also check them visually for disc rot but so far there hasn’t been any. Which makes sense because they’re not scratched, and they’re stored inside CD wallets put inside boxes put inside a dry cupboard at room temperature so environmental contamination is not likely.
Ah, cool, quite expensive (I see prices in my area around $20 USD / 100 GB) but uses no electricity.
Thanks for informing me. If you have TBs of data it’s not a sustainable solution unless you’re really into indexing. But for family photos and other long term archival its pretty great actually.
Get Blu Ray discs from a reputable brand (Verbatim, Sony). They were designed to be a lot more resilient than DVDs. Nothing wrong with DVDs either btw, if the smaller size doesn’t bother you, just make sure they’re stored properly either way.
Don’t bother with M-discs. They only provided a meaningful advantage in the DVD era. I’ve researched this a bit myself and consensus at least in the data hoarding community is use 2 Blu-ray Discs from two different batches (bought 6 months apart). Which still comes out cheaper or the same as branded M-Discs. (Though that may be overkill and truth be told as long as you test the disc and it’s data done months after writing you’ll tend to catch any rare bad ones)
Truth is, quality Blu-ray Discs have all the features that would engender M-disc type longevity in the design spec. Just make sure they’re not low to high (LTH) discs which are inferior but always marked as such at least.
Don’t get no-name cheap ones either, get Verbatim, Sony, some other good Japanese brand. For Verbatim specifically their discs marked MABL on the package are better.
Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.
From my own experience, if they do it’s undetectable over several decades. The only discs I lost were scratched CDs, and only where the scratches were at the start area; for mid-scratches the extra parity data recovered a fair amount of it. Discs that were stored in wallets and handled carefully and just sat in a drawer the rest of the time are still perfectly fine all these years later.
Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.
I haven’t kept up with BR but with DVD, that wasn’t true. For a particular burner and media you could find a sweet spot of minimal PI/PO errors. For my 16x dvd burner with verbatim media, that was 4x speed.
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The storage medium you choose really isn’t as critical as making multiple copies, storing them in separate physical locations, and testing that you can recover the data when you need it. Diversity in the physical medium you choose is probably a good thing too long term. Archival discs aren’t really that long lived though. You could try, but unless you are regularly checking the discs and making additional copies, you’re going to loose data eventually. I gave up using discs as any kind of backup because it was too much hassle. Copying hard drives was much more straightforward and reliable.
Optical discs are the least likely medium to degrade by just sitting in a drawer for long periods of time. HDDs have lots of moving parts and SSD data degrades over time. If you find a disc and an HDD in a box after 20 years and wonder which will still work, my money’s on the disc.
Well, I’ve tried both (yes over twenty years) and writable optical discs have been pretty flaky in comparison to HDDs. I never suggested SSD was good for anything but temporary storage. But you’re totally missing the point about medium mattering much less than consistently making copies.
Contrary to what people suggested, I would advise against optical discs or tapes and would go with HDDs you check every few months. They don’t rot like optical media, the only thing you have to worry about are the motor spindles getting stuck and other mechanical failures.
It will also be the cheapest option. With tapes you need expensive drives and they change the version every few years. Tapes only are better if you store hundreds or thousands of TiB of data.
Which data so you want to save? Mostly games and media? If so, consider giving them to your friends and family to copy and enjoy, which some people call a ‘friend backup’.
Most recent iteration of optical media (Blu Ray) doesn’t rot. Actually older media didn’t rot either if stored properly. I still have 20yr old CDs and DVDs that are usable. And if you’re going to let something sit in moisture or dust or whatever, a HDD wont fair that well either.
All form of storage rot, just at varying rates and likelihood of failure after X years. Keeping the data active and checked is the only way to guarantee it will survive over time. But multiple copies across formats will probably be good enough for 99% of cases.
LTO most probably… but the tapes are expensive, so are the devices.
EDIT: We use them at work. They’re enterprise grade, so long term storage is not a problem, the price is though.
Something like Amazon Glacier is your best bet if you don’t access data often and are okay with paying a (per-GB) monthly fee. Otherwise, you may want to build a NAS PC with high levels of disk redundancy (RAID5 or RAIDZ2)
Always use ZFS if you want to use software RAID arrays. And never rely on RAID alone, also use some form of offline backup alongside them, and ideally you should also keep a spare ready to be used automatically in case of failure.
Which is why RAID doesn’t really make sense for small number of disks, only starts working out around 6-8 disks and up. If you only have 2-5 disks you’re much better off setting them up as backup rather than RAID, and only make small arrays if you absolutely must.
Some examples:
Bluray would likely provide the greatest cost-benefit as of today. If stored correctly they should last for decades.
Otherwise, if money is of no concern, cloud service providers. Data is replicated across multiple drives and their filesystems have bitrot protection. Unless you stop paying, it’s likely your data would remain intact and accessible for just as long as a bluray. If it’s good enough for critical government and corporate data, it’s good enough for your data.
I would like to add. Don’t use drive/dropbox/etc unless you encrypt your data. Those providers have been node to re-encode/compress/delete content to save space or because of DMCA.
Depends what you consider “long term”. My suggestion would be a NAS unit with dual drive redundancy. And additional backup device as well. For consumer level stuff, Synology units with hyper backup are a good solution.
There’s a rule I was always told in A+. Either a hard drive is going to last you less than a year or it’s gonna last you five. Usually any problems with a hard drive you’ll see right away. However after the third year is when I’d start checking the drive. There are tools out there that can let you know when a drive is in the caution level and that’s when you should think about replacement. I’ve had hard drives like one I have to replace soon last me eight years with constant use as a Plex drive.
I didn’t know that was a thing. I just upgraded to a new pc but before my old hhd was nearly 14 years old. I’m still using it as a back up but wasn’t aware they could fail so quickly. I should get a new one for backups.
Adding to this, what would be the best way to store videos, pictures and music over a long period of time?
get a nas for you primary storage… SSDs raided for that sweet redundancy. . replicate that to another identical, stand alone nas. replicated that to a cloud provider. problem solved. kinda pricey.
SSDs need to be powered periodically to not lose bits to the cells losing trapped electrons. For offline storage HDDs are a better option.
eh, i didnt mention any offline hardware
but now that you mention it, i have a ‘bug out’ bag with 12 spinning rust drives with an old backup in case i need to leave the house in a hurry… but i admittedly rarely update it
just easier to grab the nas nowadays…
what i mean bv ‘stand alone nas’ is that is should should receive the same data, but not be dependent on any upstream device to re-serve that data
Sorry if my comment came over as criticising your approach, I just wanted to add that information if someone wanted to use it. What I wanted to say is: if you have a NAS, you need to have reliable cold storage which is not SSDs.
12 drives in the go bag seems a bit much, as I don’t think the weight to usefulness ratio would be great if you really needed to leave the house in an emergency.
yeah, i hear ya on the inefficiency… the 12 drives were just what i did with my old drives. i didnt really have a use for them, didnt really want to dump them so i repurposed them into an old foam lined pelican case. highly recommend those cases.
not really realistic with data density approaching ridiculous.
For me a single 2TB 2.5 inch external HDD in a shockproof case and a 1TB SSD contain all of my most important data (mostly scanned documents and personal media like photos, phone backups and letters). I have a Syncthing folder which syncs to my phone and is mirrored to the SSD once a week, while the HDD is used as a restic target. I don’t want to lug around 3kg of disks when my house is on fire, war breaks out or an axe murderer chases me.
Discs aren’t very suitable for long term storage. Really the only thing truly suited for long term storage of digital media is archival tape. Which isn’t cheap or accessible. The only accessible solution is to keep it alive in a raid and keep rebuilding as disks fail over the years.
M-DISC may well be a good option for long term storage.
M-DISC’s design is intended to provide archival media longevity. M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last up to 1000 years
It claims that.
Well let’s look at some actually verifiable data. I have optical discs of all generations (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R) going back 20+ years that are still fine. They don’t spontaneously decompose or anything. As long as they’re properly stored I see no reason for them to stop working for another 20 years.
Weird my post is gone.
I have azzo verbatims that were tested after burn for pi /po /pie errors that went bad after 15 years despite being stored in black cases in a temp controlled room. It’s not like the entire disc is gone but there are a few unrecoverable errors.
deleted by creator
Do you periodically verify them?
I do sample them every few years out of curiosity. They mostly contain very old software and game kits from the late 90s and early 2000s so the data is only interesting for historical reasons. I also check them visually for disc rot but so far there hasn’t been any. Which makes sense because they’re not scratched, and they’re stored inside CD wallets put inside boxes put inside a dry cupboard at room temperature so environmental contamination is not likely.
Ah, cool, quite expensive (I see prices in my area around $20 USD / 100 GB) but uses no electricity.
Thanks for informing me. If you have TBs of data it’s not a sustainable solution unless you’re really into indexing. But for family photos and other long term archival its pretty great actually.
I picked up a $20 ASUS dvdrw off Amazon and they thru in 2 mdiscs. Just FYI
Might be an option, but I bet these things aren’t cheap.
I still backup on DVDs, make multiple copies so one doesn’t go bad. In adition, I also have a storage, so I think I’m good.
Get Blu Ray discs from a reputable brand (Verbatim, Sony). They were designed to be a lot more resilient than DVDs. Nothing wrong with DVDs either btw, if the smaller size doesn’t bother you, just make sure they’re stored properly either way.
BR discs are still very expensive and will most probably be for a very long time. So are the BR drives. That’s why I still use DVDs.
Over here a 25 GB BD-R is about 60 cents USD and a 4.7 GB DVD-R is 30 cents so it makes sense to use Blu Ray.
BR drives are more expensive than DVD drives, true, but I consider it a good investment.
Here, 25GB BR is about $4. DVDs are about $0.20.
Thanks for all the input everyone! I got really interested in that M-Disc!
Don’t bother with M-discs. They only provided a meaningful advantage in the DVD era. I’ve researched this a bit myself and consensus at least in the data hoarding community is use 2 Blu-ray Discs from two different batches (bought 6 months apart). Which still comes out cheaper or the same as branded M-Discs. (Though that may be overkill and truth be told as long as you test the disc and it’s data done months after writing you’ll tend to catch any rare bad ones)
Truth is, quality Blu-ray Discs have all the features that would engender M-disc type longevity in the design spec. Just make sure they’re not low to high (LTH) discs which are inferior but always marked as such at least.
Don’t get no-name cheap ones either, get Verbatim, Sony, some other good Japanese brand. For Verbatim specifically their discs marked MABL on the package are better.
Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.
Doesn’t help the fact that the discs degrade over time.
From my own experience, if they do it’s undetectable over several decades. The only discs I lost were scratched CDs, and only where the scratches were at the start area; for mid-scratches the extra parity data recovered a fair amount of it. Discs that were stored in wallets and handled carefully and just sat in a drawer the rest of the time are still perfectly fine all these years later.
I haven’t kept up with BR but with DVD, that wasn’t true. For a particular burner and media you could find a sweet spot of minimal PI/PO errors. For my 16x dvd burner with verbatim media, that was 4x speed.