this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.

I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It's mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).

I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I'm looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.

My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that's quite outdated and DVDs don't hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I'm unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I'm looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.

I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?

What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?

Cheers

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

Might be a dumb idea but hear me out. How about sealing a reputable enterprise or consumer SSD in one of those anti static bags with a desiccant and then sealing that inside a pvc pipe also with desiccant and then burying it below the frost line? You'll just have to dig it up and refresh everything every couple of years, think 3 years at most iirc for consumer ones. Obviously this isn't a replacement for a backup solution just archival so no interaction with it. It'll protect it from the elements, house fires, flooding, temperature fluctuations pretty much everything and its cost effective. Hell you can even surround the hard drive bag in foam then stuff in the pvc pipe for added shock absorption. Make a map afterwards like a damn pirate (its night time so my bad if I sound deranged)

edit I took a nap: in hindsight I should've clarified. I went with an ssd in this idea since its more durable than a mechanical, better price for storage capacity compared to m-disc, and most likely to be compatible with other computers in the future in case you need it for whatever reason. Of course you can use another storage media, like m disc, just know of the drawbacks. Like needing a m-disc burner (~100$), several discs depending on how big of a capacity you need (price varies), pray that there's still a drive that can read m-disc in the future and know that's its gonna be slow when getting your data back regardless. All you would have to do to modify the idea would be getting a disc case that kinda suspends the disc so nothing is touching it's surfaces. Then the same idea: antistatic bag with desiccant, foam or even bubble wrap around it, stuffed in a pipe with desiccant buried below your frost line. People usually skip the "in optimal conditions" part when talking about m-disc but this way we get close to those optimal conditions

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I use external hard drives. Two of them, and they get rsynced every time something changes, so there's a copy if one drive should fail. Once a month, I encrypt the whole shebang with gpg and send it off into an AWS bucket.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Blu-Ray USB drive and M-Discs is about the best you can get at present. Keep the drive unplugged when not in use, it'll probably last 10-20 years in storage.

Seeing as there hasn't been much advance past Blu-ray, keep an eye out for something useful to replace it in the future, or at least get another drive when you notice them becoming scarce.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

According to this Blu-ray has some of the worst expected shelf life, with the exception of BD-RE.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Think they meant a blu-ray drive that could burn to a m-disc.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Wherever you choose to store it, you should still consider following the 3-2-1 backup rule.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (3 children)

This is actually a real problem... A lot of digital documents from the 90's and early 2000's are lost forever. Hard drives die over time, and nobody out there has come up with a good way to permanently archive all that stuff.

I am a crazy person, so I have RAID, Ceph, and JBOD in various and sundry forms. Still, drives die.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

nobody out there has come up with a good way to permanently archive all that stuff

Personally I can't wait for these glass hard drives being researched to come at the consumer or even corporate level. Yes they're only writable one time and read only after that, but I absolutely love the concept of being able to write my entire Plex server to a glass harddrive, plug it in and never have to sorry about it again.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What about magnetic tape? Isn't it like super durable?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

It's crazy that there isn't a company out there making viable cold storage for the average consumer. I feel like we're getting even further away from viability now that we use QLC by default in SSDs. The rot will be so fast.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Don't use DVDs. They suffer bitrot, as do "metal" hard drives.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago
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