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Digital Storage Media Advice

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William

Darth Vader
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I'm almost positive we've covered this before, but darned if I can find it. Apologies in advance. So....

I have a fairly large number of digital photos, documents, music files, and so on, and it's growing all the time. My laptop computer ran out of memory long ago, so I have an external hard drive for storing stuff (and it still has plenty of room). However, I don't really trust anything I have to plug into a wall socket as a permanent storage medium, and would prefer something a little more, er, "solid" I guess. I'm leaning towards DVD, since I figure it'd take about a zillion CDs to store what I already have. Is this a reasonable plan, or should I find another tree to bark up?

-Wm.
 
What's wrong with a raid array as NAS?
Plug into the router, and off you go.
 
Don't trust ANY media as your only source of storage. CD and DVD will go bad over time and are susceptible to damage and hard drives can fail. The only way to guarantee data security is with a backup, separate from the main storage.

The best solution in my opinion is to increase the size of your internal hard drive so you can keep everything stored on your main computer. Then back everything up on an external hard drive and keep it in a secure location.

Anything permanently connected to your network will be exposed to risks such as power spikes, viruses, theft, fire or physical damage. The only way to truly secure data is to move it to another location such as a safe deposit box or even someone else's house. Of course this makes it more difficult to do your backups so it isn't a solution for everyone.

I use a Raid-1 array in my main computer, and then have an external hard drive for secondary backup. I keep the external drive unplugged from the wall and the computer to prevent power spikes from damaging it. This doesn't protect me from fire or theft but that's a risk i have decided to take. Many of my photos are backed up on relatives computers and those are the most important digital data for me.
 
Print them out and put them in an album, then the album in the closet, so every five to ten years you can pull them out and reminisce..

Just joking.
 
I use multiple removable HDs (you can mount them in an external chassis too). One is my primary work drive for images, another is a backup, and a third is a backup I store at another location. I keep having to upgrade those drives though too. 500gb for the backups, and 750gb for the primary.

I like the idea of having both HDs and optical. I went with DVDs for awhile but I've got so much stuff, and I update so much of it so often I just went with the HDs for now.
 
Thanks for the advice. I have an external, removable HD that I only plug in when I'm putting stuff on it, and the whole idea was to get two of them to mirror each other but the expense is prohibitive for me at the moment.

Also, I just don't like the idea of all of my stuff being stored solely on things that need to be plugged into the wall socket. I've had far too many inexplicable hard drive crashes for me to be trust them anymore. (I forget how many time I've been told "Oh, they just do that sometimes" after a drive lunched itself. Shades of the dead parrot.) As far as the limited shelf life of CD and DVD, I have CDs that are going on twenty years old and they still work fine. I figure I should be okay for a few years with discs.

Regarding RAIDs, upgrades, and suchlike, I have a laptop, and it's pretty limited as to how big I can go with a new hard drive. Plus, it's a few years old, so if I'm going to upgrade, I may as well just get a new computer (which I can't afford). And it'd have to be a laptop again, because I just don't have the space for a big desktop setup.

-Wm.
 
We use a multiple hard drive RIAD server for about 100 gigs of current work and images.

I like the server, but we have no backup...the IT guy we use is suggesting a tape backup that we would use multiple tapes in to always have a tape of our backed up work at someones home.

Anyone use this kind of setup, or can recommend something else?
 
William said:
Also, I just don't like the idea of all of my stuff being stored solely on things that need to be plugged into the wall socket.
Click to expand...

Why? Today's drives are far less prone to eating themselves at the first sign of a power fluctuation. If you're really really concerned put a few bucks away for a battery backup. The small capacity ones are big enough to run an HD for awhile and they don't cost that much. I have four running in my main machine with several ready to swap in/out for backup. I had one that I suspect had a problem, the others (in the machine) run nearly 24x7 without fail.



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]
As far as the limited shelf life of CD and DVD, I have CDs that are going on twenty years old and they still work fine. I figure I should be okay for a few years with discs.[/QUOTE]

Commercially made, or burned on your machine? If you buy name-brand top-quality media it should last a few years. Unfortunately there have been a lot of folks that used CD-Rs only to find parts of them unreadable a few years later.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]
Regarding RAIDs, upgrades, and suchlike, I have a laptop, and it's pretty limited as to how big I can go with a new hard drive. [/QUOTE]

What OS are you running? If you have XP (or Vista, or a Mac) and a USB connection you can toss a new 1TB (1000GB) drive in an enclosure and have at it. It'll cost a bit, but you can do it.

A 750gb Seagate drive is $170 or a 250gb Seagate drive for $75 - and the enclosures run $20-$90 depending on the brand and style (I bought one on closeout from Best Buy for $7).

Granted, it's difficult to carry an external HD around with you - but it's for backup purposes, right?
 
William said:
...As far as the limited shelf life of CD and DVD, I have CDs that are going on twenty years old and they still work fine. I figure I should be okay for a few years with discs....
Click to expand...
Unless you read out your drives’ error correction activity you won’t know whether your CDs are degrading until it’s too late and the data is unrecoverable.

Redundant back-ups are a very good thing.


PC.
 
aerog said:
Why? Today's drives are far less prone to eating themselves at the first sign of a power fluctuation. If you're really really concerned put a few bucks away for a battery backup. The small capacity ones are big enough to run an HD for awhile and they don't cost that much. I have four running in my main machine with several ready to swap in/out for backup. I had one that I suspect had a problem, the others (in the machine) run nearly 24x7 without fail.
Click to expand...

That would be the three HD's I've had go south in the last couple of years-again with surge protection and so on. The last one happened last year, to an external HD, within a couple of weeks of buying it. Nobody could figure out why it ceased working (including tech reps from the manufacturer), but cease it did. Maybe I've just been severely unlucky in this respect, but most of my trust in such things was shot to heck.

I did not know that burned discs are less stable than "regular" CDs and DVDs. Part of the allure of this solution was the ease of storage, rather than having a bunch of HD's shoved in the corner of my closet.

I'm not sure what good a battery adaptor would do in my case. I'm not running a desktop computer and leaving it on all day-I'm trying to get a reasonably stable method for storing photos, music, documents, etc., and I don't usually leave my laptop out when I'm not using it. A new desktop would be a great solution (to add RAID's and stuff to) but it's out of the question based on (primarily) expense and space (I just don't have any place to put a computer desk and the associated gubbins).

A second external HD is probably on the horizon, based on the answers I'm getting here.

Any other (sensible-I know how you lot can get!) ideas, lemme have 'em.

-Wm.
 
All WD drives perchance?
I stopped buying them after losing three in 6 months.

One other option if you are worried about bad power is to unplug the drive after doing a backup. I have one in a foil bag that's my 'last resort' drive - if the other 3 copies go south.

nfi, but you could also try something like this: https://www.ibackup.com/charginghelp_new.htm
 
dar100 said:
I like the server, but we have no backup...the IT guy we use is suggesting a tape backup that we would use multiple tapes in to always have a tape of our backed up work at someones home.
dar100 said:
I worked as an IT guy until my surgery last year, and we had great luck with tapes. In fact, our business required it by law that we keep backups for five years. We had a service that kept backups in a secure location, and when storms threatened, we would disburse tapes to some key people locally, and send one to our corporate office for safekeeping.

Personally, I would invest in a good quality NAS , make sure there is a UPS attached to it, and shut it down when not in use. Cheaper in the long run than a tape system (last system we purchased cost 8K to get off the ground, and about $400 a quarter in tapes).
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
William said:
I did not know that burned discs are less stable than "regular" CDs and DVDs. Part of the allure of this solution was the ease of storage, rather than having a bunch of HD's shoved in the corner of my closet.
Click to expand...

They're completely different. Commercially made optical media (DVDs/CDs) aren't "burned" like homemade ones are. Consumer level stuff uses an organic layer that has the information burned into it. Some formulations of that layer have been known to degrade very quickly.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]
I'm not sure what good a battery adaptor would do in my case. I'm not running a desktop computer and leaving it on all day-I'm trying to get a reasonably stable method for storing photos, music, documents, etc., and I don't usually leave my laptop out when I'm not using it.[/QUOTE]

Well, you mentioned a concern about plugging anything into the wall. Ignore the wall and plug into a battery back-up/UPS device. You don't need to plug anything into it "all day", you just plug in when you're using the equipment. A decent UPS will provide decent line filtering and surge protection, and will ensure you won't lose any data due to a power failure. Your laptop by its nature has a power source backed-up by a battery system.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:]I did not know that burned discs are less stable than "regular" CDs and DVDs. Part of the allure of this solution was the ease of storage, rather than having a bunch of HD's shoved in the corner of my closet.[/QUOTE]

That used to be one of my reasons too - plus optical media can (sometimes/usually/etc) be made to work after a flood, etc. For me the typical consumer level optical media just isn't that convenient for all the stuff I need to back up. Last year I had 100gb in digital camera files - that doesn't include scans I did. That's roughly 23 standard DVD-R disks...which takes up significantly more room than a 3.5" hard-drive box. It's a ton faster, and easier for me to make multiple updated copies.

Again - that's just how I'm tackling it. I think the biggest thing is not to put all your eggs in one basket.
 
1965_MGB said:
Personally, I would invest in a good quality NAS , make sure there is a UPS attached to it, and shut it down when not in use. Cheaper in the long run than a tape system (last system we purchased cost 8K to get off the ground, and about $400 a quarter in tapes).
Click to expand...

NAS??? I'll Google it. Thanks for the advice. It doesn't look like NAS is off site. The server we have now has 4 hot swappable hard drives (they mirror each other, so we always have data on good drives) The drives are only abut $150, so they are reasonable. It also has two hot swappable power supplies and a UPS with a shut down feature.

It's a physical damage situation I'm worried about, like a fire, it seems like the tapes might be the way to go. We have such a comparatively low volume of storage, I would think we could re-use 2 - 4 tapes. Am I being naive?
 
Sorry for the geek speak, NAS is network attached storage. There are a few companies that sell devices that connect via Ethernet and can be set up to back up and restore data.

There are some pretty cheap deals out there on tape drives, and they are not that expensive when compared to backup software. Windows has a built in software for backing up, but I would stick with what comes with your tape drive.

Tapes are good, as they will retain the data for quite a long time, and take up much less space than drives. They are also not as sensitive to damage as a CD or DVD.

Tapes are relatively cheap, and you can rotate a few tapes to get the most recent data. Keeping the unused tape off site will help to insure nothing happens to it.

Keep us informed as to your progress.
 
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