Most Reliable Medium For Long-Term Storage?

[Lastcallhall]

I'm going to come right out and say it: I'm a pirate.

My system is close to 2TB worth of pirated programs and games at any given point in time, and that's not even beginning to count the stuff I've burned to disc, deleted, etc. My question is, is knowing that inevitably my hard drives are going to fail, what's the best long-term backup solution? For example, I have a complete US set of Sega CD games in bin/cue format with no compression. I'm about 66% through burning the games, and am awaiting arrival of a shipment from supermediastore.com to complete the task. Once the games are burned and stored, I'm obviously going to play them, but what happens if the the CD is bad, or if I lose it, or any other number of scenarios play out wherein I have to refer back to my original database and burn off another copy? I COULD have the data in the same place it's in now - an external HDD that's constantly in use, but what if that drive goes bad between here and then? What are my options?

One option I've been pondering is DVD/BD burning. I've never burned a BD data disc before, but I assume it can be done. The problem with DVDs is that they're only 4.7 GB, and the Sega CD torrent alone is close to 60GB. Take into account my Saturn USA torrent, my Dreamcast complete torrent, and various other torrents, the number of DVDs needed (along with burners to replace the burnt out ones) jumps astronomically. Also, with the DVDs I've burnt data to in the past, some of the data becomes corrupted over time, and I lose out on files I may never get back.

The other option I've considered is buying SSDs to store particular torrents on. Like, getting a 64GB SSD (or flash card, since they're so damn close to making one this size, anyway), and storing it in a safe deposit box or safe place in the house where I can only access it if I need to. My experience with SSDs is also limited, and I'm not even sure if this is a feasable option, but it seems like my best bet.

So yeah, that's where I stand, and if anyone has any advice, I'd love it.

[Jax184]

A 2TB is under $100. I'd buy one of those to put a backup on and update it monthly or so.

Optical media makes a poor solution for large amounts of data. For one, there's a huge time expenditure to create the discs. For two, the cost of 2 TB worth of DVDs would be as much or more than a better solution. And for three, burnable discs arn't nearly as reliable as pressed discs. Especially if you buy cheap ones to keep the costs reasonable. They're great if you want to back up a small amount of data since you can cheaply make 4 copies to spread around. But do you really want to burn several sets of 425 discs to ensure you'll have a complete and error free copy no matter what? Consumer DVD burners will probably fail long before 50 if they're performed one after another.

I personally have 3 1TB drives in a RAID 5 array (Giving 2TB of useful storage, and a 1 drive failure tolerance)for daily use plus the most important TB of data backed up on a 1 TB drive outside of the system.

[evildragon]

I use tape for backups.. Yep, tape.. I have backups dating to the late 90's that I can still retrieve.

[snume]

It's not extremely cheap, but a Drobo on your network with 4 or 5 drives in it seems ideal, for all data storage. And it does automated backups of your systems for you as well. I'll be getting one in the next year or so.

[TmEE]

Just get a dedicated backup HDD, or perhaps a tape drive. But not optical media

[mick_aka]

I have a 50GB solid state SSD drive for all my important stuff I'm likely to need.

Other older backups (pre 2001) are on a variety of Ditto, Zip, high quality CDRs read from caddys, and Betamax (yes I have data from my Amiga days backed up on Betamax cassette) it's all kept in my safe and I've not really had any issues retrieving anything.

[Lastcallhall]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'm really looking for an offline solution, so I think I'll take the plunge with SSDs and see how they hold up over the years when not in use. If anything, I can always convert to a NAS or RAID solution if this doesn't work out.

[Jax184]

Considering that you can get a 2 TB hard drive for less than a 64 gig SSD, I think the better approach would be multiple hard drives to give you redundant backups. At least until flash prices get better.

[TmEE]

I wonder how long does it take for a HDD to lose its magnetization ?

SSDs will last for 40...100years, depending on the quality of the flash cells... multi charge level cells will get corrupt earlier though, and majority of the current flash designs use multi charge cells.

[Lastcallhall]

I wonder how long does it take for a HDD to lose its magnetization ?

SSDs will last for 40...100years, depending on the quality of the flash cells... multi charge level cells will get corrupt earlier though, and majority of the current flash designs use multi charge cells.

This is my main argument in using SSDs over standard HDDs. I understand that the GB to $$ Ratio is lower when using traditional HDDs, I don't want to get caught, say 5 years down the road with a drive that's riddled with errors, or worse. My understanding is that SSDs reduce this possibility, although, on the flip side, if one cell goes bad, the drive is toast.

Grr... nothing is ever easy.

[The Coop]

I've got Fuji Film CDs from over 8 years ago that still work fine. As long as you take care of your mediums, they can last you a good long time. Just buy good quality DVD or CD-R discs, not Wal-Mart specials, and you'll be in good shape. I keep my discs out tucked away in a nice, steady temp place away from a lot of light. It's served me well thus far.

Oh, and don't be afraid of multiple back ups. HDDs, SSDs, CDs, DVDs... there's no guarantee that they'll last as long as some say, so be sure to make backups of backups as time goes along if it's something that's of high value to you.

[Lastcallhall]

Yeah, I'm burning the backups onto Taiyo Yudens, and have bought DVD cases to keep them in place, instead of tossing them into a book, where they'll inevitably be scratched. They're all in a DVD stand, too, so it's not like they're going anywhere (especially with a brand new 30 year mortgage). I'm just being careful, I guess.

[Rusty Venture]

I still have Imation discs from 10 years ago that are still good.

[Knuckle Duster]

The simple thing to do would be to build a NAS and have an encrypted volume image you backup to the cloud.
I'd sooner not horde data, but if I wanted to keep alot of it; I'd geek out and say "Fuck RAID", build a shitty PC with a ton of storage, and run an OS using ZFS.

It's got built in redundancies in how it addresses and stores data.

It was the last greatest thing Sun has done before being absorbed by the evil bastards of Oracle.

[Aaron]

I would take a two tiered approach. Get a large external HDD and backup to that, as well as to optical media such as BD-R. BD-R discs with inorganic dye and the hard-coat coating have been tested to last more than 50 years and are a pretty good deal for price per GB. I don't think this medium is going to be going away anytime soon. That way your data is spread across multiple BD-R's and one or two big external HDD's, the chance of loosing it all is very low.