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Best archival media?



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 8th 04, 12:02 AM
dg
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Default Best archival media?

If I wanted to store some data for 10 to 15 years (the business should be
closed by then), what would the best media be? It doesn't even have to be
CD, it could be DVD if for some reason DVD is better. ANY tips appreciated.
I did some googling, but the info I found was so old I couldn't help but
ask.

THANKS!
--Dan


  #2  
Old May 8th 04, 01:22 AM
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do a triple backup. Save to hard drive, to CD and to DVD. Whenever a
new medium comes out, do a file compare against all three media, and
then back up to the next new media (then you have 4 versions). When
the next new media comes out, do the same again. 10 years ago 5 1/4
inch, 1.2 mb floppies were the big thing. Can't read them now - no
floppy drives. Got to change medium every 3 years just to have
hardware to read the files.

"dg" wrote:
If I wanted to store some data for 10 to 15 years (the business should be
closed by then), what would the best media be? It doesn't even have to be
CD, it could be DVD if for some reason DVD is better. ANY tips appreciated.
I did some googling, but the info I found was so old I couldn't help but
ask.

THANKS!
--Dan


  #3  
Old May 8th 04, 04:47 PM
Toshi1873
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Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
says...
do a triple backup. Save to hard drive, to CD and to DVD. Whenever a
new medium comes out, do a file compare against all three media, and
then back up to the next new media (then you have 4 versions). When
the next new media comes out, do the same again. 10 years ago 5 1/4
inch, 1.2 mb floppies were the big thing. Can't read them now - no
floppy drives. Got to change medium every 3 years just to have
hardware to read the files.


Also add recovery data to the media using QuickPar (or
the open-source command line version). If you trust
that WinRAR will be around in 10-15 years, you can also
use their recovery record option.

http://quickpar.co.uk/

External USB/firewire drives make a good near-line
archival option. 160GB 5400rpm drives are around $100
and cases are $30-$40. Only use enclosures with built-
in power-supplies, because it's too easy to lose power-
bricks.

For secure media storage, I'd stick with one of the DVD
formats and recovery data, using a good quality media
(TY or some folks seem to trust a specific ritek dye).
A reasonable amount of recovery data would be to fill
the DVD to 4GB with data, then fill the last 0.35GB with
PAR2 recovery data. Verify annually. If possible,
overlap each period's data across 3 archive sets. When
a higher density storage media (BluRay) comes out in a
few years, migrate your archival data to the new format.

For the more paranoid, archive 24GB at a time, but
spread it across 8 DVDs, filling the rest of the media
with recovery data. You'll end up with 24GB of source
data and 10.4GB of PAR2 data. If the source data and
recovery data is evenly mixed across the 8 DVDs, you can
physically destroy up to 2 of the DVDs and still recover
all of your data. (Sorta like RAID5, but a bit more
recovery ability.) Downside is that you're taking
*long* prep time and you have to keep track of the 8
DVDs as a set. My AthlonXP 2600+ with DDR333 would
probably take around 20 hours to create 10.4GB of PAR2
data (not tested).
 




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