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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
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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
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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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