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Suggestions for storing tons of confidential videos? (number of videos increases daily)
Black Ice
Charlotte, NCRegistered User regular
Charlotte, NCRegistered User regular
I'm in the need of storing a lot of videos. As in, I'll be taking them every day. They have extremely confidential information in them, so I'm not sure if a private YouTube channel would be the safest place (or is it?).
What's the cheapest, most reliable way to store massive amounts of data? Just buying external hard drives? If so, how do I justify doing that instead of using a private YouTube channel?
Thanks
What's the cheapest, most reliable way to store massive amounts of data? Just buying external hard drives? If so, how do I justify doing that instead of using a private YouTube channel?
Thanks
Black Ice on
0
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Is there a reason you want to use a service like youtube?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
First of all could you be a bit more specific regarding "massive amounts of data"? I work at a place where just the user logs take up TB's of space per year, so are you talking 10 GB a day, 1 GB a day or?
Secondly what do you mean by extremely confidential? Is that something you don't want friends or family to see. Is it financial valuable company information or ?
As for extremely confidential information in my world that means storing it off-line in a way not unlikely how a bank stores money only environmentally safer (wet money is still money, wet data...well). Plus of course a backup needs to exist and be kept separate but equally safe.
You need to think about risks and put this against the value of keeping the data confidential. Plus of course also consider how available the data must be. Is it for example more a storage thing for long time keeping or must the data be available within minutes/hours/days...
I think you may need to look at tape storage, hiring two bank boxes (in two separate banks from separate bank companies) and data encryption should also be worth considering. That's about the cheapest way I can thing of storing extremely confidential information and this still holds loads of compromises. If that is too expensive I'd strongly consider abandoning the project.
-Place hard drives in secure, padded cardboard box.
-Seal cardboard box in airtight plastic bag.
-Place bagged cardboard box in a slightly larger, metal box.
-Take metal box to your backyard.
-Dig hole in back yard approximately 10% distance from the back left corner of your yard. Place metal box inside.
-Fill in hole.
-Plant a Rose Bush (of moderate size to start with) over the burial site.
-Plant two other bushes at aesthetically pleasing distances from the rose bush.
-Mulch all three new plants along with existing plants in your back yard with a pleasing mulch color, this will help keep moisture for the plants along with insulating their roots against sudden frost.
-Brag to neighbors about your yard changes, with a specific interest in insightful one-up-man-ship amongst them so they also plant new foliage in the neighborhood.
Upon suspicion your secure storage has been compromised.
-Secure x1 fanatically reliable friend, tell them the location of the box and the conditions upon which for them to remind you about them upon desired retrieval date.
-Take several medications know to cause memory loss for short periods of time just before interrogation. Common drugs that affect memory and brain function include sleeping pills, antihistamines, blood pressure and arthritis medication, antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, and painkillers. Be sure to research these extensively for safety before use.
-Be interviewed and have your name cleared, try and leave yourself a reminder to get close to those snooping in on your secure storage.
-Have friend provide you with the information on the box upon arrival of your desired retrieval date, preferably via dead drop or some sort of hidden compartment upon your person (say, an unobtrusive pouch in your jeans or tucked into the battery slot in your wristwatch).
-Be smug in knowing you got away with it.
-All according to keikaku.
If this is for a company, pay for secure, private storage with authentication, especially if you have sensitive identification information.
For your consideration as a cost/benefit argument: Anything on YouTube could conceivably be seen by YouTube employees, accessed by hackers or accidentally released to the public because someone at YouTube hit the wrong button. This is a risk you face with any online storage of sensitive information. Not a huge risk granted, but it's a risk.
To justify the expense, refer to the recent Playstation account snafus, the Yahoo password hacking etc...
If the videos you are storing need to be kept absolutely private and completely confidential, the only way to assure that at 100% is to keep them offline in a hard drive.
You can pick up a usb hard drive dock pretty cheaply at any computer store, and hard drives are cheaper then ever. You should be able to find an internal terabyte drive for under a hundred bucks without too much difficulty.
If you're going to be working with the videos, rather then just storing them for the future, you might pick up a swappable hard drive kit that will allow you to easily install and remove the hard drive on your computer rather then working at the lower data transfer rates afforded by USB solutions.
1. How much data is there? What some people consider a lot of data isn't really a lot anymore. What resolution are you recording at? What format? How long are the videos? If you are already storing these videos, how much space do you need for an average day?
2. How long do you need to keep it? Days? Weeks? Months? Years?
3. What is your first priority? Security? Reliability? Speed? Cost? One thing you will find with data storage is that these factors are often diametrically opposed to each other. For example, the easiest way to increase reliability is to add redundancy. By definition, this requires more hardware and therefore makes cost go up. In short, there is no "cheapest, most reliable way". The cheapest way will never be the most reliable. You have to decide what is most important to you?
While we really need more information for specific recommendations, I CAN tell you that anything stored in somebody else's(i.e. Google's) data center is by definition, not confidential.
How would I do it? Given the little I know about your situation. My best guess would be to store it in a personal server with a RAID 5, potentially encrypted depending on the sensitivity of the data. Now, please don't take this the wrong way, but after reading your post, you don't sound particularly knowledgeable about this subject and I'm not sure the above suggestion would mean anything to you. If that is the case, I would suggest you talk to someone more involved in IT in person and discuss your situation. Especially if this is company/corporate data, you should really consult with an IT professional about this and get an enterprise solution.
Metaphorically speaking.
If it's a business thing, it's a business expense and there are companies that can help you set up a secure, encrypted, and backed-up system to handle data on whatever scale you need. The price will be commensurate with your needs vis-a-vis sensitivity and quantity.
I'm definitely not knowledgable about the subject - which is why I posted here! No offense taken.
Thank you everyone for the responses. To be more specific, this is customer information for a small business. We're adding about 500MB/week right now.
We're recording at the smallest resolution possible that is legible to read letters and numbers... I think it's 340 x 200something, which I think is a bit too small. But of course, increasing the resolution increases the size.
We currently don't have an IT pro. Frankly- the company threw this on me to do. They're leaning toward just using Google Docs at this point.
First priority is security, but it doesn't need to be anything outrageous. As everyone is saying - if it's that confidential, burry it in your backyard, etc. so it needs to be secure within reason. Second priority is cost.
Any examples of these companies?
A good example, I believe, would be someone like EMC. They're all about data solutions.
Iron Mountain is another.
Yeah, like what are you doing, filming their invoices?
Would a scanner be a better option?
If it's just documents or scans, the same solution works just as well. The only difference is you can use smaller drives (which you could really do in either case).
even documents or scans will get tedious eventually. you might want to look into database solutions (MySQL is free, easy to use, and if the company has a website, they probably have a MySQL database available to them with the hosting company).
if you have any questions about a MySQL solution, feel free to PM me.
Sharing from computer to computer would be a big plus, although I don't suppose it's necessary. I don't know anything about RAID except for the bug spray and candidly I don't have enough time to learn about it if it's complicated. We have a secure facility - cursory research and my understanding indicates that RAID is for protective purposes? Would the cheapest thing just be to buy terabyte hard drives?
EDIT: I think that helped solve the problem. 1 TB for $80 is ridiculously cheap. Thanks guys!
If losing that data would be catastrophic, I would highly consider looking into RAID. This link explains implementing it better than wikipedia.