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Long time Archive Solutions?
SniperGuy
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
So my dad's looking into making an archive for some files, notably some old Vinyls he's ripping, old files, home movies, etc. He can get it all digital easily enough, but CDs decay rather quickly, and putting it on a harddrive to rest inside a safe...well, I don't know if that's a good idea or not.
Any ideas as to what the best idea for storing a large amount of data for a lasting time?
Any ideas as to what the best idea for storing a large amount of data for a lasting time?
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Valuable things? I presume he simply means a fireproof safe or safety deposit box.
Go with optical storage. Burn two sets of the data on decent quality CD's or DVD's. If your climate is humid, seal them. In dry conditions, optical storage will last you decades.
Do burnt DVDs last as long as CDs? Because iirc, standard DVD-Rs hold 4GB, which is only 50 DVDs. I can't imagine any valuable data that you would keep and NOT check/update/re-organize every decade, so optical storage seems ideal.
If properly maintained, I do not see why not, at least for a handful of years.
EDIT: Also, it may be kind of fucked up to say something like this, but in a few years, maybe if the market shifts enough, swap to 5 or 6 Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs instead?
EDIT: Alot of modern DLTs can store 100's of gigabytes.
15 years or less? Ask a librarian or archivist. Optical storage is pretty much the most durable and long lasting form of storage you're going to find, much better and more reliable than magnetic storage on either a hard drive or a tape (tape storage is good for data backup because it's cheap, not because it lasts a particularly long time). If you don't expose CD's or DVD's to humidity they'll last you decades.
If it's a matter of convenience (I remember backing up hard drives onto 50 floppies, backing up onto 50 dvd's wouldn't be much more enjoyable) then definitely go with some big hard drives, but if the data is important and you really do want it to last, go optical.
If you went dual-layer, it'd only be 25 dvd's
Then an Amiga with a 3.5" 800K single density floppy drive.
Accessing that data now is hard no matter how well the floppy disk has survived.
It fifteen years you may have swapped from Windows, and windows then will have as much compatability as it does now to Windows 95. You may be using Linux. Or Macs.
Their is only one way to keep data alive and that is to bring it with you. Put it on a Hard drive and DVDs as an extra back up. But one day they will be as 5" floppies are now. But then to keep it alive keep a copy on all the machines you own.
You upgrade, you bring it with you. You convert the music to new formats. The text to new formats. Keep it modern.
Many copies keeps things safe.
For long term access to files, you may want to start running Linux. Ogg vorbis, will always be available to access your audio. Text files will always be able to be read.
For example some of the fortran code I run for my PhD on linux has comments from the 70's stuck in there. I find that a lot harder to believe would happen in Windows and OS X.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
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And there's a difference between burnt optical media and pressed optical media. The latter will last FAR longer. I suppose as long as we're making backups that'd work, but still, convience matters. Would a flash drive last longer for just standard degrading than a magnetic hard disk?
Bloody hell, I've just realised how old my cd32 is!
PSN: SirGrinchX
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No!
Flash drives can easily become corrupt after even a year or so if you leave the same data on them.
My suggestion is to Buy an external hard drive, write everything once and then store it in a cool dry place. Hard drives don't wear out if you don't use them, to the best of my knowledge.
Just like it got sued before by SCO. It makes no difference. I don't believe Ubuntu has made a deal at all. And corp's like IBM will protect linux again as they did with SCO.
And even if it is was. Any code found conflicting would be changed within hours so that there was no longer a problem. And as no one owns Linux even if Microsoft drove every distro bust - new ones could leaglly spring up over night.
The entire Astronomical community is dependent on Linux. Do you know the Rovers on Mars? They run Linux. Most web servers run linux.
It might not be the solution for you - but I promise you - Linux will offer much better long term access to data than corperate OS's.
It probably isn't best for you. But you can't dismiss Linux.
2009 is a year of Updates - one every Monday. Hopefully. xx
I heard a local media specialist talk recently, a guy whose main job is basically transferring film & video for one format to another for major clients (film conversion to digital for post & back for instance). According to him the manufacturers' official expected lifespan of commercial, pressed DVDs hits about 20yrs vs the roughly 100yrs for CDs. That surprised me, but is apparently at least partially due to how much more compact the data is on the surface.
Multiple HD backups (or tape) in multiple locations would be the way to go. It sounds weird but a few recording engineers I've talked to swear that to preserve HD backups they need to be powered on every year or so (which is being generous, could go much longer)... not all HDs are subject to this, just the tech in your common ATA drive or whatever. The technical reasons were explained to me once but it was a few years ago. I'll try and dig it up. edit: These are guys keeping backups for major clients including major labels, they're inveseted in keeping the data around.
Un-shown film in a temperature and humidity controlled environment is most archival for images, unplayed vinyl is most archival for sound. When a motion picture is 'restored' generally a new film print is actually the end result, maybe a hi-def video master is made for home video release later down the line.
If the trend of contemporary archivists is really to archive to CDR and DVDR they're in for a hell of a shock.
The short answer is that everything fades & everything dies, regularly backup your backups no matter what you do, and keep multiples.
If you want a bit better storage, then DVD-RAM is your better bet. The discs hold 2x a DVDR, and last much longer. They are also rewritable if you need to add or change something on them later. The drive and media are going to cost you a bit more though.
Also, if you go optical with DVDR or DVD-RAM - store them where they aren't touching each other or plastic. Don't put them in a CD binder or spindle where they could melt together or eventually bond with the surface next to them. Store them in hard cases or in a storage system that separates them slightly.
The original gold-tint CDRs had a archive lifetime of 25-50 years depending on brand and quality. Pre-recorded CDs are much higher (as you stated, up to 100 years or so). Today's CDRs use the cheap tint and thus have hardly any archive lifespan because they are mass-produced to be cheap. Gold-tint was NOT cheap.
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