Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.

I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It’s mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).

I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I’m looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.

My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that’s quite outdated and DVDs don’t hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I’m unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I’m looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.

I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?

What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?

Cheers

  • DigitalDilemmaEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I used to write to DVD’s, but the failure rate was astronomical - like 50% after 5 years, some with physical separation of the silvering. Plus today they’re so relatively small they’re not worth using.

    I’ve gone through many iterations and currently my home setup is this:

    • I have several systems that make daily backups from various computers and save them onto a hard drive inside one of my servers.
    • That server has an external hard drive attached to it controlled by a wifi plug controlled by home assistant.
    • Once a month, a scheduled task wakes up that external hdd and copies the contents of the online backup directory onto it. It then turns it off again and emails me “Oi, minion. Backups complete, swap them out”. That takes five minutes.
    • Then I take the usb disk and put it in my safe, removing the oldest of 3 (the classic, grandfather, father, son rotation) from there and putting that back on the server for next time.
    • Once a year, I turn the oldest HDD into an “Annual backup”, replacing it with a new one. That stops the disks expiring from old age at the same time, and annual backups aren’t usually that valuable.

    Having the hdd’s in the safe means that total failure/ransomware takes, at most, a month’s worth. I can survive that. The safe is also fireproof and in another building to the server.

    This sort of thing doesn’t need to be high capacity HDDs either - USB drives and micro-SD cards are very capable now. If you’re limited on physical space and don’t mind slower write times (which when automating is generally ok), the microSd’s and clear labelling is just as good. You’re not going to kill them through excessive writes for decades.

    I also have a bunch of other stuff that is not critical - media files, music. None of that is unique and can be replaced. All of that is backed to a secondary “live” directory on the same pc - mostly in case of my incompetence in deleting something I actually wanted. But none of that is essential - I think it’s important to be clear about what you “must save” and what is “nice to save”

    The clear thing is to sit back and work out a system that is right for you. And it always, ALWAYS should be as automated as you can make it - humans are lazy sods and easily justify not doing stuff. Computers are great and remembering to do repetitive tasks, so use that.

    Include checks to ensure the backed up data is both what you expected it to be, and recoverable - so include a calendar reminder to actually /read/ from a backup drive once or twice a year.