Long term storage

PhotoCarp · Joined: Sep 06, 2007 Posts: 109

I have amassed so many photos and videos that I need to consider long term storage for them. I'm currently at 75+GB of pictures and 200+GB of video. Last week the HDD with the video crashed. Recovering 200+GB takes a while so now it's time to archive. I know that there are at least two schools of thought on this.

One method is to burn everything to DVD's and put them in your safe deposit box. Advocates of this system say that HDD's fail and your data will be safe for a very long time. The naysayers' list of reasons includes degradation of optical discs and hardware obsolescence. (Remember all those 5.25" floppies that you saved those files on?)

The second method is leave them on your HDD, and do regular back ups. This is more of a "set it and forget it" thing with descent back up software (I currently use Acronis 10). In the plus column you always have a fresh copy. In the negative column you have catastrophic loss if your house burns down so you need to maintain at least two HDD's with one located away from the other.

Thoughts and suggestions?

pasquanel · Joined: Jun 20, 2005 Posts: 507 Location: Maine

Having lost some precious (to me) photos in the past I became a back up fanatic i.e. Acronis, Genie Back Up Pro. burn everything to DVDs
but realistically one forgetful moment or one bolt of lightning or HD failure and it's poof....gone.

For over a year now I have been using Carbonite on line backup it works immediately and automatically in the background. It's $49.99 per year and you can get extra time added by referring others. The beauty of this is it removes having to remember to do the back ups.
If peace of mind is worth $4.00 a month you can check it out here...Carbonite

Good Luck and Happy New Year! Very Happy

BudDurland · Joined: Dec 05, 2002 Posts: 475

With the amount of data you need to backup, CD or DVD is not a viable option IMHO. It will take to many discs, and the medium is not that reliable.

The controlling factor here is "how nervous are you"?

The easiest and cheapest way to backup all that data is to purchase and install a second hard drive in your computer, then backup the data to it. With terabyte drives costing around $100, this is pretty cheap.

The problem with this is that while it protects against a hard drive crash, and a file deleted by mistake, you are out of luck if the house burns down.

At the next level is an external hard drive. The plus here is portability. You can do the backup, then take the device somewhere off-site. You can also use the device on more than one source computer -- you've got a desktop, and your spouse has a laptop? External hard disks usually only cost $20-$50 more than their internal counter parts

A step past that is two external devices -- one "live" and one "off site"

Now we look at how to put the data on the backup device.

A batch file using XCOPY is surprisingly effective, if all you are looking to backup is data, pictures and movies. There are many utilities, both free and for pay, that go a step further and will create ZIP files of your data.

Usually the desire is to be able to recover the entire system from the backup. There are many good backup products -- Acronis True Image (my choice), Ghost (the choice of others on this board), Retrospect (you've probably only heard of it if you have a Mac), NTI, etc. If you would like to hear people's experiences about any of these products, just ask here -- most folks like to share!

One bit of opinion I'll pass along here. If you buy a "true" backup program, like Acronis or Ghost, don't be afraid to install the backup software on your computer. The software will take ups a very small percentage of your hard drive, but will make it very to remember to actually do the backups. I know that Acronis (and I'm pretty sure ghost) comes with a "boot CD" that you can use to restore your system after replacing a failed hard drive. No need to first install Windows on the replacement drive.

Hope this doesn't muddy the water too much Smile

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

The solution I use is a combination of that already mentioned. (& for OS's, I'll preach IMAGING until I'm blue in the face)
Remember - redundancy is the key here. The more places you have your files, the less likely you are of losing them.

I have a 2ndary drive in all my computers PLUS an external (USB) drive that I have backups on. The USB drive is only attached when I am backing up. The rest of the time it is sitting here UNHOOKED so I can grab & go if fire or whatever happens.

As for pix & such, I'd ALSO burn them to DVD & store them. The adage about obsoleteness (SP?) is garbage. Just dump them over to new technology when the old one starts to fizzle or keep the necessary stuff to use them around.

goretsky · Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:18 am Post subject:

Hello,

Have you considered using DVD-RAM media? It is considered to be more stable than writable DVD±R discs and comes in single (4.7GB) and double (9.4GB) disc sizes. You do, however, have to flip over the double-sided discs to access the second side. You would be able to fit a backup onto about 30 double-sided discs, which could then be kept in a cool dry location, such as a safe-deposit box.

If you are interested in going the hard disk drive backup router, you might want to consider using a RAID solution of some sort. RAID1, or mirroring, utilizes a pair of identical hard disk drives, and anything that is written to one hard disk drive automatically gets written to the other. Another level, RAID5, allows you to store data across multiple identical hard disk drives in "stripes" with enough information stored across the hard disk drives so that if one fails, the data is still available. You would want to keep spare hard disk drives around in case of a failure, though.

Another possibility might be use to use a NAS device such as Data Robotics' Drobo or one based on Microsoft's Windows Home Server. These types of devices have methods of storing data across multiple hard disk drives for redundancy, although I am not sure of how they are implemented.

Another option might be tape. DAT tape drives store up to 160GB of compressed data and Ultrium LTO tapes store up to 1.6TB of compressed data. The drives are more expensive than optical or hard disk drives, although tapes are relatively cheap.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

I should also point out that whatever method used, consider the failure rate of such devices. The more it is in use, (or just powered on) the greater the chance of it failing. (or being the victim of such things as lightning) This is another reason why I have a USB drive, UNHOOKED, with my backups on it. Plus the pix & such on disks.

But any way you go, the method(s) you choose must be one that YOU LIKE TO DO - as to be carried out. No backup system is any good if not done on a regular basis.

Best wishes & may all your backups be usable!