Store 10 GB data for 7-8 years, SSD?

les_garten

les_garten

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I have a client who needs to keep a Copy of about 10GB of data for like 7-10 years. This data may be never accessed or may be accessed just a few times in that span of time.

My solution to him is to get two 1 TB external SSDs and copy the files out to these two drives as identical copies. I'll also burn a Blu Ray.

These are PDF files

Any other suggestions? Good idea - Bad Idea?
 
I have a HDD spinny boi that has 10.8 years of powered on time, an SSD will be fine if its not getting tons of usage, especially with 2 copies and a blu-ray
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Why get 1TB drives for 10GB of data? grab some 256GB ones.
Maybe toss them on a thumbdrive as well
 
As said, why a 1TB external, waste of money.

Also, why not use a cloud storage as a 3rd option also? How important are these documents?

Get like 10x 16GB USB drives for the same price as external SSDs and store them in several places, if you want get the Kingston encrypted ones and just remember the password
 
les_garten said:
I have a client who needs to keep a Copy of about 10GB of data for like 7-10 years. This data may be never accessed or may be accessed just a few times in that span of time.

My solution to him is to get two 1 TB external SSDs and copy the files out to these two drives as identical copies. I'll also burn a Blu Ray.

These are PDF files

Any other suggestions? Good idea - Bad Idea?
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Cloud storage replicated copy like S3 AWS storage in Glacier?
 
The data is only important if It is called for, and it most likely won't ever be. There are penalties to not having it available if called. These are Medical Records. It just needs to be reliably available for a call that may never come, or may come once to see one PDF out of 3000 or so.

No online. Just need reliable storage for let's say a decade.

No Online, No HDD is my feeling

So memory based, anybody have a feeling for SSD vs Flash?
 
les_garten said:
The data is only important if It is called for, and it most likely won't ever be. There are penalties to not having it available if called. These are Medical Records. It just needs to be reliably available for a call that may never come, or may come once to see one PDF out of 3000 or so.

No online. Just need reliable storage for let's say a decade.

No Online, No HDD is my feeling

So memory based, anybody have a feeling for SSD vs Flash?
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Get something with Hardware level encryption like an Iron Key or something like it. SSD 100% of spinners
 
Is their any compiance around how this data is stored? Since it is medical records? Is it this persons records, or other people's records?
 
Get two usb spinning drives, get two anti static bags, get two large enough zip lock bags, get two large desiccant sachets.

Put data on drives, put drives in anti static bags with desiccant sachets, put the lot in ziplock bags, make sure they are closed properly. Change (or refresh if you can be bothered) the desiccant every 2 years.
 
Keljian said:
Get two usb spinning drives, get two anti static bags, get two large enough zip lock bags, get two large desiccant sachets.

Put data on drives, put drives in anti static bags with desiccant sachets, put the lot in ziplock bags. Change (or refresh if you can be bothered) the desiccant every 2 years.
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Why mechanical Hard Drives vs SSD?
 
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Keljian said:
Because data on ssds is stored as electrical charge, data on mechanical drives is magnetic. Electrical charge held in transistors has leakage and needs to be periodically refreshed/turned on. On magnetic media that is not the case.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/427...ally-need-to-worry-about-ssd-reliability.html
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Interesting, didn't know that about Memory Chips. Not impressed by a Magnetic drive that is not run though either. How about hooking up a SSD for 24 hours every year for maintenance charge?
 
Absolutely, don't use thumb drives. You will lose your data. Same with an SSD.
For archival purposes get a cheap spinning disc. It will last forever.
I use archival grade dvd-rs as well.
 
When data cannot be lost over a long period of time, I would create at least 3 backups on different media and a 2nd copy.
BD disk, Hard drive and SSD, stored in a safe or cool damp free place, sealed with no air flow.
Also place a large moisture absorbing silica gel pad with them (or similar) and replace it every year. (they can be re-used by drying in an oven)
Use only high quality media and keep 2nd copies in a place well away, in case of fire, theft or a mistake.
Then you have the best chance of recovery without incurring more long term costs.
 
Guys why not just use a bluray burner? Should be within even single layer of 25gb. Optical discs are way superior to any of 5he others for long term storage. Oh and discs are only a few bucks.
 
robijito123 said:
Guys why not just use a bluray burner? Should be within even single layer of 25gb. Optical discs are way superior to any of 5he others for long term storage. Oh and discs are only a few bucks.
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I saw a disc being eaten away by strange bacteria or something else.
I'd upload an image but as soon as I enable scripting now, I cant even make a post, the box to type in disappears!

Also some old BD discs had problems, they can age.

Hahaaar, I can still upload images even though I cant see where they are going :D
 

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Nenu said:
I saw a disc being eaten away by strange bacteria or something else.
I'd upload an image but as soon as I enable scripting now, I cant even make a post, the box to type in disappears!
Also some old BD discs had problems, they can age.

Hahaaar, I can still upload images even though I cant see where they are going :D
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That's an offbrand cd-r. Not a factory pressed disk bought from a reputable company. Big difference there.
 
Burn 2 or 3 copies onto name brand, long-life CD-R's (not DVD if possible). Library of Congress research suggests that you'll get at least a couple decades.

If you want a little extra safety, put the data on a USB hard drive as well and mount it to spin up the drive every few months. I might even suggest investing in a second CD drive (can be outboard / USB) just in case one goes south over the years.

Store everything in a low humidity environment. Don't allow the CD-R's to touch plastic (or anything else) while stored, use a proper jewel case.

I would absolutely NOT use cloud storage. Who knows what providers will survive, or will retain the same storage product for 8 years?
 
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I think I still have a wheel of burned psx and Dreamcast cdrs that have survived 2 decades and blurays from 2005 but just my 2c.
 
robijito123 said:
I think I still have a wheel of burned psx and Dreamcast cdrs that have survived 2 decades and blurays from 2005 but just my 2c.
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Yeah, I think I threw out some ancient (as in 25-year-old) CD-R backups. They were still raw-readable except that I no longer had the program that created them; so the data was gibberish.

Tape can last a long time as long as you store it properly, which is unlikely outside of an enterprise.
 
les_garten said:
I'm definitely doing Blu Ray in addition to whatever else.
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TBH I think I'd go with a lower density medium if at all possible. The higher the density the more sensitive it is to degradation. Blu-Ray is better than no optical copy though.
 
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trandoanhung1991 said:
All jokes aside, I think you should check out tape drives, should be solid unless you don't have the capacity to store them safely.
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Isn't getting started with writing-reading part of it really expensive and only make sense for giant amount of data ?
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
I'm pretty sure there are affordable rental services floating out there.
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This data may be never accessed or may be accessed just a few times in that span of time.

That combined it is for a client (and only 10 gig) I would favorize physical support they will able easily to read it in 10 year's if they forgot about it and moved during that time frame, simple USB drive-flash disk being the first obvious option, bluray being already possibly being sometime not obvious to be read in an office-someone in 10 year's, depending of the client obviously. Cloud storage for a giant almost certain to survive (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) being an other one.
 
LukeTbk said:
This data may be never accessed or may be accessed just a few times in that span of time.

That combined it is for a client (and only 10 gig) I would favorize physical support they will able easily to read it in 10 year's if they forgot about it and moved during that time frame, simple USB drive-flash disk being the first obvious option, bluray being already possibly being sometime not obvious to be read in an office-someone in 10 year's, depending of the client obviously. Cloud storage for a giant almost certain to survive (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) being an other one.
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Well according to the research collected in the article I posted any form of disc media lasts 5 years tops, same with HDDs, so I wouldn't count on those. For long term storage like this I think at least 3 tiers would be ideal, so maybe SSD > USB Flash > Tape.

Or maybe even "refresh" the data every year? IMO that would be a good idea to perform regardless of what media you choose.
 
trandoanhung1991 said:
Well according to the research collected in the article I posted any form of disc media lasts 5 years tops, same with HDDs, so I wouldn't count on those. For long term storage like this I think at least 3 tiers would be ideal, so maybe SSD > USB Flash > Tape.

Or maybe even "refresh" the data every year? IMO that would be a good idea to perform regardless of what media you choose.
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Your article is shit, sorry.
 
I have CD-Rs that I haven't been nice to which are still perfect and over two decades old. I have DVD-Rs which have been treated better but nothing special which are well over a decade old and still work perfect. I've been using optical as my backups for a very long time and there's a reason for it. Good optical media when burned properly can and will last a long ass time. It will last a hell of a lot longer than any sort of flash storage.

I'm laughing at all these suggestions of using any type of flash whether it be thumb drive or SSD. It's obvious some people haven't bothered to look into pros and cons of storage and have little or no experience even in a casual way regarding long term storage. I'm definitely not an expert at all on storage but at least I've researched enough to know what not to use for a backup for any sort of long term.

There's a reason optical media has been around a long time. It's convenient, it's cheap and it works.

I'd definitely go with optical media of some sort for storage. I do agree with some who say that Bluray might not be the best and that DVD may be better due to much lower data density. That's assuming it's not an issue splitting up the data between multiple discs in the case of DVD. Personally, I would do multiple copies of both DVD and Bluray for some extra redundancy. Both are a lot cheaper and more reliable than any suggestion of flash storage or spinning hard drives. Optical will also be easier and more convenient to store.
 
Well I'm glad I asked this question!

I am looking at M-Disc BluRay. Multiple Copies.

I had no idea SSD was so Volatile. Can't we just power up for like 3 days once a year with New drives?

Originally before I posted here I was thinking 3 SSD's and a Couple BluRay copies M-Disc.

Tape ain't gonna Happen. Online, no. Realistically we need to go 7 years, but I kinda rounded up to 10.

Hard rives that don't spin much scare me as much as anything else.
 
I don't remember if M-Disc is one companies brand or a standard. Ideally, you want media from multiple reputable manufacturers, if that's not possible, at least try to get it from multiple batches. You don't want all N copies to fail around the same time because the factory was too warm on the tuesday the disks were made (or whatever).

If you really care about this data, generate par2 files and store those as well. On an annual basis, read everything from all the disks and make sure the par2s verify. If any disk fails, make new copies on freshly bought disks. There's certainly privacy issues, but having one copy on an active disk would help too, as long as that disk is somewhat cared for. If you only have to make a good effort, burn the disks once and store in conditioned space and forget about it until after the retention period ends and you can destroy them.

I've got my old Dreamcast burns, and some of them don't play anymore, although the one I wanted to play, I was able to take an image and burn to a new cd-r and play (well, that cd-r was old too, but hadn't been written yet).
 
I'm late to the party, but yeah...SSD and flash drives are a bad idea. Probably the worst media of all mentioned. Even powering it up every so often won't do it.
 
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