What do people use for a shelf-stable backup
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I have a terrible track record with USB sticks, including completely losing a stack of photos because of a USB stick.
I'm now thinking the benefits of a nice error-correcting file system probably outweigh the benefits of using a widely supported one. So I might use a pair of mirrored hard drives with SATA->USB cable, then include instructions along the lines of "plug into my linux laptop to access, or take to a computer repair show if you can't work it out".
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The printed photos are only there as an extra layer of redundancy in case everything else fails. It's ok if they get discoloured a bit, it never put me off going through my grandparents' suitcases of photos. Ideally the digital files survive, if not then at least there is something rather than nothing.
Is SSD really necessary? Everything I search up says SSDs have worse retention than HDD in cold storage. A couple TB of HDD is pretty cheap these days, and seems like a better cold storage option.
You can’t exactly make it fool-proof. Outside people will never know what you did to create your backup and what to do to access it. Who knows if the drives file system or file types are still readable after 20 years? Who knows if SATA and USB connectors are still around after that time?
Yes, so now I'm thinking a rotation cycle. About every 5 years replace the drives with new ones, copy over all data. If newer technology exists then I can move to that newer technology. This way I'm keeping it up to date as long as I can.
For example it is very likely that SATA will disappear within the next 10-15 years as hdds are becoming more and more an enterprise thing and consumers are switching to M.2 ssds.
Does this matter if I have a SATA->USB cable stored with it? Other than if USB A standards change or get abandoned for USB C, but that should be covered by the review every 5 years.
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Is SSD really necessary? Everything I search up says SSDs have worse retention than HDD in cold storage. A couple TB of HDD is pretty cheap these days, and seems like a better cold storage option.
SSDs are by design less susceptible by design. No moving parts and able to work in much harsher conditions than hdds will ever be able to. The standard set by JEDEC requires every consumer ssd to have a 1 year data retention while powered off at 30 °C (I think). That's the minimum it has to archieve but usually they are better than that. Do not buy the cheapest thumb drives because they contain the all the crap that wasn't good enough to make ssds from it.
Btw you need to fire hdds up regularly too or the motor gets stuck. I think every 3-6 months was the recommendation.Yes, so now I’m thinking a rotation cycle. About every 5 years replace the drives with new ones, copy over all data.
Don't make it flat every 5 years. Let a software monitor the SMART values of the drives and send notifications if the values indicate an increased change of a dying disc/ssd.
Does this matter if I have a SATA->USB cable stored with it?
Those are the first that fail, followed by the usb controller chip in the tray. Keep it as simple as possible. Removable trays are probably the best way but I'm not sure how much wear they can take.Do not buy 2.5" drives. This class will die out soon
. There were no new hdds introduced in years and ssds are often replaced by M.2 ones because of the faster connection. -
Completely understandable. I say this as someone with way more photos in digital only media than I should.
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I've decided I should have a small number of physical prints, as extra redundancy. I'm thinking I'll print 100 each year to store with the hard drive backup.
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I decided instead to use ZFS. Better protection than just letting something sit there. Your backups are only as good as your restores. So, if you are not testing your restores, those backups may be useless anyway.
ZFS with snapshots, replicated to another ZFS box. The replicated data also stores the snapshots and they are read-only. I have snapshots running every hour.
I have full confidence that my data is safe and recoverable.
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I have automated backups including to cloud, but I want a separated manual system that cannot get erased if I mess something up (accidentally sync a delete, lose encryption key, forget to pay cloud bill). I have 3 2 1 but it's all automated and backups are eventually replaced, if it's not a critical failure I won't necessarily know I've lost something.
Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don't want it encrypted.
Based on other conversations I'm planning on using duel disks mirrored, zfs, annual updates and disk checks with disks rotated out every 5 years (unless failing/failed). Handling the need for layman retrival of data by including instructions with the hard drives.
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You are the first person who has recommended SSD for cold storage. Everyone else (including what I've googled) says HDD for cold storage, just spin up every year or two and they will be fine. Can you point me at further reading?
Don't worry, I'll SMART check the drives each year as I update as required.
As for types of drives dying out soon, I can reassess the situation every 5 years when I do drive replacement. I would be confident 2.5" drives will still be readable in 5 years.
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Reminds me of project Silica. Media historically was more durable (stone/ ink and cloth paper, etc) but had a low data density. As density increased, so did fragility
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If you need something which can withstand some bitrot on single drive, just use par2. As long is filesystem is readable, you can recover files even if bit of data get corrupted
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That is not gonna work - read up on byte rot.
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That sounds like a really good idea. You basically get the best of everything.
The cool thing about ZFS is the pool information is stored on the disks themselves. You can just plug them in and import the pools.
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Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don't want it encrypted.
I have a client with a photographic studio. To give you an estimate, his data is around 14TB of mostly camera pictures with approximately 20 years or history and the owner believe it or not, relies on multiple external hard drives for cold storage, he has a 2TB Seagate thats like 2011-2012 old which still works.
To put in a cupboard tho, M disc is your best bet.
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Do not use an SSD for cold storage - it will fail. SSDs need to be plugged in every once to refresh the charge in their NAND, otherwise they'll lose the data.
This is not a theoretical thing - I've had a good Samsung 850 Pro drive fail while being off for 2 years.
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Yeah it's an interesting thought. They seem to come up to 100GB capacity, but the wikipedia page claims (with a [dubious] qualifier) that you need some sort of special higher power burning device to write to M-Disc.
I don't have an optical drive at the moment. Would I just pick any rated for BDXL?
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Everyone is saying to avoid flash memory. It doesn't store well.
Another suggestion given is M-Disc, which might be a better option because then anyone should be able to throw it in a CD drive and load it without having to worry about the format of the drive and things like that. And even if CDs are not that common anymore, I think people will still know what they are and be able to find a way to load it even in 50 years. Like if someone found a cassette tape today (I know they were common much less than 50 years ago, but it's hard to find an example since records came back into fashion). Plus M-Discs are designed for long term storage, so I could worry less about bitrot and files getting corrupt etc. They are write once so I'm not going to write over existing content.
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You need a designated M Disc capable burner,yes.
There are a few on the market though - they cost around 100-150 bucks usually.(In theory you can use a regular writer sometimes - I know people who do that,but why risk that?)
I usually recommend the verbatim to my clients,they are dirt cheap and work flawlessly so far.For reading the discs any regular data-capabale blue ray disk drive will do.
