What do people use for a shelf-stable backup
-
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.
-
-
-
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
-
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
-
-
-
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
You need a designated M Disc capable burner,yes. (Not generic BDXL,there are slight differences)
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.
