[geeks] Best media for personal long-term backup?

[Jochen Kunz]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:47:09 -0500 (EST)
nate at portents.com wrote:

> So I recently began the process of pulling out my CD-R discs that are
> 10 years old and older (I think my oldest disc is now 14 years) out
> and transferring the contents temporarily to my NAS for
> re-organization and re-archiving, and I need to decide on the storage
> medium again for the new (old) archive.
Hard disks. Multiple of them, each containing a separate copy of the
archive. If you use RAID use at least two different RAID systems, each
containing a separate copy of the archive. The redundancy of disks is
useless, if your one and only RAID controler breaks. I.e.: A RAID
controler is a single point of failure.

Constantly check the health status of your archive disks and replace
them. Or use a "pipeline". Start with two disks from different
manufacturers. Add an other every year and phase out the oldest disk if
you got more then e.g. 3 disks. This way you will have your data on at
least three different disks of different vintage.

MO is long dead. The disks are very robust, but the drives fail and are
hard to replace. Out of experience I do not trust in any CD-R or DVD-R
technic to be usable for reliable long term data archiving. And
handling stacks of CD / DVD media is realy cumbersome.

Tape is / can be good, but good tape technology is expensive.
--


tsch|_,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/