[Frogging101]

I have heard that hard drives last on average about 5 years. I have a 1TB backup drive (internal) with all my important files on it that are stored nowhere else.

Obviously, hard drives DO fail. And when mine does, my data is screwed. Now, the obvious solution is to back up my stuff somewhere else. But where? Another drive?

No, another drive would just fail again. Do you see where I am going with this? This means that my data will only last for another 4-6 years. Is there anything I can do to stop it?

 

[ComGuards]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frogging101 I have heard that hard drives last on average about 5 years. I have a 1TB backup drive (internal) with all my important files on it that are stored nowhere else. Obviously, hard drives DO fail. And when mine does, my data is screwed. Now, the obvious solution is to back up my stuff somewhere else. But where? Another drive? No, another drive would just fail again. Do you see where I am going with this? This means that my data will only last for another 4-6 years. Is there anything I can do to stop it?

Optical media - DVDs / BluRay
Magnetic media - Tape backups

Tape backup is commonly used by businesses. They can be stored at a secure location (such as Iron Mountain) for an extended amount of time.

 

[BNT]

Thats just on average. With decent maintenance you can extend your HDD life. If you really want to protect your data just make hard copies (print text to paper, burn cds/dvds, etc.)

 

[stupidcha]

upload your data online?
heard of moxy?

 

[JVene]

At an average rate of 30 cents a DVD, it would take about $70 worth to back up a 1Tb drive, and would require a couple hundred disks at bout 8 minutes each, or about 30 hours.

Tape can work, but the drives are even more expensive and the standards aren't all that consistent.

Frankly, at the price of the green drives these days, it's better to just pick up one or two as additional backup drives and duplicate the data as storage, periodically adding to the arrangement.

 

[ComGuards]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JVene At an average rate of 30 cents a DVD, it would take about $70 worth to back up a 1Tb drive, and would require a couple hundred disks at bout 8 minutes each, or about 30 hours. Tape can work, but the drives are even more expensive and the standards aren't all that consistent. Frankly, at the price of the green drives these days, it's better to just pick up one or two as additional backup drives and duplicate the data as storage, periodically adding to the arrangement.

Tape has inconsistent standards? I guess I'm missing something

. Never experienced compatibility issues if I went with, say LTO4. Backed up to an HP LTO4 robotic library, restored using a Dell LTO4 single-drive...

As for backing up a 1TB HDD... that's a lot of pictures and documents. You're not going to be backing up movies to optical media, since under Digital-whatever-Acts, you're only allowed to create a backup copy of a movie you already own, so if you happen to rip a movie to HDD, you should still have the original source, so you don't need to back those up.

Likewise with music, probably? Or else it's linked to whatever legal download account you have and you can re-download it in the event of a failure.

Anyways, the original question didn't ask for the most economic means. It asked for long-term alternatives.

Optical and tape are long-term alternatives, even if they may not be the most fiscally-practical.

 

[TheDreadedGMan]

well this is the classic problem with data storage.. basically all forms fail eventually, that's why old paper books are so impressive, they fail but take hundreds of years if stored well

The strategy I've been employing for years is just duplication... The more copies the safer, so really important small stuff can also be stuck on things like DropBox or Google Docs for free, and the rest just keep copying it on to other HDDs.. just keep em alive...

Tape is a bit longer life, but really they can be a pain to deal with... once you've got a system it's ok... Optical media is pointless unless you store it perfectly, and even then it degrades, so you might as well use HDDs...

 

[ComGuards]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDreadedGMan well this is the classic problem with data storage.. basically all forms fail eventually, that's why old paper books are so impressive, they fail but take hundreds of years if stored well The strategy I've been employing for years is just duplication... The more copies the safer, so really important small stuff can also be stuck on things like DropBox or Google Docs for free, and the rest just keep copying it on to other HDDs.. just keep em alive... Tape is a bit longer life, but really they can be a pain to deal with... once you've got a system it's ok... Optical media is pointless unless you store it perfectly, and even then it degrades, so you might as well use HDDs...

I agree with all this, just so you know.

I don't personally have a robotic library at home, though that would be cool. Just not worth it, like you said. I just have a bunch of file servers with replication and external backups as well as off-site replication to another set of servers and another whole bunch of external hard-drives. And finally, a once-a-month backup to an enterprise-level drive that I put inside a safe-deposit box at the bank... A bit excessive though, but once you lose data once, you tend to get as such

 

[JVene]

Quote:

Tape has inconsistent standards? I guess I'm missing something

Well, I go way back...I mean all the way back to cassette tape storage, like on the TRS-80

Over the years, of all the problems I've ever had, tape has been my biggest headache. Just last month a client that depends on tape backup required a restore, couldn't find any in the last sequence of daily backups that would actually read (even though they verified each day), and only 1 tape from 6 months ago was usable. It is convenient to be able to put 30/60/120Gbytes on a single media, but the drives have to be kept clean, the tape itself is fragile and, indeed, depending on the OS and applications, it can be difficult to pull data off of an older backup sometimes.

Multiple instances is about the best solution I've found in the last 10 years.

 

[ComGuards]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JVene Well, I go way back...I mean all the way back to cassette tape storage, like on the TRS-80 Over the years, of all the problems I've ever had, tape has been my biggest headache. Just last month a client that depends on tape backup required a restore, couldn't find any in the last sequence of daily backups that would actually read (even though they verified each day), and only 1 tape from 6 months ago was usable. It is convenient to be able to put 30/60/120Gbytes on a single media, but the drives have to be kept clean, the tape itself is fragile and, indeed, depending on the OS and applications, it can be difficult to pull data off of an older backup sometimes. Multiple instances is about the best solution I've found in the last 10 years.

I've found that disk-disk-tape has worked best for me in the past... or disk-disk-disk-disk-tape, or something like that. So yeah, basically just the same.

Though every so often I've had to revert all the way to tape to recover things... and yes, have run into many issues with tapes - though mainly with older iterations. But I understand your POV.