How do you keep 1.5TB of important information safe for generations ?

[Fif23]

Hi there !
I have collected about 1.5TB of important materials.
Scientific data and paid courses, pictures and family videos, personal sports videos, favorite movies, gazzilion books, etc etc.

So far the best I have come up with is 2X2TB hard drives, and a weekly auto clone from drive A to drive B... But both are connected.

My brother recently had a complete electrical failure burning both of his drives and I am afraid it will happen to me too !!

Is there a better option than what I am doing...
Should I add a 3rd USB 2TB drive...
The drives are almost full... Is it safer to get 2x3tb and have more open space on them in terms of reliability ?

Thanks for any suggestions

 

[eidairaman1]

2 HDDs that are not used on usb controllers, DVD/Blue Ray disks put in a hermetically sealed vaccum firproof case.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

http://www.mdisc.com/mdisc-technology/

Optical Media with a 1000 year lifespan.

You would need 15x100GB for 1.5TB

Also are you compressing this data? I would compress the hell out of it and then burn to mdisc...only stuff you want to last literally forever.

 

[Sasqui]

http://www.mdisc.com/mdisc-technology/

Optical Media with a 1000 year lifespan.

You would need 25x100GB for 2.5GB

That's interesting tech, never seen it before.

Media:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KGWV6MI/?tag=tec06d-20

LG M-Disc writer:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ACOQF2Q/?tag=tec06d-20

Edit: Back to the OP's question. I've got a NAS Raid 1, a WD Black HD in my main PC and an USB 3.0 external drive. It's a pain, but I keep them all in sync and the external drive lives in a fireproof safe.

 

[Fif23]

So I'd need 3 packs of that MDic 100gb x 5 correct ? That's 300 bucks for the plates and 120$ for the burner.

420$ for a lifetime media isn't bad ! I will look into it. Is 100gb per disc the maximum ?

Also, should I keep running 2XTB spin drives for the flow of using the backups ? Perhaps upgrade them to WD Reds that are supposed to be on 24/7 for many years? Will that be a smart preventative measure ?

 

[Kursah]

Redundancy.

RAID like a 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 or 60...depending on if the data store is gonna grow or how many drive failures the array should be able to handle and what kind of performance needs you have.

Replication.

Beyond the primary RAID array. A NAS with its own RAID that is used as a backup storage for the main data set.

Enterprise grade drives are a good idea for longer term reliability. Also consider replicating the backup to storage that is or can be taken off site to a secure location. Even a USB hard drive solution would work here if it is rarely used. I would prefer an enterprise grade drive with USB adapter to the Costco USB HDD specials that fail in a few months of consistent use.

It all comes back to redundancy though. You want your data to stick around long term? Diversify the storage solutions it is on and manage them appropriately.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Dried sheep's skin. Will last about 2000 years in a dry climate.

 

[silentbogo]

Or here's a better one: Verbatim BD-XL Mdisk, 5-pack (500GB of storage)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011PIJPOC/?tag=tec06d-20

Why haven't I heard of M-disks before?

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Dried sheep's skin. Will last about 2000 years in a dry climate.

You could tattoo it with special ink....With Hex...So 1.5TBs = 300,000 dead sheep and like 50 tonnes of skin. LMAO.

MDSIC is a better alternative and less expensive and not as gross.

 

[dorsetknob]

Have it transcribed to Platinum or Gold punch cards
store in Fort knoxx or Area 51 as Alien Artifacts

 

[qubit]

@Fif23 I wanna make sure I've understood you properly before answering. Are you talking about keeping data in a readable and accessible state for something like 100 years, 200 years or more?

 

[Sasqui]

Apparently, NASA has figured it out:

 

[natr0n]

Keep multiple copies in a cool ,dark and dry place.

 

[suraswami]

2 drives, keep one onsite and one offsite, periodically sync them, yeah manual process but hey some kind of backup and safety right!!

 

[Fif23]

Well, to be clear I don't REALLY need it to last for a millenium just be afcessible for replication as years pass without losing it if one drive fails.

Can I have raid on two Red WD 3TB drives ? How would i start ?

 

[jboydgolfer]

Might I suggest viewing and then memorizing the information?

get five or six 256 GB stick drives, save the information to them ,seal them up nicely put them in a safety deposit box.

I can't imagine the degradation would be anything that traveling over the next 5 to 10 years in which time I'm sure a technology will be available that would resolve this issue and then some.
The way I look at it, is you don't need to worry about storing it for a lifetime safely just for the next 5 to 10 years until the technology becomes available that allows you to do this actually for a lifetime
At which point the technology at the time will allow you to encode genetic DNA sequences and inject them into your bloodstream there by passing them on from generation to generation,via typical intercourse best procreation

 

[Halo3Addict]

Do you access these files on a regular basis, or are they more for sense of security in that you can access them whenever you want?

I've been researching NAS servers and there's a lot of cool things you can do with them, including redundancy, backups, internal network access, external network access, and many other configurations. If you just want a place to store for an eternity, physical media is probably better, as HDD's tend to fail within a few years of usage. Then again, technology changes so often you may not have a way to access a Blu Ray storage media in 100 years, we may have moved on to Ultra Red Ray or some other ridiculous naming convention.

 

[Steevo]

2 HDDs that are not used on usb controllers, DVD/Blue Ray disks put in a hermetically sealed vaccum firproof case.

You cannot operate HHD's in vacuum and shouldn't store them there either, and the vacuum may well destroy optical media as the ink/dye can volatilize them causing corruption and or the reflective layer to bubble if any gasses are trapped between layers.


Buy a couple HDD's and keep one attached for backup and switch them out every few weeks and put the second in a safe deposit box or at a friends/families place for safekeeping in case anything happens to it.

You will be protected if your place burns, floods, or gets hit by lightning.

 

[Sasqui]

Might I suggest viewing and then memorizing the information?

LOLz...

Well, to be clear I don't REALLY need it to last for a millenium just be afcessible for replication as years pass without losing it if one drive fails. Can I have raid on two Red WD 3TB drives ? How would i start ?

I've had a RAID-1 2-disc array fail on me (thanks Seagate). Anyway, I digress... that's a start. Go one step further and backup all data onto two more drives and keep at least one of them in safe storage. Most companies keep an off-site backup, which is pretty easy these days with the "cloud"

 

[eidairaman1]

LOLz...



I've had a RAID-1 2-disc array fail on me (thanks Seagate). Anyway, I digress... that's a start. Go one step further and backup all data onto two more drives and keep at least one of them in safe storage. Most companies keep an off-site backup, which is pretty easy these days with the "cloud"

Till that fails, looking at you TPU

 

[Fif23]

Hmmmm, what is the difference between "Raid" and having two drives auto-mirrored with a backing software on Windows ?

 

[Sasqui]

Till that fails, looking at you TPU

My current NAS is a Qnap TS-253 Pro 8GB, with 2x 2TB WD Black drives, it's awesome. You can go at least 2x 4TB drives.

 

[Jetster]

Just put it on a quality hard drive then Blu ray also

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Write it on a cave wall, i've seen cave painting that are millennia old.

 

[phanbuey]

optical is probably the safest.

+1 to bluray.

Other than this, would be cave paintings and/or oral tradition ballads.