Looking at storage options for some of my wife's photographic files i.e. an offline archive.
I had someone recommend I use something called an M-Disk - old school optical drive, but it seems setup cost might be prohibitive, and max storage size per disk is 100Gb?
Wondering if I should use a good old USB hard drive, USB flash drive, or an SD Card?
Thoughts?
How much do you need to store? Aprox 1Tb in total
Whats your budget? 300-400
What do you have them stored on now? NAS
NAS is not a backup. If the NAS dies don’t assume you can just rip the drives and put them in another device. You’ve now got 2 points of failure instead of one. Same goes for any kind of raid setup.
A NAS with a proper redundant RAID configuration will be as bullet proof as possible.
Needing only 1TB means getting 2 or 3TB disks for a RAID with extra, obsessive, redundancy.
My biggest concern will be file format. What today is great could be nonexistent tomorrow. Been there, suffer that.
@LFO: RAID is NOT a backup! There's so many things that can take out all the disks in an array, regardless of how many disks you are using as parity etc.
Serious backup means following the 3-2-1 rule. That is:
@photonbuddy: I think op means for home data storage, nothing too expensive to do some hardcore like that.
I think op means for home data storage, nothing too expensive to do some hardcore like that.
OP is talking about ~1tb of data. There's no need for it to be expensive at all.
The $300-$400 budget OP has listed is more than enough to meet the 3-2-1 rule for such a reasonable amount of data.
I think the consensus is blu-ray is best of consumer grade optical, dvd/cd-rom inks fade.
SD cards and flash drives lose charge over time, and need to be accessed to restore state. Not sure if SSDs have this issue.
Spinning hard drives retain files a long time, but can suffer from mechanical issues like lubricants drying out.
My conclusion is the cheapest way to store 1Tb for 10 years plus with no ongoing work would be two portable hard drives of different brands, the redundancy aiming to reduce the chance of a manufacturing fail.
SSD can fail too within years, so offline storage and cloud storage are important for important files.
Backblaze company has shared valuable info about their HDD and SSD failure rate/history from their data center ;-)
Agree with cloud also being in the mix.
Offline cold storage is great, but it is human nature to leave it too long between backups and not to test restores.
Online can be automated.
I was wondering about that. How much power does an SD card need? You might be able to rig one up with a battery
There are also very different qualities of blu-ray media. I have lost photos that I thought were safely archived when I stupidly used cheaper media :(
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/pioneer-new-blu-ray-record…
Archive grade DVD media, note the price …
https://www.amazon.com.au/Verbatim-96320-DVD-R-ULTRALIFE-Arc…
Bluray archiving tech
https://www.disc-group.com/technology/blu-ray-technology/
M-Disk.. another archive format. Burners that support it seem more available (I have one)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
Mdisk media
https://www.amazon.com.au/Verbatim-Japan-VBR520YMDP5V1-Long-…
Thanks for that, I learn smth new today. The Pioneer BDR-WX01DM is very pricey though
If needs to be accessible, then RAID5/6 with medium of choice (HDD are cheap, SSDs are fast) …
If can be stored, multiple copies …
(for example, 1 x HDD online, 1 x HDD offline, 1 x HDD at work, 1 x BD/CD/DVD written per month/year depending on updates) …
I still have text and word documents from the 1980s that were transferred from HDD to new HDD over the years!
The Data CDs that were written on the first CD writers are unreadable (they were not my only copies, just backups) …
Floppy disks
Too bendy. How about a 12" 10MB glass HDD from just before storage became bendy?
OP still have NAS, hopefully also have cloud storage.
Good backup method is both offline and online backup. If NAS burned down along with house burn or natural disaster, cloud storage is still available …
I have cheap second hand OG Pixel XL that can backup photos and videos at original quality unlimited ;-) Another way is using custom Pixel experience ROM for certain phones that can also have unlimited original quality backup just like the OG Pixel.
I'm no data storage expert, but it seems to be putting it on a SSD then plugging it in once every 6-12 months to maintain charge should last an extremely long time. The less used a SSD is the better it tends to retain data and it'll be significantly more reliable than flash drives/SD cards at a reasonable price per GB.
That said, m-disks are about $10-20 a pop for 100GB and require no real effort to maintain.
On top of that, you should have NAS, Cloud (Office 365 family account will get you 6TB for $100 a year) and the local storage itself. That's more than enough.
If only photos and videos, unlimited Google Photos backup at original quality from the OG Pixel phone or certain phones with Pixel experience custom rom is much cheaper.
I don't want to pay $100 every year for photos and videos online backup. Everyone has different need of how many GB or TB cloud backup.
https://wasabi.com/ is what I use and it is great.
Only use it for files backup, you would have to download stuff to view it.
Good solution for also backing up a NAS as it is an S3 solution. It can mirror your local NAS.
Can use a FTP connection as well for making it easy to upload/download files quick without a web panel.
I think it is about same same. I like Wasabi because it is a like for like with S3 comptability. Seems like Backblaze do now offer this.
Yes, they've offered it for years
chatgpt told me consumer-grade SSDs are rated for a 1 year data retention period
What’s your wife into?
Photography, I'm guessing.
Dropbox with smart sync. Files live on the cloud but the client will show thumbnails in your Finder/Explorer window. When opening, it will download to disk. So it feels like local storage but no hassles
Dropbox is $184/year for 2TB, might as well go with Google Drive at $125/year.
Agreed, it is expensive but I suggested it for smart sync. Even cheaper is S3 Glacier or similar if access is going to be infrequent.
Agreed, it is expensive but I suggested it for smart sync.
How does it differ to Google Drive's "online only" and OneDrive's Files On Demand?
Thoughts?
Any medium will decay over time, so you will need multiple copies of the data on different types of mediums to protect from this.
If it was me, I would be going a standard HDD for one copy, and a cloud copy. Google drive does 2TB for $125/year.
I have 20 years of photos and storage backed up on Google Drive, a separate hard drive on my computer and also a third copy on my wife's computer. The reason I have it on Google Drive is if my house burns down (yes it does happen) and I only have physical copies, everything is lost. I am also able to access them when travelling if need be. The small amount of money spent on cloud storage will be worth it compared to explaining to your wife that it is all gone and not coming back..
I would get an enterprise disk drive, i still have old 2 tb western digital re3s working close to 20 years later used as cold storage.
The often overlooked part of these long term storage efforts is how the data would be retrieved when required. What events are you insuring against? Would the technology required to read the data be available in 5 years or 30 years? Are you archiving that technology with the data?
I use a couple of enterprise-grade HDDs on-site and backup to Backblaze offsite.
The problem with cloud storage is that it leaves your files wide open to hackers and who knows what they will do your data and photos once they gained access to them.
You don't have to store them as-is, you can use a program like the free opensource Cryptomator which seamlessly encrypts your data before storing it on your cloud storage provider. It just appears as a normal drive on your computer.
More chance of a HDD being stolen from your house.
Iron Wolf Pro hard drive is what i would recommend. Don't go SSD for long term storage.
For myself I have a NAS that gets backed up once a week to a portable hard disk, and to Google Drive, Microsoft Onedrive, and a second old NAS.
Overkill I know but take your pick of ANY combination of at least two backup methods (suggest one physical and one cloud) in addition to the main NAS.
Too many sad stories from my customers when their HDD has to go to a lab to get get some data retrieved starting at $800 and only going up from there. Photos are precious and moments in time you cant get back.
Blueray discs would be the cheapest, as the disc them selves are reasonable priced for 25GB each and $100 for a writer.
NVMe
I use 2 external HDDs for my backups.
The first one sits near my PC and I sync each month using robocopy.
The second one is kept at my parents place.
Every few months I swap them around.
PCloud
I recently pulled out some CDRs I burned in 1997 on gold coloured media. They all work 100% fine.
Cloud storage is just storing your files on someone else's computer. They can choose to delete them.
I suggest multiple backup media, in multiple locations. Also avoid flash media. It has a known limited lifespan.
Backblaze B2.
They're also in the Bandwidth Alliance, if that helps, e.g.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/1d5ddug/question…
LTO tape stored in Iron Mountain
The NAS is good for your local storage. However If you're looking to keep storing files locally there's always the chance long term the hardware will fail. So would always recommend a sync to cloud based storage.
From your NAS you can sync files or take backups to Wasabi it's very affordable. https://wasabi.com/pricing
If it's just your happy snaps and family photos, brand name Blu-ray disc will last 20-30 years. If it's something critically important you need to just bite the bullet and pay for mdisc (it's not even that expensive, they're $20-30 each) or tape. My experience with mdisc is that the drives can be temperamental, not all writers can write BDXL even if it's listed on the specs. So you may only get 25gb out of each disc.
How much do you need to store?
Whats your budget?
What do you have them stored on now?