Best Way To Store Digital Video For 20 Years?

An anonymous reader writes "My kid is now 1 year old and I already have 100G of digital video (stored on DVDs, DVD quality) and photos. How should I store it so that it's still readable 10 to 20 years from now? Will DVDs stil be around, and readable, 10 years from now? Should I plan for technology changes every 5 to 10 years (DVD->Blue-ray->whatever)? Is optical storage better, or should I try to use hard drives (making technology changes automatic)? And, if the answer is optical, how do you store optical disks so that they last?"

My method

Pictures: Backed up to HDD, DVD and Flickr. For $24.95, it's cheap offline backup and the grandparents love it.

Movies: Taken on MiniDV, backed up to HDD.

The only worry I have is that the MiniDV's and HDD are in the same house although they are stored in separate locations. But every picture is backed up offsite.

Gold Disks

Claim up to 300 years.

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Office/Storage/U9P4F7L2 [smarthouse.com.au]

for some years: dvd + raid-1

Currently, There is no better way than store a backup on DVD and store the main data on a raid-1 disk set. Move the raid disk set to new disks every few years.

All the other technologies are more expensive, and even possibly more dangerous (loss of data due incompatibilies or for any other reason).

What I've found to work...

In the department I work for we typically use archival DVDs in a temperature and humidity controlled room (also used to store photos, slides, and vellum). For the really important ones I'll copy the disc onto a server in the same room as an ISO. Every month I mirror the data drive onto an offsite server in another building on campus. It's not fool-proof and it's pretty expensive but it has worked for about 8 years now.

Optical?

Only wimps use optical media, _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.

Storage array.

Build a simple storage array with RAID from a barbones PC, your favorite Linux distro, configured for fault-tolerant RAID. It doesn't have to be complicated, and it doesn't have to be powered on unless you're actually pushing data to it.

Every couple of years, you can add an extra couple of drives. With drive capacities increasing as fast as they are, cost shouldn't be a huge issue.

Use backups

Regardless of the methods you choose, I would highly recommend using at least two different media.

If these videos are important enough to be stored for 10 to 20 years, then they are important enough to be backed up - it is always difficult to foresee long term failures in any technology. If you read the article on tin whiskers [slashdot.org] they mentioned that some failures can not be tested using short time span methods.

Do what IT departments do

Use multiple different media, with redudancy.

Store it on HDDs. Mirrored RAID like RAID 1 or RAID 10 is preferred. but even RAID 5 buys you some extra integrity protection.

Then back it up. CDs. DVDs. BluRay. Tape. Whatever. Multiple times, multiple ways. Every few years do some copies onto new media.

Keep at least one copy off of your premises. A safe deposit box might be good.

One word, USENET.

Video I posted 20 years ago is still there....

Simple - disguise it as porn

1. Rename to "xxx 18yr old bj strip"
2. Upload to P2P protocol of choice.
Let it proliferate around the internet and retrieve it when necessary.

Wow, that's a lot.

I sure hope you're shooting in 1080p and RAW, because otherwise your kid must think everyone has cameras growing out of their skulls... Seriously, put down the camera and live a little.

As for storage, I would personally go through and put together maybe a movie and and picture viewer DVD for each year. And then have those professionally mastered onto pressed discs. Keep those in your fire-proof storage and use burned copies for everyday (I hope not) use and sending to relatives and what not.

Re:Wow, that's a lot.

I have not been able to find anybody willing to press discs in quantities lower than about 150. Pressing discs in quantities of, say, 5 would be a nice service for archival purposes, but it would presumably be expensive, since I think the setup costs for pressing discs are high.

Still readable

As the other guy mentioned, CDs are still readable, almost 20 years later. However, they didn't have a viable alternative until about 10 years ago. I think that you will easily be able to find a DVD drive for many years to come, at least the next 20. The problem becomes ensuring that the actual media doesn't get scratched. I wouldn't trust DVDs to last that long, even if you just leave them on a shelf, away from the sunlight. If I was really interested in saving the stuff, I would put it on hard disks with at least 1 redundant copy, if not 2, stored in different places, and transfer over every 3-4 years. Still, it's going to be a lot of data. Your kid is only 1, and you already have 100 GB of stuff. Just think about how much that will balloon to once the kid has an attention span of more than 43 seconds. The first hockey game, all the school plays, all the other junk you could record.

Personally, I just don't bother with recording much. My wife gets on my case for not taking a lot of pictures with the kids, but I'd rather be interacting and paying attention, rather than trying to ensure we have everything recorded. Sure sometimes like during school plays you can record and not miss anything, but a lot of times, I find when I'm trying to take videos, or photos, I end up missing out on the actual fun.

The strength of digital in archiving....

isn't long term storage, though it may have it. The strength is that you can reproduce it with high fidelity to the original numberous times.

The best way to store digital vidio for 20 years is to make numerous copies of it. 10Gigs is about 3 DVD's at the lowest density. Add a dvd of checksum files (something like a PAR [wikipedia.org]) and you should still be able to make five sets for under $20 if you are shopping around for DVD media.

Once a year or three, load up one of the sets and run it through the checksums. Correct any errors discovered via the checksums and copies from the other sets, and make another five sets.

Volia. Repeatable as long as there is any sort of cheap digital recording media that can easily fit your files out there.

The real question is how you do this when you have 1,000 Gig to backup.

Use S3

With S3 [amazonaws.com] you'd pay $15/mo (+bandwidth) to have it hosted online, instantly accessible. Will it still be around 20 years from now? One can't be certain, but if not, I'm sure you'll have enough warning to copy things off to another medium, and I'm sure there'll be similar services to take its place if need be.

How much could you store?

No one's brought it up yet, so I will... As the price/convenience/long term compatibility and viability of storage goes down and down, I wonder to what end we will end up keeping this stuff? How many hours of video that you're paying (in time, money, security against fire/damage/loss, etc) to keep up you're actually going to watch? Sure, it's nice to have every single event in your child's life on demand at the touch of a button/click of a mouse, but aren't just plain old memories ok? Does his entire life have to be recorded and watchable?

At some point, I came to the realization that I had downloaded over 6 solid months worth of music. This doesn't include CD's, LP's, or 7 inch records, of which I probably have 1000 total. If I were able to put all that music on a big loop, and not repeat anything, I'm thinking it would last over 12 months. Some of these I'll probably never listen to. I'm thinking the same is true for the submitter's videos.

My parents have a big box of photographs from their childhoods, as well as those of their parents. There are some great photos in that box, and I could and have spent hours going through them. Each time I do, I make a mental note that one day I'll scan them and make them digital. Then I realize that we only drag out that box once or twice a year, and never do anything with the photos anyway, and resign to scan them once it gets even cheaper.

Good luck with that!

People who say HDD have their heads in the sand. 20 years. Think about that. 1988. SCSI-1 40 pins. Nearing the end of MFM/RLE. Parallel.

People who say CDs and DVDs again have their heads in the sand. That's the Floppy Era.

The best format IMHO is the "current" format. DVDs + HDDs along with a live copy on your computer. DVDs and HDDs should be at two of your friend's houses.

5-10 years later, once one of the formats is obsolete (EXT3 is now EXT8, DVDs are now expensive again in drug stores), it's time to copy these to the new "current" format, and repeat the process.

Hard Copies

Print the bits out on paper to be scanned later, as necessary. You should make several copies and store them in different locations incase of fire or water damage. To answer your next question: Land in Montana and the Yukon territory is cheap.

Continually Transfer

Unfortunately there isn't a guarantee on any technology. CD/DVDs were supposed to last 100 years until that pesky mold and poor quality make them unsuitable for long term storage. HD-DVD was promising until it lost the format wars. HDs reliability varies with manufacturer and model. My suggestion is to back it up every 5 - 10 years onto new media to keep ahead of the curve. It's more work but you'll make sure it gets saved.

8mm -> VHS -> DVD -> Bluray -> Profit!!

Re:CDs are still readable

no they're not. ever hear of cd rot?
store everything on hard drives, with duplicate backups stored off site.

Re:CDs are still readable

On CDs, the rot becomes visually noticeable in two ways: 1. When the CD is held up to a strong light, light shines through several pin-prick sized holes.[1] 2. Discoloration of the disc, which looks like a coffee stain on the disc (see also CD bronzing).[1]

In audio CDs, the rot leads to decreased audio quality, chatter, scrambled audio, and static. A Philips press officer has declared CD rot to be an isolated problem affecting only an "absolute minority" of cases. PDO has offered to replace any discs affected by CD bronzing if supplied with the defective disk and proof of purchase. However, according to the website of one of the affected record companies, Hyperion, PDO's helpline was discontinued in 2006 after a change of ownership, and defective CDs are now no longer replaced by the manufacturer, even though some of the affected record labels continue to offer replacements.[2]

CD bronzing is a specific variant of CD rot, a type of corrosion that affects the reflective layer of audio CDs and renders them unreadable over time. The phenomenon was first reported by John McKelvey in the September/October 1994 issue of American Record Guide.[1][2] Affected discs will show a uneven brownish discoloring that usually starts at the edge of the disc and slowly works its way towards the center. The top layer is affected before the bottom layer. The disc will become progressively darker over time; tracks at the end of the disc will show an increasing number of audio problems due to disc read errors before becoming unplayable. CD bronzing seems to occur mostly with audio CDs manufactured by Philips and Dupont Optical (PDO) at their plant in Blackburn, Lancashire, UK, between the years 1988 and 1993. Most, but not all of these discs have "Made in U.K. by PDO" etched into them (see image). Discs manufactured by PDO in other countries do not seem to be affected. A similar, if considerably less widespread problem occurred with discs manufactured by Optical Media Storage (Opti.Me.S) in Italy. PDO acknowledged that the problem was due to a manufacturing error on its part, but gave different explanations for the problem. The most widely acknowledged explanation is that the lacquer used to coat the discs was not resistant to the sulphur content of the paper in the booklets, which led to the corrosion of the aluminium layer of the disc, even though PDO later said it was because "a silver coating had been used on its discs instead of the standard gold."[3] Peter Copeland of the British Library Sound Archive confirms that silver instead of aluminium in the reflective layer of the CD would react with sulpheriferous sleeves, forming silver sulphate, which has a bronze colour.[4] A combination of the two factors seems likely because, as Barbara Hirsch of the University of California points out, the oxidation could only have occurred if the protective lacquer did not seal the metal film and substrate well enough.[2]

Those were from Wikipedia, fact is, though CD rot can be a problem, it isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

Recordable CD reliablity

Depends on the manufacturer and dye formulation. Some have failed in as short of a time as eight months while others are good after nearly ten years. For very important stuff, it is far too risky to be relying on the manufacturer. It's probably safer to make it a habit of regularly make multiple backups your data.

Re:CDs are still readable

Only professional CDs have that sort of shelf life, because they're physically stamped. The consumer grade ones use a type of photosensitive dye that DOES decompose in less than a decade.

Re:Stone Carvings

Step 1: Review video footage.
Step 2: Carve memorable/important parts into stone.
Step 3: ??? (commandments?)
Step 4: Prophet!

Re:Tape

tape is still one of the best archival storage types

Duct, Electrical, Masking or Transparent?