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Protecting Your Backup Media? 20

Posted by Cliff from the in-case-of-rain-sleet-snow-fire-or-EMP dept.
// asks: "How do you protect YOUR backups from destruction? Paper-based backups can survive most disaters (fire and even EMP) in a relatively low-spec firesafe/cabinet. Magnetic media (floppies, DAT, DLT) are much more sensitive to temperature (and EMP) - they won't reach anywhere near the magic 233C (or "Farenheit 451" if you prefer) at which paper bursts into flames. A higher specification firesafe is required for these. But what about CD-ROM; what temperatures can they handle? And we've all zapped CD's in a microwave - does this mean that they are particularly vulnerable to EMP too?"
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Protecting Your Backup Media? More

Protecting Your Backup Media?

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  • Ah, yes. Another pointless and overly-broad Ask Slashdot. How quaint.

  • 3 layer protection (Score:3)

    by po_boy ( 69692 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2001 @06:44PM (#284082)
    First, I place my CD's in a black box from an airplane. those things seem highly resistant to crashes and stuff. People also always seem able to find them

    Then I tape cockroack exoskeleton all over it. everyone knows that cockroaches are immune to nuclear holocaust and will be the only remaining life to withness the nuclear winter. I think this is because of the exoskeleton.

    Lastly, I pack Ju-Ju-Bees all around it. From personal experience, know that this stuff will never be dissolved and cannot be picked apart even with a sharp instrument. This provides protection from undesirable human tampering (such as by Malorie)

    I feel that this three layer protection is one of the most advanced and impenetrable available at a low cost today. Please let me know if you find any weaknesses in it or devise any improvements.

  • Multiple backups, mutliple locations.

    Yes, this greatly increases cost. You have to decide how much your data is worth.

    We have a local tape backup, a tape that is rotated home with my boss, and another server off-site that all backup the same data.

    If an event occurs that wipes out all of these, we have bigger problems that our data.


  • You've already gotten the Right Answer (multiple copies, multiple locations) from another post. Here's my Fun Answer :).

    Books are surprisingly durable things. In a cool, dry environment free of book-eating parasites and people with torches, a good-quality book can last for centuries or longer.

    Enter the next generation.

    Alumina - corundum - is as cheap as the dirt it's refined from. It can, with enough fiddling, be drawn into thin fibers (much like the whisps in fibreglass insulation), which can be woven into cloth.

    Alumina is virtually invulnerable to chemical attack (it's an oxide of a reactive metal; it's only really vulnerable to a more reactive metal or oxidant). It's also virtually invulnerable to fire (with a melting point above 2000 degrees C, and good heat conductivity). It's also very hard and very strong (hardness 9, great tensile strength, and with very fine fibers, shear stresses are minimal [because the fiber bends, making most of it tensile stress]).

    Weave cloth from alumina fibers. Cut the cloth into pages, and fuse the edges so they don't unravel. Paint words and pictures on them with oxides, and stick them in a kiln for a few hours. The metal ions in the pigments diffuse into the fibers, colouring it in the same manner as ruby and sapphire are coloured (exactly the same, since they're corundum too).

    Sew the pages into books, add thicker pages as covers, and file for a few millenea. Nothing short of a direct nuclear strike or being stuck into a grinder or the heart of a foundry's forge will destroy them.

    The lettering within them could be smeared by heating them in a kiln for a few hours, but careful choice of pigments makes this difficult for the vandal.

    It would be really neat to copy some of the greater works of the 20th century and previous centuries into books like these, and to distribute copies far and wide. In an era where data storage is increasingly volatile, this lets us leave something for future archaeologists to find.

    Heck, use glyphs (or plain ol' hex) to encode data, and you can store your pr0n and MP3s, too.
  • Re. your questions about CD media:

    • They're vulnerable to EMP, but not to fridge magnets or ambient radio noise or being put next to a vacuum cleaner. Unless you're expecting a military attack, you're fine. Much better than tape for this.

    • CD media do decay. This is influenced by light and temperature, I think (mainly temperature, but I wouldn't put burnt CDs under a UV lamp). CDs that are stamped in a factory don't decay, but writable and (especially!) re-writable ones will. Estimates I've heard ranged from one year to one century for lifetime.

    • CD media are vulnerable to water, severe heat stress, solvents, etc. Soaking for a while in water or a solvent, or uneven heat stress, may cause the CD to delaminate (the data-carrying layer may peel off the pastic, or so I'm led to understand). Many organic solvents (like acetone) will attack the plastic, too.



    For peace of mind, nothing beats redundant copies and printouts of any documents that are important. For long-term data storage, tape is probably ok, as long as it's very high quality, was written with a high-quality writer, and is stored in a box shielded with both iron and aluminum (or copper) (iron shorts out low-frequency magnetic field lines, aluminum or copper or any other good conductor reflects high-frequency EM). These materials must be in closed shells around the tape enclosure (the iron shell is much less picky about being unbroken, but a broken conducting shell won't help you a bit against EMF). I'd personally trust soft iron more than steel for magnetic protection (steel is magnetically "hard", and can become permanently magnetized; soft iron can't (much)).

    If you're not near any motors or monitors or speakers or high-current power conduits, you can probably get away with just the conducting shell. YMMV. Heck, stick aluminum tape boxes in an iron safe and you're fine on both counts.

  • In other words, it makes no sense to protect your data with a $1000 backup system if it's only worth $1 .

    There are actually three different problems which while related, have different priorities:

    1. Backup, or "Oops, I deleted something and need it back". This also covers crashes and normal system data loss. Basically, recovery of any data from yesterday, with a very short timeframe (no more than 24 hours in most cases, a few minutes in the best cases). The time window (eg age) of data is a set period (say, no more than 4 weeks ago) from the present day, and data older than this is purged.
    2. Disaster Recovery, or "Oops, the building burned down, how do we keep the business running?". Or in other words, the ability to completely reconstruct the data to yesterday's state WITHOUT any backups. Timeframe varies from a few hours to several days to get back online. The only concern here is to get back to yesterday's status, so all you need is a complete copy of the data yesterday (or however old your disaster plan calls for). Thus, it's a single snapshot in time of the data.
    3. Archiving, or "Oops, we're being sued/audited, where are the records from 5 years ago?" Here this is the ability to get specially designated data back, and to insure that previously stored data remains intact.

    Anyway, back to the question. EMP isn't a concern. Don't delude yourself with visions of your importance. Your data isn't that important. For general business use, there are a considerable number of places that will act as data storage vaults for your important data. Keep an archive copy at work, and one at the data vault (and one somewhere else if you can, like at a branch office). If you're going for archive-quality recordkeeping (that is, you need to keep data for say 10 years, and be sure it's there and readable), get the data pressed onto mastered CDs. Not CD-R or CD-RW or anything like that, but pressed CDs (like those which Music or commercial software comes on). Mastered CDs are very resistant to water, heat, and electrical damage. And their shelf life is beyond your life expectancy.

    In the end, for archival media, everyone nowdays uses pressed CDs that are stored in at least 3 (and if you're serious, 5) geographically distinct places. If you do this, you don't have to pay special attention to protection at all the locations.

    -Erik

  • If it's something that needs to last for more than the next five years, give strong consideration to hardcopy. For instance, I keep ASCII dumps of my PGP public and private keys stored in a bank safe deposit box. I keep one key, and my attorney has the other. That way, in the event that a fire sweeps through my house and destroys all my media (even my backup media), I'll still have copies of the important stuff.

    I've got a six-month-old copy of a codebase I'm working on printed out and stored in that safe deposit box as well, so that if a disaster happens I don't lose six months of my coding lifetime.

    For the record, I laserprinted all of it onto 25%-cotton acid-free paper. It'll still be around and legible for decades, even centuries, to come.

  • Sentry makes at least two models of fire-resistant boxes for protecting media: a small [staples.com] ($255) and large [staples.com] ($410).

    Personally, I haven't been able to spring for one of those and I keep mine in a cheap ($49) Sentry fire safe with a four-leaf clover and rabbit's foot.

    Having worked a lot of fire and flood scenes, here's some advice that can help around the house:

    It's pretty rare for a average house to burn to the ground. Apartment buildings seem to burn down easier than a house, but they are still fairly rare. A mobile home is much worse -- don't live in one.

    Keep important stuff like that low to the ground, but not so low that it floods. (It seems like everyone that lives in low-lying areas keeps their family pictures in the bottom drawer of the dresser.) I've seen cases where smoke detectors and everything plastic melted in the top 3 feet of a room, but the bottom half is almost untouched (heat-wise).

    Keep doors shut. I've seen fires where the core part of the house was decimated (hole in the roof, interior walls burned through) but the kid's room barely smelled of smoke because the door was shut.

    As for the top causes of fires: Don't light candles. Don't cook french fries. Don't smoke, especially in bed. Don't use those $20 halogen lamps where they can tip over (or get pushed by the kids). An please, if you have to look under the bed for something, buy a flashlight -- don't use a cigarette lighter.

  • I have my data backed up on 3 sets of Cds that are enlosed in plastic box designed to keep static out (also good against water). Two are stored off site(e.g. my grandfathers house and my uncle's house). The third is stored in my basement. All three are placed in a protective environment. My uncle keeps it in his safe, my grandfather has it in a locked steel box and I keep mine in a firesafe box.

    Total cost: $4.50 for the blank CDs.
    If I update all three quarterly then my yearly cost is only $18. Not a big price for peace of mind.

    --
    Spelling by m-w.com [m-w.com].

  • The PCGuide at www.pcguide.com [pcguide.com] has a wonderful discussion of backup and disaster recovery procedures at http://www.pcguide.com/care/bu/index.htm [pcguide.com]. Discusses the various methods and mediums, rotation schedules, onsite vs offsite storage, etc. Also has an analysis of the how well various backup methods protect against various risks (i.e., hardware failure, file system corruption, accidental deletion). A must read.
  • Something many people overlook is that paper isn't damaged, too much, by steam and smoke, but computer media is destroyed by remarkably little amounts of either.

    The damage can be direct (by steam) or indirect (by soot, which is nearly impossible to remove and will quickly damage any reader).

    Fire safes are designed to protect "media" - like your passport or stock certificates. It is <i>not</i> designed for computer media, unless it explicitly states so. And these safes are very expensive.

    The best solution is actually the cheapest. Go to Costco or the like and buy a bunch of quart and gallon "freezer" ziplock bags. Put the media in a paper sleeve, then quart bags, then in gallon bags, then in any fire safe. Try to have the "open end" of each bag on the far side of the surrounding bag.

    Any single freezer bag should be enough to block steam and smoke from any fire which is survivable, the reason for nesting bags is that the outer bag might be very sooty after a fire. If you have the media immediately inside, the soot might transfer to it as you try to remove the media. But with a second layer of plastic, the media should be clean.

  • > 3.Archiving, or "Oops, we're being sued/audited, where are the records from 5 years ago?" Here this is the ability to get specially designated data back, and to insure that previously stored data remains intact.

    I think you misspelled "intact". In audit situations, it's supposed to be spelled "irretrievably lost, but you've got plausible deniability because you can claim in court that you tried to back it up..."

  • And we've all zapped CD's in a microwave

    What, am I the only person on the planet who never once thought of doing this? Man, there goes my 'with it' quotient ...

  • This site doesn't address the specific media protection question, but has very good advice about backup in general: The Tao of Backup [taobackup.com]. There's a sales pitch way at the end, but it's quite nonobnoxious. The author is Ross Williams who is one of the good guys.

    As for media protection, as several people suggested, rent a safe deposit at a bank (or several boxes at geographically separated banks). You get heavily fire protected vault space for a fairly low annual rent.

    If you're using tape media, you should also periodically try reading your backup tapes on a different drive than the one you wrote them on, to make sure they interoperate. Drives can get out of alignment and will keep working with their own tapes but stop interoperating with other drives.

  • You overlooked gameshow hosts. Their hair is the hardest known substance (even harder than cockroach exoskeleton). Their teeth are the most reflective known substance. Should someone try to cut their way into your backups with a laser, they will find that %110 of the light is reflected back (physicists are STILL trying to explain that bizarre property).

  • Dump your backup data to hex (Intel format should do...) and have it inscribed on a solid titanium monument (by laser...) embedded in the bedrock of a geographically stable area. Don't forget checksums.

    Expensive, but should work for a long time, and you won't forget where you put it...

  • I've got a few music CD's from the 80's that have turned almost transparent.

    you mean like Milli Vanilli and Bros? those groups were always pretty transparent from the start.

  • I'm curious about this suggestion. Would vacuum sealing the bags provide any additional benefit? I'm thinking of the ambient humidity that would be trapped inside the inner plastic bag... both in it's direct effects on the media, and it's possible effects through indirect exposure to the outside steam.
  • A word of warning. I was once involved in a business where we kept backups of everything. Yess-sir! We had a grandfather father - son system, where one backup was kept on the machine, in the office on disk , and a previous backup disk at home. Every week, we brought in the old (home) backup, wrote a new backup on it, then took the old office backup home. This was done every friday. The building burnt down on a friday, so we lost *all* the backups!
  • Where can you get pressed CDs for a low number of copies (under 10)? What does it usually cost?
    ------

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