Best Way To Store Digital Video For 20 Years? 805
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yea, never dismiss the old standard of posting it online and making storage someone else's problem.
But yea, if you are serious about storing, store on HDD, and keep an offsite backup. If you're careful with your offsites (i.e. you make a new FULL backup on a semi-regular basis), you can use DVDs, but like everyone else has already said, optical media is a crapshoot, and if you depend on it, you can depend on it letting you down.
Considering that you're still under a TB, I'd invest in a pair of externals, and
Re:My method (Score:4, Interesting)
You're exactly right. I used to work for one of the largest banks in the country, large enough that I can say with confidence that every American, and probably 75% of the people in the world, have heard of them. Our backup system was amazingly well designed. A lot of very smart people drew very large salaries for a very long time just to design it, not to mention the millions of dollars in hardware, and gigantic fees to hardened facilities for offsite storage.
They had a major data loss once because some douchebag forgot to change the backup tapes when he was supposed to.
The best laid plans and so on.....
(I'll throw in that, while working for the same company, I learned that no amount of money spent on ultra high end UPS systems and backup generators can protect you from an incompetent technician replacing a battery without following proper procedures.)
Gold Disks (Score:5, Informative)
Claim up to 300 years.
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Office/Storage/U9P4F7L2 [smarthouse.com.au]
Re:Gold Disks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The wording here is what is important.
Up to 300 years includes 1 day. Since there is no minimum given, it is a semantically void promise. The only thing guaranteed is that your data will not last 300 or more years.
It is like the "Save up to 50% and more" sales. What does that really mean?
Re:Gold Disks (Score:5, Funny)
for some years: dvd + raid-1 (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Optical (Score:4, Funny)
Optical? (Score:5, Funny)
Only wimps use optical media, _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.
groovy man (Score:3, Insightful)
Storage array. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
That's one of the problems with Linux people.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Build a simple storage array with RAID from a barbones PC, your favorite Linux distro, configured for fault-tolerant RAID.
If you're not a Linux person, that *IS* complicated by default.
Not that it would really be less complicated with Windows, but only a Linux person wouldn't recognize the inherent complication of RAID.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You could always use FreeNAS [freenas.org], which is slightly less complicated and can fit on a USB Key.
Use backups (Score:5, Informative)
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.
buy an external eSATA RAID5 array (Score:3, Insightful)
a few years ago, this would have been exorbitantly expensive overkill, but this stuff keeps getting cheaper by the day
with raid5, your videos will last forever, as long as someone keeps replacing the dead drives
any other media format is physically static, which can degrade. raid5 ensures that the files live on after the physical components degrade, as long as new drives are continually added to the system
and when the technology becomes ancient and archaic, simply move the files over and upgrade (obviously to a new file format as well)
as long as some continually performs low level maintenance, your videos will last forever
Do what IT departments do (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Diversify. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can afford it, I'd recommend a utility computing platform, like Amazon S3 or whatever Google's offering in that space. Verify that they're built out for long-term, fault-tolerant storage (ie: replication + automated verification and repair.)
I wouldn't trust that 100%, though, so keep them locally as well.
One word, USENET. (Score:5, Funny)
Video I posted 20 years ago is still there....
Look at it this way: (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of hiding behind the camera the whole time, actually interact and play with your kid. The videos and memories aren't as interesting as who the kid will become.
Re:Look at it this way: (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes that video isn't just for you, who is able to be there every day with your child. Grandparents who are unable to be there every day with the child really like to see videos also. Also, not every waking moment needs to be spent actively interacting with your child. Sometimes they need some time to play on their own or with other children. Some of the cutest moments with my son have been spent watching him explore the world around him on his own (and subsequently get stuck in the tupperware drawer).
Re:Look at it this way: (Score:4, Funny)
Simple - disguise it as porn (Score:5, Funny)
2. Upload to P2P protocol of choice.
Let it proliferate around the internet and retrieve it when necessary.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
hey where can I get that file?
Re:Simple - disguise it as porn (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not quite good enough. When I wanted to back up drafts of my master's thesis, this is what I did.
1.) Assign each revision (or tape, in your case) a unique word combination of bizarre sexual acts. For instance "Ostrich feces smeared by Horny Redhead Orangutan Schoolgirls."
2.) Keep the list of mappings of backed-up files to unique names very, very safe. Keep the list, written down is fine, in a safe deposit box at one or more locations.
3.) Upload the "porn videos" to Usenet, Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.
I think you'll find this backup method more than sufficient to withstand fire, flood, meteors, and other acts of God. It sure saved my butt several times when I needed to find old versions of my thesis to build on in future work. If you want to see the final draft of my thesis, just search for "Crazy teen Lllama Sucking Blonde Elephant". There's about a million copies out there, just rename to .pdf.
For extra points, is anyone out there willing to write automated software to perform such backups? I'm thinking, you have the user enter a few dozen unique animal names, sexual acts, etc. Then, everytime you do an SVN commit, the backup manager chooses a unique combination of words, renames to .avi, and uploads to the usual locations.
Wow, that's a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, that's a lot. (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't really apply here. It's really hard to tell what's good quality and what isn't if you're only within a few years of taking the family footage. All it takes is the death of a family member to make you wish you'd kept every scrap of video of your kid interacting with them.
The original poster will want to edit it down eventually, sure, but for the moment those edits should be along the lines of getting rid of dead air, finding the right encoding quality, getting rid of repetitive stuff in favor of a good sample (Two minutes of the kid putting a square block into a round hole is amusing. Thirty, not so much) and LABELING.
Re:Wow, that's a lot. (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
How much could you store? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:How much could you store? (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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?
No. Auto accident. Child dead. Now what?
Also, if the original poster is smart, he will include his wife and himself in some of the videos, and his children and grandchildren can see what grandfather Surname was like if something happens to him, instead. Let his wife take a few of him, or it will be like our family, where we have just one half inch high photo of my one grandfather, who took all the photos of everyone else.
> 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.
Scan them before a leaky roof or basement ruins them. Annotate them, while someone still lives who can identify who is who. Then you have a backup to the photos, as well.
100G in one year? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck with that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's a lot of video... (Score:4, Insightful)
So in his first year of life, you've recorded around 34-35 hours of footage? (going on single layer dvd capacities and mpeg2) Ask yourself, when are you going to watch all of that?
transporter loop (Score:4, Funny)
Better still - uucp them over some convoluted circular path back to yourself.
Or rig up an ultra-high-speed moonbounce communications system...
Just keep them all in motion and they won't get lost.
Hard Copies (Score:5, Funny)
Continually Transfer (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!NARA and Library of Congress (Score:5, Informative)
Forget Wikipedia, ask the people who spend their lives trying to figure this out.
http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/you/digitalmemories.html [digitalpreservation.gov]
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/technical/guidelines.html [archives.gov]
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/family-archives/digitizing-photos.html [archives.gov]
http://www.archives.gov/preservation/storage/ [archives.gov]
A tried and true method (Score:3, Insightful)
Chisel what you want to keep onto stone tablets, or use clay tablets then encase them in a clay envelope. Then bury them in a pit in your back yard.
Thanks for the memories indeed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me, or do you find that besides a few photos meant to invoke memories, its better to remember something than to record it? I find If I over-indulge in 'capturing the moment', all I seem to have left was the content and I forget what it was like to -be- there.
Quality not quantity (Score:4, Insightful)
A few good pictures and a handful of short videos become "precious memories".
A slag heap of hundreds of hours of raw material become a burden that someone will eventually stop maintaining because it is such a chore.
Lots of pictures are less of a problem than video both because they are smaller, but because you can look at them faster to see if there are any worth copying, printing etc.
Send copies of your "best of" to friends and family so that you have off-site storage should your house burn down.
The key is to archive less... (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife and I have taken thousands of digital photos and videos since 2002, but the cold, hard truth is that the vast majority of them just aren't very good. I suspect the OP is in the same boat. The solution is to take the time to identify the best images and videos. This should result in a relatively compact archive only a few hundred digital photos and videos. This "best of" collection will be much easier to duplicate in different format and making physical prints on archival quality paper won't put a huge dent in your pocketbook. Remember that just because you can take 2000 photos of your spittle-covered toddler doesn't mean that you need to keep them all.
Chances are pretty good that your great grandchildren aren't going to give a damn about inheriting a massive archive of pictures and videos starring weirdly dressed dead relatives they've never met, and if it's physically large it stands a good chance of ending up in a garden shed or unprotected lunar storage pod. If you condense your family album into something more manageable, it will be more accessible and enjoyable for all - now and in the future.
Flash Storage (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm amazed that no one mentioned it. Just get 16gb usb flash disks.
It has theoretically unlimited life for archiving. The only time it deteriorate is when you continuously write/erase it.
Re:Flash Storage is NOT GOOD (Score:4, Informative)
I'm amazed that no one mentioned it. Just get 16gb usb flash disks. It has theoretically unlimited life for archiving. The only time it deteriorate is when you continuously write/erase it.
What are film & video archives doing? (Score:4, Informative)
AMPAS recently had a report called "The Digital Dilemma", which the NY Times wrote about [nytimes.com]:
If not operated occasionally, a hard drive will freeze up in as little as two years. Similarly, DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years...
What are film archives doing? Where possible, studios are making long-lasting, non-fade B&W pan separation YCM polyester negative film backups, even when the film is mostly or totally "born digital". Then you put it under a mountain somewhere.
Government video archives worldwide are moving to LTO tape, typically using JPEG 2000 video encoding, with the recognition that every few years they will have to migrate their tapes up a generation of LTO. I suspect there may be a move from lossy JPEG 2000 to lossless JPEG 2000 and eventually uncompressed video as tape speeds and capacities ramp up.
Is your kid named Truman? (Score:5, Insightful)
you're collecting 100 GIGS per YEAR?
When do you plan on WATCHING this stuff?
Odds are, by the time he's three, you'll be so sick of watching him grow up through a camera viewfinder you'll toss the camera into the back of the closet.
And if you ever have another kid, he'll grow up thinking he's adopted, because he can't find any photographic evidence of his childhood.
I speak from experience :)
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, I just went looking for the handbook I got with my photography course, there's a paragraph about optical media: The CD's with a greenish look are guaranteed up to survive for 1-3 years. The siverish CD's last about 10 years. And there are also more expensive CD's with a gold color, and a black protection layer on top, that last +/- 100 years.
It also mentions there is no durability data about DVD's yet. This seems strange to me, and it's maybe outdated.
It might be wise to get some advice at a photography store, I'm sure they get a lot of those questions.
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have a single CD that has succumbed to "CD rot". I've had some rendered unuseable by scratches or by being left in the heat/sun too long by accident, but other than that all my CDs, even from the late 80s and early 90s are completely fine. The data CDs I burned in the early-mid 90s are also still fine.
I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but people make far more of a big deal about it than is really warranted.
That said, anything I wanted to make sure was still good I'd "refresh" every 5 years or
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:4, Informative)
CD-Rs are not the same thing as stamped CDs. With CD-Rs you're lucky if they last 5 years. Stamped CDs, if taken care of, will last practically forever.
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
YMMV.
I have CDs from 1998 burned with SCSI cd burner and used cheap $1.00/CD bought in bulk that still read today.
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me introduce you to a concept I call down-engineering. What happens is something is made really well. So well that the thing lasts a long, long time. This is bad for profits. So, the company has a choice of two:
1) develop something new
2) make the thing less reliable
So, the company making the thing begins to use poorer quality material to increase the failure rate over time.
What lasted 10 years soon only lasts 5, then 3, then 1 year. And people buy more.
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Insightful)
Low grade garbage consumer CD-R's do that. you can buy high end CD-R's that have a gold substrate and a permanent dye that are guarenteed to last decades. I have a couple of TDK archival quality CD-R's from the very early 90's that were burned on a god-awful-expensive 1X CD burner that are still readable.
Do I store them on my car's dashboard? nope. I store them in a cool climate controlled media safe. I can still buy high end archival quality CD-R and DVD-R disks that I am sure will last a long time.
And if the 3.5" floppy drive is any example, CD and DVD drives will be around for another 10 years at least.
I have the opposite experience (Score:5, Informative)
Your experience is very interesting because mine is the opposite. I make (at least) quarterly backups of my data and have since mid 1993 (CDs since 98, floppy before that). This spring I got bitten by the curisoity bug and started going through all my old backups looking for forgotten and interesting things. Every CD older than two years had at least one unrecovereable read error. Every CD older than five years, except for one, was completely unreadable. Between two and five years the number of read errors grew with many files being lost and several CDs being unusable. The 3-1/2 floppies were all 100% readable.
In that time period I've been through probably a dozen CD burners, both expensive varieties and cheap ones, and I've used at least as many brands of media. All the CDs have been kept stored in dark, dry, clean places. I tried reading the "unreadable" CDs on multiple computers and met some limited success accessing additional data. I didn't try any recovery software.
Fortunately for me I kept most of these backups out of habit and I didn't really care about much of the older ones outside of curiosity.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More accurate would be "CD content still readable". CD rot is only an issue if you made too few copies and didn't re-copy to newer media periodically.
If it's really, really important:
--Save the stuff on reasonably reliable, name brand media. Make more than one copy, saved separately.
--Make the secondary copies on a different brand media, just to cover your ass.
--Copy over to identical media type a year or two later ( save originals )
--Copy/consolidate to the newer, cheaper media ( like CDs to DVDs) when th
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I keep 2 sets of copies a secondary hard disc, originals & edits. I also keep a master copy on standard Maxwell DVD+R that I check periodically generally when I add another volume, roughly 6 months time. I also keep another set on my gf's computer on the network, keeps her out of my hair in Photoshop
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
SCSI
I can read a SCSI-I drive in a Ultra 320 controller easily.
Recordable CD reliablity (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've had good luck ordering Taiyo Yuden media online, and the prices haven't been so bad, even in Canada. So far, I have had no trouble with them (but as we well know, that doesn't really mean much). I tried picking up some MAM-A recordable media, but it was a bit pricey for my needs.
Re: You're looking for the wrong thing.. (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, a misspelled spelling flame. It's like digging into the ground and pulling up a USENET post from 1993. Let me introduce you to a 21st century technology that might help you in future: it's called a search engine.
It's Taiyo Yuden, according to their own web site [t-yuden.com].
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
CDs, perhaps. CDR's? No, they're not.
I paid a ton of money for one of the first 1x CDR drives for PCs back about 14-15 years ago. Recently I've been moving all the data I've built up over that time onto HDs for longer term storage.
What I've found is nearly all of the discs from back then I can read -- the $20 a pop gold discs.
Starting with the discs from the very late 90's, I'm getting about a 50% failure rate (on discs stored in climate controlled conditions away from light). With some brands (and not nece
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're not trying to go cheap, get a tape drive (DLT, LTO, or AIT, not the quarter-inch or DAT crap). If your time isn't worth that much, migrate from optical format to optical format every few years. Either way, keep your backups off-site.
Hard drives and just not suitable for (home) archiving - one robbery, fire, or natural disaster and everything's gone forever. If you add backup to those hard drives, then we're back to "what format?".
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Newegg has Quantum DLT SATA drives (160GB native capacity, 35 GB/h throughput) for about $700, so it won't break the bank to get proven multi-decade shelf-life media of reasonably size and speed for a 100GB dataset.
Every real OS has tape backup support (though you may have to hunt for drivers). If you're stuck with Windows, type ntbackup at the command line - it doesn't suck for home use.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well , you could hire webspace to store the files. A good contract would ensure regular backups and redundancy . That way , you don't have to worry about it , but it's probably the most expensive option. And off course , in 20 years , that company might go bankrupt , leaving you with nothing
Re:CDs still a pain. Keep it alive and available. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:CDs still a pain. Keep it alive and available. (Score:5, Funny)
WW900FTJD?
Re:CDs still a pain. Keep it alive and available. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Raid is good for keeping the data alive, it is a backup in the sense of avoiding failure of devices causing major data loss. Raid 10 or a Mirror are your best bets for redundancy. However, a RAID is not going to be a preventative measure against other forms of data corruption, virus, batch file run amuck, accidentally deleting a folder. So you need a
Re:Where can I get these mythical disks? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:CDs are still readable (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stone Carvings (Score:5, Funny)
Step 2: Carve memorable/important parts into stone.
Step 3: ??? (commandments?)
Step 4: Prophet!
Re:keep copying it (Score:4, Funny)
As I understand it, holomagical disks will be loaded with so much DRM, nobody will be allowed to view the contents. Period.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Better yet, buy two of them and mirror. Use some good filesystem -- like ZFS (available in Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD and to some extent in Linux), which will detect corruption and heal files using redundant copies. (google "zfs self-healing" for more)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no, no! Mirroring is not backup. One theft, fire, or natural disaster and you're toast; plus mirroring provides no protection at all against the 85% case for data loss: "Oops! Dammit, undo, undo!"
Re:HDDs (Score:5, Funny)
Oops! Dammit, preview, preview!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, is this some special technique to fortify the data on the drive? And it sounds like this actually doubles the space on the drive after I rinse it. Does this require distilled water, or will tap water do?
Re:HDDs (Score:5, Informative)
Do not buy the largest hard drives that you can find. Cutting-edge storage densities might mean bad long term reliability. Go for something a little smaller than the leading edge that has had enough test time for you to find a large number of reviews on the drive's reliability. These will also be cheaper so you can buy two and store them at separate locations.
When you store your files, write a small utility or script that runs through them all and builds redundancy data, like QuickPar, and that stores a hash, e.g. MD5, so that 20 years later you can check the data is still good bit for bit, and even if it contains errors theres a high probability that you'll be able to correct it, even from the redundancy data stored on the same drive, let alone your second copy.
One important thing: As well as all of this, on each drive store a copy of the software (e.g. codecs), as well as any registration information to make them work. Backups of your files are no good if you can't play them later. Try to avoid storing video long term in any format that requires a codec with online activation. Will that company still be around in 20 years time?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One important thing: As well as all of this, on each drive store a copy of the software (e.g. codecs), as well as any registration information to make them work. Backups of your files are no good if you can't play them later. Try to avoid storing video long term in any format that requires a codec with online activation. Will that company still be around in 20 years time?
DVDs are played by all open-source tools today and mplayer will play all of MPEG2/VC1/H.264 (though slowly and not a problem in the far future), what kind of codec wouldn't you find?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was under the impression that unspun drives tend to deteriorate relatively quickly - the heads clashing with the platter or some such nonsense. Just spin them up once a month and you're fine, from what I've heard.
Re:HD unreliable (Score:4, Informative)
I was under the impression that unspun drives tend to deteriorate relatively quickly
Quickly? No.
- the heads clashing with the platter or some such nonsense.
Head crashes have been a non-issue since the late 1980s.
The real problem is the lubricant in the tiny motors. It can get gummy, and then the read arm won't move.
Just spin them up once a month and you're fine, from what I've heard.
I'd say bi-annually.
Re:Tape (Score:5, Funny)
Duct, Electrical, Masking or Transparent?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Qualilty digital tape will last 30 years. There's "100 year" digital optical media (if you believe it), but it's very expensive per-byte.
DARPA did a research project to create a storage medium that would last for centuries after a nuclear war, and be readible with very low-tech gear. They invented a metal punch-tape format - very cool.
Re:Without meaning any offence... (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that in a few decades, estate planning will include what to do with the family terabytes.
Re:Without meaning any offence... (Score:4, Interesting)
I already have instructions on how to access my archives, what is available to whom, and what to destroy as part of my will.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)