hard drive storage

[Joe]

I archive images to hard drives (just my preference) - I want to store these
offsite - Does anyone have a recommendation for wrapping / packing for
medium to long term storage - I was thinking of individual bubble wrap &
Food saver type vacuumed sealer. I need to do this to about 250 gb each
month. I also have a live copy.

Are there problems with my plan - any better ideas.

Joe

 

[Arno Wagner]

I archive images to hard drives (just my preference) - I want to store these
offsite - Does anyone have a recommendation for wrapping / packing for
medium to long term storage - I was thinking of individual bubble wrap &
Food saver type vacuumed sealer. I need to do this to about 250 gb each
month. I also have a live copy.

Are there problems with my plan - any better ideas.

If you can, get Seagate Sea-shells. Samsung has something not quite as
good, but still adequate. (For both, you get one with each bare drive.)
If not, use at least three layers of bubble-wrap. Put the disk inside
an anti-static bag before using the bubble-wrap. (Not needed with the
Seashells or Samsung-equivalent....)

Also, for long-term storage, you may want to add a demoisurizer
(silica gel) inside the anti-static bag and seal it with with
a thermic sealing machine (I thing that is the "food saver" you
refer to...). For Sea-shell, just put in the silica-gel.

This should bring moisture, electrostatics and mechanical schock
under control and schould be pretty safe. Still, I would not
recoment this for more than 5 years or so storage period. If
you powrer up the disks every few years and run a long
SMART self-test, then you should not have any problems
even with longer storage times.

Arno

 

[David A. Flory]

I archive images to hard drives (just my preference) - I want to store these
offsite - Does anyone have a recommendation for wrapping / packing for
medium to long term storage - I was thinking of individual bubble wrap &
Food saver type vacuumed sealer. I need to do this to about 250 gb each
month. I also have a live copy.

Are there problems with my plan - any better ideas.

Joe

Hi,

I wouldn't use bubble wrap. It could wind up trapping moisture. I also
think trying to vacuum seal a drive wouldn't be a good idea.

As long as the storage location is climate/humidity controlled, the
drives should be fine stored in an enclosure or hotswap rack.

I've never had problems with long term data storage on stored hard
drives, although you should have important data backed up onto an
alternate media, like DLT, just in case.

BR,

Dave

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi,

I wouldn't use bubble wrap. It could wind up trapping moisture. I also
think trying to vacuum seal a drive wouldn't be a good idea.

As long as the storage location is climate/humidity controlled, the
drives should be fine stored in an enclosure or hotswap rack.

I've never had problems with long term data storage on stored hard
drives, although you should have important data backed up onto an
alternate media, like DLT, just in case.

BR,

Dave

Use anti-static bags. You can buy them in bulk.

Your archive disks are not for ever. In a couple years you'll be able
to copy ten of yesterday's disk to one new disk. Two years from now
or there may be some completely new media by then. Every few years
there will be a larger new device, by a factor of 10. In two years it
will be hard to find a new PC with an IDE connector, anyway. Keeping
an old PC around had more reliability problems than the disks do.

Keep in mind you want a couple copies of the data at a couple
locations if the business calls for absolute reliability.

Depending on the nature of the data, running the application, years
from now can be a problem that makes keeping the data an easy problem,
in comparison.

 

[Paul Rubin]

I archive images to hard drives (just my preference) - I want to store these
offsite - Does anyone have a recommendation for wrapping / packing for
medium to long term storage - I was thinking of individual bubble wrap &
Food saver type vacuumed sealer. I need to do this to about 250 gb each
month. I also have a live copy.

Bubble wrap can help protect the drives from shock, but if they're
just sitting on a shelf that may not be an issue. You want antistatic
protection and moisture absorbent. I have severe reservations about
using HD's this way though. I've had drives fail to read data after
just sitting in my bedroom for a couple years. There's just too many
electronic and mechanical parts in there to rely on, even if nothing
happens to the media.

Although consumer optical media (including dvd-ram) has its
attractions, its capacity is rather low by today's standards. I still
haven't figured out a good alternative to spending the big bucks and
buying a tape drive. Right now I'm getting by with HD's and CD/DVD's
but will probably buy an LTO drive sometime when I've got enough cash.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Use anti-static bags. You can buy them in bulk.

Your archive disks are not for ever. In a couple years you'll be able
to copy ten of yesterday's disk to one new disk. Two years from now
or there may be some completely new media by then. Every few years
there will be a larger new device, by a factor of 10. In two years it
will be hard to find a new PC with an IDE connector, anyway. Keeping
an old PC around had more reliability problems than the disks do.

Keep two IDE-to-SATA converters....

Keep in mind you want a couple copies of the data at a couple
locations if the business calls for absolute reliability.

Indeed. Usually, with regular checks, two (with one the primary
processing site) is considerd enough. But, depending on your
reliability needs, you may want more.

Depending on the nature of the data, running the application, years
from now can be a problem that makes keeping the data an easy problem,
in comparison.

Also very true. The only protection I know is using open source
software, were you usually still can run the old stuff decades
later....

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Bubble wrap can help protect the drives from shock, but if they're
just sitting on a shelf that may not be an issue. You want antistatic
protection and moisture absorbent. I have severe reservations about
using HD's this way though. I've had drives fail to read data after
just sitting in my bedroom for a couple years. There's just too many
electronic and mechanical parts in there to rely on, even if nothing
happens to the media.

Although consumer optical media (including dvd-ram) has its
attractions, its capacity is rather low by today's standards. I still
haven't figured out a good alternative to spending the big bucks and
buying a tape drive. Right now I'm getting by with HD's and CD/DVD's
but will probably buy an LTO drive sometime when I've got enough cash.

Which may or may not be an issue. If you can fit your backups on
a reasonable number of media, MOD/DVD-RAM are ideal. My Linux
backup still fits on two 640MB MODs.

Arno

 

[Paul Rubin]

Which may or may not be an issue. If you can fit your backups on
a reasonable number of media, MOD/DVD-RAM are ideal. My Linux
backup still fits on two 640MB MODs.

I want to back up 100s of GB's. Well, right now probably 50GB or so,
a good chunk of which is home-made audio recordings. But if I ever
get around to digitizing my shelf full of camcorder video, the amount
goes way up.

 

[Al Dykes]

Keep two IDE-to-SATA converters....


Indeed. Usually, with regular checks, two (with one the primary
processing site) is considerd enough. But, depending on your
reliability needs, you may want more.


Also very true. The only protection I know is using open source
software, were you usually still can run the old stuff decades
later....

Arno

Going forward, emulators are going to be our salvation. You'll be
able to run your Windows95 :-( specific application as long as you
don't need funny hardware. You have to plan and test, in advance.

I could run the entire transaction processing and database application
that I ran on a mainframe in 1985 on a cheap PC, today, under an
existing emulator.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Going forward, emulators are going to be our salvation. You'll be
able to run your Windows95 :-( specific application as long as you
don't need funny hardware. You have to plan and test, in advance.

Do test by all means. Looking at Vista, I am not sure it _can_
be emulated. All these DRM features. Of course making emulation
difficult is a complete no-no for a professional OS, but Windows
is a toy in its core.

I could run the entire transaction processing and database application
that I ran on a mainframe in 1985 on a cheap PC, today, under an
existing emulator.

Moore's law at work...

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

I want to back up 100s of GB's. Well, right now probably 50GB or so,
a good chunk of which is home-made audio recordings. But if I ever
get around to digitizing my shelf full of camcorder video, the amount
goes way up.

Looks like a case for archival-grade tape to me. Make sure the
drives will have long-term availability or buy a second one.
Go for an SCSI interface, these should be available for quite
some time.

Also not that not all tape is for archiving, some only have
5 years data-live. The specification should tell you.
Tapes are sensitive to storage conditions (MOD is not),
so make sure these are met.

Arno

 

[Al Dykes]

Looks like a case for archival-grade tape to me. Make sure the
drives will have long-term availability or buy a second one.
Go for an SCSI interface, these should be available for quite
some time.

Rather than invest in an expensive tape drive and tapes, I'd stick
with IDE disks for now and wait a year or two for the new DVD formats
to settle down. 40+GB/disk. Yes, archival life will be an unknown for
a while but multipe copies and good storage conditions will make the
best of things and readback testing will catch problems before you've
lost any data.

IME we are about to see new storage technologies with factor-of-10
increases in capacities every couple years for a while.

Keeping one tape drive running or years is a real PITA unless you've
got a maintenance budget.

 

[Paul Rubin]

Looks like a case for archival-grade tape to me. Make sure the
drives will have long-term availability or buy a second one. Go for
an SCSI interface, these should be available for quite some time.

Yeah, I have a DDS-2 drive right now, haven't used it in ages, have
been using CD-R and HD's instead. If I get a more advanced tape drive
it will probably be LTO (not sure what generation--depends on drive
pricing and my finances). Nothing else seems to really make sense.
The stuff is really getting cheaper:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140068408895

LTO-2 drive for $700 Buy It Now, would have been at least 2x that a
year ago. I have my doubts about getting a used tape drive though,
even with the 30 day warranty.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Rather than invest in an expensive tape drive and tapes, I'd stick
with IDE disks for now and wait a year or two for the new DVD formats
to settle down. 40+GB/disk. Yes, archival life will be an unknown for
a while but multipe copies and good storage conditions will make the
best of things and readback testing will catch problems before you've
lost any data.

IME we are about to see new storage technologies with factor-of-10
increases in capacities every couple years for a while.

Keeping one tape drive running or years is a real PITA unless you've
got a maintenance budget.

Hmmm. Can't say I disagree. Looks like the best option still is
copying every few years if you have large volume. Fortunately
I don't and my now 8 year old MOD drive and disks still work
flawlessly.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yeah, I have a DDS-2 drive right now, haven't used it in ages, have
been using CD-R and HD's instead. If I get a more advanced tape drive
it will probably be LTO (not sure what generation--depends on drive
pricing and my finances). Nothing else seems to really make sense.
The stuff is really getting cheaper:

LTO-2 drive for $700 Buy It Now, would have been at least 2x that a
year ago. I have my doubts about getting a used tape drive though,
even with the 30 day warranty.

Agreed. And 30 days is not enough to find any more subtle flaw.

Arno