archive storage

[Julia123]

What are the best choices for long term archival of files? I've transferred most of my completed project into Wav. files and now have a neat package of DP projects plus final Wav files ready to store on something, put in a drawer, and probably never return to. I do plan to keep a running up to date hard drive of my music & personal photo's to move and transfer along with me into the future but I want to have an extra separate backup of this particular project all by itself to put away and forget about. In my research and asking around, I found out SSD's have batteries. That sounds bad for what I'm doing? DVD's might be an option if I archive only the final audio tracks (about 30 gigs worth.) I'm sure what ever I choose will be out dated over time but at least if it holds up I can transfer later if I find the need. I'm leaning toward a couple of thumb drives plus a duplicate of just the final Wav files on DVD and see what happens.
BTW, I finally dumped my old 2" tapes during our last move. Now I'm thinking how easy those actually were. At least what ever I choose now will be light weight and take up a lot less room.

[FMiguelez]

I would NOT recommend DVDs or CDs. Their life is very short, no matter how well you store them (most of my old DVD backups are unreadable now. POS, really.

I suggest 2 regular HDs for your archive. Take one home and leave a clone at the studio. Simple, fast and safe.
Make sure you spin them once or twice a year.

[buzzsmith]

Pretty much with FM on this. I backup and archive to two external drives.

I don't have off-site storage, yet, however.

Working on that.

I also will give a client the project on a thumb drive as another precaution...so I guess I do have 1 off-site storage per project, just not all in the same place.

Buzzy

[bayswater]

There are DVDs that are designated at having "archival quality". Verbatim makes some that they claim are useful for this purpose. There are some other brands with similar designations. The reflective surface for these disks is gold, rather than the usual aluminum, and so are much less likely to corrode. Understandably, these are considerably more expensive than general purpose disks, and there is an expectation they will be stored in a proper environment. If you google "archival quality DVDs" you will find a lot of discussion on the topic.

In the end, whether these disks can last "up to 100 years" as is claimed is a complete unknown because they haven't been around long enough, and none of us will be around long enough to find out. People concerned with archives that I've spoken to appear to be more worried about whether there will be any DVD readers available to read these archives in the long term, than whether the media they use will last.

Another thing you can do on top of using these disks that is to create RAR or similar archives. You can specify a level of redundancy for these archives and if some of the data become corrupt, the redundant files can be used to restore missing information. You end up with an archive larger than the original files, but have some additional level of security. MacPAR deLuxe will do this.

Making multiple copies of the backup further reduces the chances of loss, as does making copies of the archives every few years, so there is always a recently created copy.

Having said all that, the last test I saw on the reliability of various media concluded that the best backup for a hard drive is another hard drive.

[Shooshie]

My DVD archives still work on the machines that wrote them, but 10 years later they don't work on any other machines. I've found that problem a lot over the years. I mean, other machines that wrote archives still read them, too, but not the newer Macs. Sometimes even other models from the period would not read them.

So, when I want something, I have to hook up to a 12 year old Titanium Powerbook and relay the files via ethernet or wifi. It's slow. It's no way to access your archives.

So, I went to hard drive archives. I'm currently using WD My Passport Studio drives, which are bus powered Firewire 800 drives. They can be swapped in seconds, and they hold 2 TB. They're not as fast as SATA drives, but Firewire 800 makes DVD suitable only for frisbees, and not very good ones at that. I'd say that you'll get 10 years out of a hard drive like that, after which you'll be lucky to find a Firewire interface on a computer. In fact, that day may be coming sooner than 10 years. But at least, when you move to the next thing, 2TB Firewire 800 drives will disgorge their contents far faster than 7GB DVDs, or is it still 4GB? I forget. So, here's what you need to imagine: burn 1000 DVDs that you'll definitely have trouble reading in the future, when DVD drives are as scarce as 8mm movie projectors, and if you DO manage to read them, well... you're going to swap 1000 DVDs? When you could plug in one or two 2TB My Passport drives, drag them to the new holographic 10 petabyte ThunderLightningBolt Graphene interface, and you can go for coffee till it's done.

Let's face facts: "archival" DVDs may sell DVDs for a higher profit, but the word does not guarantee that your data will be safe. Most of the brands are just names put on the same crap that comes out of China, and we already know that DVD burners may not make compatible archives for future machines.

This is a no-brainer. Forget DVDs. Use hard drives. They're about the size of a couple of iPhones stacked, and they hold 2TB. I have a rack of DVDs the size of a typical bathroom medicine cabinet, and it may hold 500GB altogether. I'm working on eliminating it, but I only work on it slowly, when I have the time. I regret ever making that decision, but these cheap little hard drives weren't available then.

That's my advice. Take it or leave it.

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

What is the shelf-life of a hard disk?

This thread is timely as I have been going through an unorganized (but thorough?) set of overlapping backups and data spread over several big drives. And I am running into these challenges:

1. How to consolidate projects down to two backups of the latest (last-saved, known good) version.

2. How to organize the back ups and keep them up to date.

3. How to relate my "manual" back-ups with Time Machine. Currently my Time-Machine is a back up of my current drive with its various projects and libraries, etc. My "manual" backups are drives where I've just dragged whole folders of data over for back-ups. Messy but somehow I trust it more. With Time Machine, there is the thing of how it will delete old versions when it runs out of room on the back-up drive.

Cloud storage (either through a data back-up service, or through ones web service) seems like a pretty unworkable solution. Uploads & downloads would either be running in the background (automatically) or would have to be scheduled for big projects, you would need to move all that data if you changed services, and well people report all kinds of problems in these scenarios. On the other hand, it seems a bit more elegant than the drive in a safety deposit box-- though that does have a kind of James Bond vibe to it.

[frankf]

Here's my strategy, if it helps.
-for current projects: DP's autosave, Save a Copy As with audio to a different internal drive, Just Cloud in the middle of the night plus if I take a break during the day; archive to bare drives kept in 2 locations when project is complete. My studio is in my residence, so no taking home, but I do use a fireproof safe.
-for Boot SSD: Time machine and Super Duper clone, Just Cloud for User data

-Sample Library Volumes, which don't change that much: Super Duper clones, Just Cloud. OrigInal installers or DVDs as well.
We're fortunate to have FIOS connection here and Just Cloud backs up incrementally, so cloud backup is viable. But I've found that the fastest way to get up and running after a disk problem is to use a clone or clone with Time machine. Cloud storage and reinstalls are too slow if I'm in the middle of a project.


Frank Ferrucci

[mikehalloran]

Drive docks are cheap. You can get them USB 2 only or USB 2/3 / FW / eSATA and TB. Speed really isn't the issue here so go with what works best. You install a drive by dropping it into the slot.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/NewerTec ... Drive_Dock

Since ML, you can have multiple drives available in time machine. Every once in awhile, I drop a new or recent drive into an eSATA dock and put it into the TM que. Since speed is not an issue, I use WD Green drives. The 2T are a little over $100 and are the ones that Apple uses in the Time a Capsule.

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search ... rn+Digital

These drives are not normally used for TM - I use Time Capsules over Ethernet and wireless nowadays. They are archival only and I rotate them. When they approach capacity, they are retired and stored offsite in a few places. Drives with only a few hours on them should last a very long time and I have multiples. At $100 a pop, it's cheap.

I pasted in links to OWC but Frys has better pricing locally. My USB / eSATA docks cost me under $20 and have worked flawlessly for over 4 years.

[frankf]

I'm actually running an SSD Samples Drive in one of the eSATA OWC docks. It's great. I also have 2 others for use as you describe, Mike. I haven't bought an enclosure in a long while.


Frank Ferrucci

[groove]

I'm with mikehalloran on this: HD dock (I've got a Vantec USB 3.0, 29.00 $) and plain internal hd.
No cases, no power supply, no nothing. Internal HD are cheaper than external ones.
For each client, I backup on 2 HD for redundancy and keep the HD's in a plastic box way from dust. That's it!

[Julia123]

Thanks for all the great info. I've been researching a couple of things mentioned here I wasn't familiar with. I was just being naive thinking I could put the project in a drawer and forget it, even the Wav files. So, I'm definitely bagging the DVD idea and going with hard drives.

Just think of all the photo's, videos & music etc. that will be gone in just one generation! (I don't see people backing up Grandpa's files every few years.) Thanks again.