Hi,
I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.
I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It’s mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).
I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I’m looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.
My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that’s quite outdated and DVDs don’t hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I’m unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I’m looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.
I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?
What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?
Cheers
There isn’t anything that meets your criteria.
Optical suffers from separation, hard drives break down, ssds lose their charge, tape is fantastic but has a high cost of entry.
There’s a lot of replies here, but if I were you I’d get last generation or two’s lto machine from some surplus auction and use that.
People hate being told to use magnetic tape, but it’s very reliable, long lived, pretty cost effective once you have a machine and surprisingly repairable.
What few replies are talking about is the storage conditions. If your archive can be relatively small and disconnected then you can easily meet some easy requirements for long term storage like temperature and humidity stability with a cardboard box, styrofoam cut to shape and desiccant packs (remember to rotate these!). An antifungal/antimicrobial agent on some level would be good too.
Do unplugged SSDs eventually lose the data?
Yes. They also slowly take longer to access their data with every read.
Wow, I didn’t know reads deteriorate SSDs. What’s the reason? Is the rate significant?
The data is stored in little ccd cells. It’s recorded as an analog voltage. There is no difference between analog voltages and digital voltages, I’m just using the word analog to establish that the potential is a domain that can vary continuously.
When you read the data, the levels of the voltages are checked and translated to the digital information they represent.
To determine the level of a voltage, a small amount of current is allowed to flow between the two points being measured. It’s a very small amount. Microamps and less.
When you draw current from a charge carrying device the charge, as represented by the potential between its negative and positive terminals, the voltage, decreases.
When the controller in the ssd responsible for reading voltages and assembling them into porno.mov doesn’t get a clear read, it asks again. As the ssd ages, parts of it can be re queried hundreds of times just to get commonly read information into memory like system files.
So the ssd degrades on read, and the user experiences this as “slowness”.
Would rewriting the data fix this problem? Yes. Using either badblocks -n, dd or a program called spinrite, rewriting the data fixes that problem.
Why doesn’t the ssd just do it? Because the ssd only has so many write cycles before its toast. Better to rely on the user or more accurately the host os to dictate those writes than to take on that responsibility.