Morgan Jones on 11 Mar 2014 14:12:51 -0700 |
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Re: [PLUG] How to Archive Data for 20 Years? |
On Mar 11, 2014, at 4:37 PM, Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org> wrote: > On Tuesday 2014-03-11 3:53:57 PM Art Clemons wrote: > >> Actually neither flash nor DVDs/CDs are really suitable for long term >> archiving. The estimates on life by manufacturers of said items seem to >> not be reflected in actual results. I refer you to the following url >> >> <http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/initiatives/temp-opmedia-faq.html> >> >> have DVDs I used for backup six or seven years ago, if I didn't have >> later backups, I'ld be in trouble because I get read errors on most of >> them. I've faced similar issues with tape, hard drives and the like. > > > IMHO, there is __ONLY ONE__ media that is guaranteed to be machine-readable in > 20 years: paper. > > If a human being can read the data, a computer will be able to also. Any > other media will have a technical life of about 20 years max. Even if the > media survives, the hardware to read it will be obsolete and very rare. > > > So store those tax records in file folders and keep them in a cool, dark, dry > place. When I embarked on my project to build a home NAS I had all sorts of problems with the several dozen DVDs I'd been using to archive my data. I did some research and discovered what Art said above. I vowed to not use DVDs to archive again. Between picking up photography as a hobby, digitizing a moderate sized movie collection, periodic backups of my Linode VMs and backups of mine and my wife's various computers I've ended up with a fair amount of data. I also bought a high speed document scanner and have been digitizing more and more to reduce the paper I am store. My answer is to archive data on a few different redundant spinning mediums and keep at least two versions: my primary data store is a mirrored FreeBSD ZFS machine. I have a Linux LVM nas at a second home a few hours away that I periodically rsync to. I also rsync to USB drives periodically. I have a good friend with a similar setup in his house and we talk about rsync'ing to each other's NAS periodically though haven't gotten there. -morgan ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug