Re: [PLUG] How to Store Video Files for 25 Years?

Great topic!

This is the thing that orginally got me into learning how to really use mencoder and ffmpeg and why I have one of those horrible shell scripts (we're all embarrased by) for media rendering.

There is no [easy] answer that is a do-it-and-forget-it solution for the things we care about. Meaning that you'll put it on a format that will never be updated. The business world found this out the hard way through recents decades with tape by trying to do recovery from either tapes they've never spun to verifiy data fidelity or realizing that the DAT, ZIP, JAZZ LTO-<2 generations back), etc doesn't work anymore or isn't availble. Allow me to make suggestions based on my experience doing this since the late 1990's.

#1) The first thing I would say is forget about a do-it-and-forget-it solution. If these memories are important that you **have** to be willing to care for them even though stats show that most people do not routinely watch their memory archives with any regularity. In my family, we actually did use to do that- dad would break out the 35mm slide machine and properly embarrass me, my brothers and my cousins. If you're not doing that, then every couple of years (no more than 5) or when you are thinking about moving into a new storage technology you should go through your archives and make sure they are all good.

#2) Media types... DVD's, disk, et al.

a) I would avoid USB flash drives (i.e. thumb drives)... Low quality stuff so data long term data fidelity is questionable.

b) I would avoid SSDs for now.... Long term data fidelity is unknown since SSD's are relatively new and we don't know what we don't know.

c) USB hard dive... sure, as long as you mean an internal HD in enclosure with a USB interface. There's plenty of options here. The point is you want to be able change the drive

d) DVD (or Bluray I'm assumming too)... also a great option since you have a 50 year shelf life **BUT** you have to always make sure you have this device availabe and working. Addtionally, not all drive are created equal and depending on how you store your optical media you can have situation when one disc does not play in another drive. I used to render DVDs to the actually playback spec- chapters and end sometimes menu's. I would still store the original files in a folder on the DVD so I always had the source content. Once DVD and Bluray units could play media files, I stopped rending them all togther since mpg2's are much larger that anything else. At this point, my player is not even connected since we stream everything. One of my project next year is replication all the DVD data onto my current storage solution. Which bring me to my final point.

#3) Invest a robust storage solution and media server... I have 4 bay storage enclosures (USB 3 and e-SATA take your pick both are fine for this) connected to a media server (which could be a simple as an ARM SBC). I strongly recommend RAID 10 because its easy to upgrade mirror sets. To be clear and avoid storage arguments, what I am recommending in whatever you do, is mirroring so you have more that one complete set of your archives. I've been migrating data from older formats all year and my other solution is just a RAID-1 on WD RED drives. Hard drives are the cheapest most way to do this now and any future interfaces are going to be integrated into system boards with the older standards so migrating will be easy. The nice thing about mirrors is that you can run them in a degrated mode so that the life on one of mirrors/mirror sets is lower than the other. You just have to sync them regularly. One set should be stored in a data rated fire safe when not in use. I should also say I personally would never recommend any cloud blah blah blah for anything like this. If you don't have physical control of your data you don't have your data. To avoid yet another argument about trust of cloud stuff, one compromise you could make is to keep one or two local copies and then another copy off prem somewhere on an encrypted set. I have project hopefully starting in the next couple of weeks where I'll pushing data that 3rd copy to data center resources to satify the off-site but physically under my control paradigm.

You probably thinking, that is NOT archiving since drives are always spinning and you would be correct. In doing this over the years and trying to address my point #1, I realized that my personal archive is much smaller than the rest of the data on my storage. By keeping the personal and family archive with the rest of your storage, you have the opportunity to 1) watch it more readily, which perhaps means more often and 2) know that you have good data fidelity. As such, the chore of having to manage this dataset is not realized because I'm using the same work effort to protect it as I use to protect the rest of my data for the long haul. I know this is a different approach and may not be the answer exactly but for me this approach evolved about of attempting to do what you are asking and realizing there are no good solutions. This approach has completely taken the stress out of the task. Memories are important and how much we watch them should not be the test. Its **can** we watch them when we want or when whats in our own memory castles starts to fade.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.

Managing Member, DAO Technologies LLC

(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033

(M) +1.215.432.5167

www.daotechnologies.com

From: "Casey Bralla" <MailList@NerdWorld.org>
To: "PLUG Philadelphia Linux Users Group" <PLUG@Lists.PhillyLinux.org>
Sent: Friday, December 7, 2018 4:28:32 AM
Subject: [PLUG] How to Store Video Files for 25 Years?

As a Christmas present to my wife, I'm converting old VHS home movies
that we started filming in the early 1990's. I bought a $35 USB gizmo
that came with a Windows-only application. I'm using an ancient laptop
with Windows 10 (ugh! I HATE Windows 10, and the the laptop is way
under powered for it.) But it seems to be working pretty well. It
creates mpg files which I will edit and burn to DVDs on my Linux
machine. My wife wants DVDs, but I'd like to also give copies of the
videos to my 20-something kids.

I figure the videos will be most valuable to my kids in about 25 years.
I'll be in the rest home (or worse), and their kids will be interested
in their parents as infants.

How do I store the files so that they are secure and readable in 25 years?

My options:

1. DVD.   Pros: Media will survive intact in normal environments.
Cons: Bulky. Will you be able to buy old DVD players at Goodwill in 25
years?
2. USB Hard Disk: Pros: Media will probably survive. Good size (not
too big, but not too small to lose)   Cons: Will USB 3.0 still exist?
3. USB SSD:   Pros: Small size. Physically robust for storage. Cons:
Will SSD data last 25 years?   Will USB 3.0 still exist?
4. USB Thumb Drive: Pros: Easy to mail to them.   Cons: Small, so can
get lost easily. Will data last 25 years? Will USB 3.0 exist?
5. 3.5 Floppy (Yes, I still have the drives!) Pros: None   Cons:
Don't be silly

Any suggestions?

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