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

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 2:20 PM brent timothy saner <brent.saner@gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/7/18 1:31 PM, Keith C. Perry wrote:
> 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.

i'm really good at suggesting terrible ideas[0].

>
(SNIP)
>
> #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.

agreed, 100%.

> 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.

any RW storage i'd avoid, honestly, but SSDs have the propensity to last
longer than platters since they're not susceptible to magnetic
interference in quite the same way. also, no moving parts, so less to
possibly rust due to improper storage, etc. also WAY more shock-resistant.

> 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

i'd do SSD over platter due to above.

> 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.

agreed here. blu-ray as a media was designed specifically to last.
whether it remains *accessible* for the media's lifetime, though...

>
(SNIP)>
> 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.

worth noting, and hinted at here, is that the lifetime of the media is
limited by keeping it running but, as Keith said, as long as it's
*mirrored/duplicated* in the running state, you'll always (in theory)
have an idea of the *integrity*/*quality* if the media - allowing you to
spin in new hardware to replace faulty.

i actually talk about this topic a bit on the podcast.

https://sysadministrivia.com/episodes/S0E6 - backups[1]
https://sysadministrivia.com/episodes/S0E14 - data recovery
https://sysadministrivia.com/episodes/S0E17 - data archival (specifically)

[0] https://twitter.com/SysAdm_Podcast/status/978923468770209792
[1] i recommend borgbackup over everything else for backups these days,
and you may find a wrapper helpful. i have one at
https://git.square-r00t.net/OpTools/tree/storage/backups/borg/backup.py

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