Long time storage solution

I have been amuzed by all the posting about MICRODRIVES failing yet no one posts about CD or Harddrives. I have never lost a Microdrive but I lost many CDs and a few harddrives. And most people using CF use CDs as backup.

Gald this article is waking people up to reality.

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Fujitsu makes a unit called the DynaMO 640 Photo that stores data directly onto 640MB MO Media. It is expensive media compared to CDs or DVDs at around $20 a pop. But Fujitsu guarantees it's long term reliability.

Product info @ Fujitsu site:
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/product.asp?L=en&PID=364&INFO=dsc

Review at Tom's Hardware Guide:
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031017/index.html

Something to think about. I'm sure capacities will be greatly increased soon.

That is the best solution today, and it's what major information industries do. Hard drives are extremely reliable these days, and barring something actually reaching out and killing them, they can last a decade.

When hard disk space dropped below US$1.00 a gig, I put together a file server with half a terabyte of storage space on 4 removable drives. My backups run automatically each night, and I swap out two of the drives (two drives now hold my data) each week, keeping the two "out-of-cycle" drives in a separate location.

Changing storage formats is almost a moot point--it will happen almost automatically as I back my data up after making the conversion. In addition, it also handles the problem of reliable storage of all my non-photo (but still very important data) with the same solution.

Boyan said:

I don't undersant how no one suggests hard disks for backups. Two
dedicated hard disk for photos are can last longer than CDs or
DVDs, backuping on them via firewire or usb 2.0 is way faster, and
you always have EVERYTHING on one place and accessing ANY photo you
imagine is way faster.

Even today a 250 GB hard disk cost as much as ammout of CDs to
store 250 GB.... To not mention the time needed to record that much
CDs (especially since it is recommened to burn at 8x speed or even
less).

Click to expand...

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

The actual failure rate for tape is pretty high. Unless the backup process is actually tested rather constantly, it is common to find out that the backup is useless. Backing up to hard drives (multiple hard drives) is far more reliable.

Remember that today most hard drives are set to shut down when not being accessed, and a parked hard drive stored in a safe location is quite stable (more stable than tape). Even if something physically destroyed the casing, the data is recoverable.

cloudless said:

Harddisks only have a few years of lifetime too. If the harddisk
fails and you reach for the DVD and find out it is dead too, then
you've got nothing. I'm thinking perhaps tape is the way to go.

--
my photoblog in Hong Kong:
http://cloudless.net

Click to expand...

--
RDKirk

'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Click to expand...

All media fails. Even if it doesn't fail, it will become obsolete. If you only have one copy of your pictures, you are just living on borrowed time. For example, one of the very minor stories that went out after September 11th, 2001 was about a famous photographer from the Kennedy era, kept his negative collection in a bank vault in the basement of the World Trade towers. One of the nice things about digital photography is how easy it is to make backups. To paraphrase the old joke about Chicago voting: Backup early, backup often.

At the very least, you should have backups in two separate locations, and plan to recopy your backups every 3-5 years as media changes. For instance, keeping everything on a harddrive, and maintaining two sets of DVD backups (preferably using two different brands of DVD media just in case there was a bad batch of media), keeping one set at work, safety deposit box, or some other remote location would be one reasonable choice. Other possibilities include getting an external hard drive or laptop and just doing CD backups.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20040416/index.html

jamesjaie said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Fujitsu makes a unit
called the DynaMO 640 Photo that stores data directly onto 640MB MO
Media. It is expensive media compared to CDs or DVDs at around $20
a pop. But Fujitsu guarantees it's long term reliability.

Product info @ Fujitsu site:
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/product.asp?L=en&PID=364&INFO=dsc

Review at Tom's Hardware Guide:
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031017/index.html

Something to think about. I'm sure capacities will be greatly
increased soon.

Click to expand...

Thank you everybody for the discussion. It seems like CD-R is still practical to use IF carefully select both high quality (i.e. dye type) media and recording hardware...

MO seems great but the technology itself might not last long. Tape is expensive and obsolete quickly. HDD failed too (I had first hand experience on this, not on digital photo though).

Any brand suggestion on this? I'm currently use the 'light green' Imation (3M) 16x. Purchased 100 discs few year back. My drive is Verbatim 52x24x52 ...which seems like OEM from other brand.

John

I guess that's certainly a good way to go, but probably not everyone here is comfortable enough w/ managing a separate file server on a home-office lan. Also, probably everyone tends to think the upfront cost is too high vs the low commitment costs of just adding an archival storage unit to their existing PC.

OTOH, I suppose most people don't really need a file server since most might not need quite that much storage space. I'm thinking I will start using a separate HDD for regular backup and/or mirror setup perhaps -- and burn CDs for additional protection as well as easy near-line access on any other PC. How are the ATA/IDE-based RAID offerings these days for PCs? Would they work well w/ removal HDD setup?

Man

RDKirk said:

When hard disk space dropped below US$1.00 a gig, I put together a
file server with half a terabyte of storage space on 4 removable
drives. My backups run automatically each night, and I swap out
two of the drives (two drives now hold my data) each week, keeping
the two "out-of-cycle" drives in a separate location.

Changing storage formats is almost a moot point--it will happen
almost automatically as I back my data up after making the
conversion. In addition, it also handles the problem of reliable
storage of all my non-photo (but still very important data) with
the same solution.

Boyan said:

I don't undersant how no one suggests hard disks for backups. Two
dedicated hard disk for photos are can last longer than CDs or
DVDs, backuping on them via firewire or usb 2.0 is way faster, and
you always have EVERYTHING on one place and accessing ANY photo you
imagine is way faster.

Even today a 250 GB hard disk cost as much as ammout of CDs to
store 250 GB.... To not mention the time needed to record that much
CDs (especially since it is recommened to burn at 8x speed or even
less).

Click to expand...

--
RDKirk
'I know you're smarter than I am. But I think you're making up
some of those words.' Rocky Rooster from 'Chicken Run'

Click to expand...

--
Just another amateur learning to paint w/ 'the light of the world.' (John 8:12)
Motto for the season: 'Cameras are for making photos, not war...'
See profile for more + some basic photog resources.
As usual, YMMV + caveat emptor.
Contact me at [email protected]
Indulge my fancies at http://www.pbase.com/mandnwong

http://www.cddimensions.com/cd-r_media/mam-r80tgg-cb.asp

record at the slowest speed for greater accuracy. make 2 sets and store them in different cool dry places vertically.

--
Just my nickels worth.
Happy Snappin'!

Ron
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.pbase.com/recalcitrantron
FCAS Member No. 68
pbase supporter
D Seventy
Coolpix 45 Hundred

Gold CD-R are supposed to be the best

Wouldn't it be better to buy one of those big machines that "prints" DVD and CDs?

D

John_of_LA said:

Thank you everybody for the discussion. It seems like CD-R is still
practical to use IF carefully select both high quality (i.e. dye
type) media and recording hardware...
MO seems great but the technology itself might not last long. Tape
is expensive and obsolete quickly. HDD failed too (I had first hand
experience on this, not on digital photo though).

Any brand suggestion on this? I'm currently use the 'light green'
Imation (3M) 16x. Purchased 100 discs few year back. My drive is
Verbatim 52x24x52 ...which seems like OEM from other brand.

John

Click to expand...

See this article http://www.xdr2.com/CDR-Info/Dye.htm for dye type...

For burning speed, I've read on somewhere that the min speed is NOT a good idea on newer CD-R which the dye designed specifically for higher speed. There would be optimum speed for doing this for each dye type... wondering what should be the right one!

http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/91
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/dlc/book3/chapter6/index.shtml

I have > 100GB of images on 3 HD. One is permanently installed in my computer while the other 2 are installed in a removable drive bay. Each week, one of the removable drives are swapped out. The 3rd drive is taken off site. I use SynchroMagic to back up critical files to the 2 removable drives. I'm reassured that if there is a failiure of any of these drives that at least one will still contain a reliable backup. This is much more efficient than either CD-R or DVD-R (I have both capabilities). Besides, how many CD-R or DVD-R would be required to back up 100GB of data? Not really practical IMHO.

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

--
Doug Walker
Check my profile for equipment list.

Gareth said:

I have been amuzed by all the posting about MICRODRIVES failing yet
no one posts about CD or Harddrives. I have never lost a
Microdrive but I lost many CDs and a few harddrives. And most
people using CF use CDs as backup.

Gald this article is waking people up to reality.

Click to expand...

So what is your long term archival solution?

Dave

Does anybody use TAPE drives? They supposed to be very reliable.

I never had a problem with a CD-R though (some of them are cheap and more than 7 years old), but after this article, I am concidering something else ... TAPE looks interesting as it is still IT industry standart back-up device

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

Man-Fai Wong said:

I guess that's certainly a good way to go, but probably not
everyone here is comfortable enough w/ managing a separate file
server on a home-office lan. Also, probably everyone tends to
think the upfront cost is too high vs the low commitment costs of
just adding an archival storage unit to their existing PC.

Click to expand...

Old P166-P200 machine - $50 - $100. Or you probably already have one.

Promise IDE controller card - $30 (to suipport big drives in old computer)

Several hard drives- Watch the ads for the best buy. You know they are cheap.

Linux O/S running Samba Free.

UPS for file server. Appox. $100.

For a backup file server, slow is better than fast becasue fast uses more power. A 3 GHz P4 would be bad. A P166 woud be good. By the same token, 5400 RPM drives are better than 7200 RPM drives.

11:50pm up 252 days, 3:11, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
root tty1 - 15Aug03 133days 0.19s 0.19s -bash

From one of my basement Linux servers. A P200. The "133 days" figure was the last time I touched the keyboard that is connected to it.

Of course the wild card here is Linux. If you don't know anything about Linux, then this can be a long detour. Do you have any geek friends....?

An external drive is easier to set up, but think about it. Every time you want to do a backup, you need to connect the cables, turn it on, start whatever backup program. Then twiddle your thumbs for 10-15 minutes while it is flailing away and then shut it down. Are you really going to do this each and every day? There is a lot to be said for a full time backup machine that you can forget about (see my uptime figures, above.)

Wayne Larmon

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

The hard drive solution works for me. I have 2 external 16ogb drives carrying backups of my photos and video. I keep 1 in my desk at work, and only bring it home to add data. Cheap and reliable, given the incredibly long odds that both drives would fail at the same time.

(As of this minute CompUSA has the WD 160gb drives on promo for $59 US after rebate, and a good USB 2.0 housing can be had for $35-40 US)

BTW, I would consider tape as the most risky of all storage schemes. Big corps use tape backup systems, but the tapes are seldom more than 1 year old, and are rewritten at very short intervals.

Any magnetic media storage will gradually decay due to the magnetic fields. Companies use tape backups because they are fast and can be reused but they are unreliable and are easily damaged. The best method is not to make a backup and just store it away but to regularly "refresh" the data by rewriting. I tried CDRWs but I have found them more unreliable than standard CDs. I have therefore gone for the HDD backup method which is quicker and cheaper than using multiple CDs / DVDs. I keep all my images on my computer and have 2 external HDDs as backups.
--
Regards,

Brian

John_of_LA said:

Hi,
What do you guy use? I have been using CD-R as my primary permanent
storage. However, I've just had one fail on me (luckily, I have TWO
copies on each disc). The one that failed has 2 years life on it.
It is not being use more than 10 times (during 2 year period), and
it was written at the same time with the one that does not fail.
The disc is not the cheapest one and it has a good brand on it. I
keep them in CD-wallet... locked, inside the carbinet so light and
moisure are not my issue here.
It's kinda scary here. Reading new article that Phil's post make me
even more freak out I couldn't imagine if both disk fails!
Any good suggestion here?

Thanks,
John

Click to expand...

Keep them in standard jewel cases instead, not the slim ones- the standard ones which protects the surface better.

Don't let the temperature, humidity or light level get too high.

Check now and then with a comparison file app...I use "Vice-Versa" (tucows.com), which compares down to the bit level if you want.

Jim Hayes

Hi People

After reading some post the first thing i saw on the long term, it is not the realibylity of the backup, but the amount of data we will have after 10-30-50 60 years from now. Also what happen to our children that will be nostalgic. Who here doesn't keep picture(s) of their grand parent..........

I konw it may sound dramatic but.............

Imagine some people already need more than 2-3...5 drive of 100-200 gig to store data. Those information came from the last 10 year.... 20 for the one who was in head of their time.

I take around 5000 to 10 000 pic per year since i switch to digital and i don't think i am the one who take a lot of picture.

10 000 x 60year x 5 meg =3000000meg...3000 gig (take 5 meg cause i think it is a good guess but put the number you whant to have a realistic estimate)

This is lot of data.......ok i see this with my eyes of 2004 in 2064 it may be different. Bigger drive.

But if i remember car should be fly by now !!!!! My guees is we generate more data then what we are able to manage and store.

((((This is a world deasease.......more for our need))))

Everybody will reach a breakpoint where emotionnal and rational will meet and you will have to choose between keeping or loosing (erase it).

It will be utopic to think that we will be able to keep everything......

Has for the best longterm storage........memory and emotion

Have a nice day...

P.S. To be more rationnal i write CD for now(near 150 and counting) and i have not see problem. I acces my cd 5 time a year. To avoid reading my cd to much i have a index software (Whereisit). This help me browse my cd off line and see small thumbnail of the pic i have

I also have HDD; one of 150 meg, 300 meg, 600meg, 5gig and 20gig. I also change my pc around every 4 year. Now i have a laptop with a drive of 60 gig on that one i have 5 gig of important data to back up..... up to now..

My concern is how i will transfert my non graphic data Word, excell and other programm that may not exist in few year. Example lotus word pro and lotus organizer file..........
But this is not the place to talk about non-image data.