I have backups on a backup hard drive and also synced to B2, but I am thinking about backing up to some format to put in the cupboard.

The issue I see is that if I don’t have a catastrophic failure and instead just accidentally delete some files one day while organising and don’t realise, at some point the oldest backup state is removed and the files are gone.

The other thing is if I get hit by a bus and no one can work out how to decrypt a backup or whatever.

So I’m thinking of a plain old unencrypted copy of photos etc that anyone could find and use. Bonus points if I can just do a new CD or whatever each year with additions.

I have about 700GB of photos and videos which is the main content I’m concerned about. Do people use DVDs for this or is there something bigger? I am adding 60GB or more each year, would be nice to do one annual addition or something like that.

  • ifmu@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I usually use a dehydrator for ~3 days on my drives to make them shelf stable. So far I haven’t had any issues.

    • Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 days ago

      This will do nothing at all. Drives don’t die by rust. They usually die because the motor somehow can’t get the discs to spin. Very often dry lube is the reason. That can occur if you leave the drive off too long.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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    15 days ago

    I’m using blu-ray disks for the 3rd copy, but I’m not backing up nearly as much data as you are.

    The only problem with optical media is that you should only expect it to be readable for a couple of years, best case, at this point and probably not even that as the tier 1 guys all stop making it and you’re left with the dregs.

    You almost certainly want some sort of tape option, assuming you want long retention periods and are only likely to add incremental changes to a large dataset.

    Edit: I know there’s longer-life archival optical media, but for what that costs, uh, you want tape if at all possible.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      15 days ago

      Hmm I am keen for something that could be left in the cupboard for 50 years and still works when brought out.

      What does it take me to do home tape storage? Do the tapes needs to be stored with climate control or are they pretty stable? Is it feasible for the average person to load the contents?

      I’m thinking of pulling a suitcase out of the cupboard of all the baby photos, but digital files or photo and video.

      • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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        15 days ago

        Tape isn’t readable by normal people even if they found it tomorrow with a drive already configured to be used.

        In 50 years good luck finding a working drive compatible with LTO4 when LTO32 is out (it’s backwards compatible only with previous gen).

        Unless you write on the box “here there are the keys for 100k bitcoins” they’ll just trash the tape

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          15 days ago

          Yeah from some other comments I think my initial plan (that I’ll research some more) will be:

          • buy a new HDD, format with ZFS or btrfs for error correction
          • copy data onto drive
          • store in cupboard with sata-> USB cable and instructions about what it is, how to access .
          • every year, load the previous year’s data onto the drive
          • about every 5 years, replace the drive by copying onto a brand new one (timeframe will likely depend on when my other HDD drives die)

          This way I should get a chance to update storage medium as technology changes as well.

          • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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            14 days ago

            you need to use fat32 if you want normal people to access the files

            Otherwise, they will get the “You need to format the disk in drive D: before using it. Do you want to format it?” dialog, they blindly click “yes”, then they will mumble to themselves “weird, he left behind a massive collection of blank drives…”

            • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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              14 days ago

              Oh shit you’re right. Argh ok I’m going to have to rethink that. Two drives and something to compare against each other to check for errors. I’m not sure about FAT32 as there are some multi-GB video files. Shit.

              • PassingThrough@lemm.ee
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                14 days ago

                exFAT is a newer and viable alternative to FAT32, with better size limits and some pretty good cross-platform capabilities. That said, if your primary access is through Windows, NTFS may have some better features and is at least read-only on other platforms.

            • PassingThrough@lemm.ee
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              14 days ago

              This is why I can’t/don’t have a lot of the “best practices” in my family archive. I’m not encrypting local drives, I’m not using BTRFS, or a ZFS pool. If I did I’d have to ensure my Will provided for the lawyer to hire a tech shop to help recover them. No, exFAT and NTFS, in the clear so those left behind can just plug them in and get to making their own copies. Otherwise the archive would die with me.

              Does that mean someone could steal my drives and go through my family photos? Sure. I hope it brings them much guilt, something a garbled encrypted drive could never do.

            • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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              13 days ago

              Yeah since then I’ve been convinced I need two drives mirrored under zfs, which should handle that scenario.

              • philpo@feddit.org
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                13 days ago

                Hard drives loose their data fast if not powered (within a few years),so do SSD based media. Furthermore the former are very suspectable to mechanical destruction, electromagnetic interference,etc. And even if for some reason your drives last that long there will be nothing to connect them to - you know how we connected hard drives 25 years ago? Via SCSI/IDE. Good luck finding a converter to these now. If you go back further you need ISA controllers for the drives.

                This is a really bad idea. Really really bad, especially with the goal you want to achieve. Your data will be gone within 5 to 10 years.

                • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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                  13 days ago

                  The idea is that I’d swap out drives every 5 years or so. If USB A is no longer in use I’d swap out at that point for something newer. Plus the drives would be powered on every year for the update, it’s just the point that I stop doing it (too old/hit by bus/etc) that the clock would start ticking.

                  I do like the M-Disc idea though. Probably a similar price, and more in line with the shelf-stable solution I was looking for.

      • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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        15 days ago

        So, 50 years isn’t a reasonable goal unless you have a pretty big budget for this. Essentially no media is likely to survive that long and be readable unless they’re stored in a vault, under perfect climate controlled conditions. And even if the media is fine, finding an ancient drive to read a format that no longer exists is not a guaranteed proposition.

        You frankly should be expecting to have to replace everything every couple of years, and maybe more often if your routine tests of the media show it’s started rotting.

        Long term archival storage really isn’t just a dump it to some media and lock it up and never look at ever again.

        Alternately, you could just make someone else pay for all of this, and shove all of this to something like Glacier and make the media Amazon’s problem. (Assuming Amazon is around that long and that nothing catches fire.)

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          15 days ago

          Hmm damn. I don’t really think cloud is the right answer for what I’m trying to do.

          I disagree that formats like JPEG won’t be readable in 50 years. I feel like there would be big demand for being able to read the format even if it’s been superceded, on account of all the JPEGs that still living people have.

          Maybe I get a big drive. Each year I copy over files from the last year. Every X years I swap the hard drive for a new one, copy all data.

          How can I tell if individual files get corrupted? Like the hard drive failed in that section, then I copy the corrupted file to the new drive, and I’d never know. Can I test in bulk? 50k+ photos and videos so far.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            14 days ago

            How can I tell if individual files get corrupted?

            Checksums. A good filesystem will do this for you, but you can do it yourself if you want.

            If you sync a drive with rsync or something periodically, it’ll replace files with different checksums, fixing any corruption as you go. Then smart tests should tell you if there’s any corruption the drive is aware of. I’m sure automated backup tools have options for this.

            • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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              14 days ago

              I specifically don’t want to be touching previous files on the drive, it should be addition only. So I may need to write a script to do the checks, or compare against a mirror drive. I can do this with the right filesystem, but I’m worried that if I use a filesystem not readable by Windows then it may not be layman-proof enough.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                14 days ago

                Then I’d go with FAT on a USB, which should be plenty portable into the future. You’ll want to replace it every 5-10 years, and check on it every other year or so.

                That’s about as easy to use as I can think of. Decades down the road, physical media like DVDs and tapes may be difficult to find readers for, but USB is versatile enough that someone is bound to have access. Micro SD cards may also be a good option, as long as you keep a couple USB readers around.

                • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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                  14 days ago

                  I have a terrible track record with USB sticks, including completely losing a stack of photos because of a USB stick.

                  I’m now thinking the benefits of a nice error-correcting file system probably outweigh the benefits of using a widely supported one. So I might use a pair of mirrored hard drives with SATA->USB cable, then include instructions along the lines of “plug into my linux laptop to access, or take to a computer repair show if you can’t work it out”.

              • Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                14 days ago

                Any file systems Windows can read out-of-the-box are no good file systems. What Windows read? FAT and NTFS. Former is so basic it has no mechanisms to detect errors and bitrot and the later one is a mess.
                You should stick to ext4, btrfs and zfs.

                If you want to make if fool-proof then add a sticker with ‘bring me to a computer shop to access my content’.

                • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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                  14 days ago

                  I have considered that exact message. It does seem making it easily plug and play may be out of the question if I want the error correction capabilities.

          • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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            15 days ago

            The format is the tape in the drive, or the disk or whatever.

            Tape existed 50 years ago: nothing modern and in production can read those tapes.

            The problem is, given a big enough time window, the literal drives to read it will simply no longer exist, and you won’t be able to access even non-rotted media because of that.

            As for data integrity, there’s a lot of options: you can make a md5 sum of each file, and then do it again and see if anything is different.

            The only caveat here is you have to make sure whatever you’re using to make the checksums gets stored somewhere that’s not JUST on the drive because if the drive DOES corrupt itself, and your only record of the “good” hashes is on the drive, well, you can’t necessarily trust those hashes either.

            • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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              15 days ago

              Ah good thinking. I am thinking a spare drive that I update once a year with new content and replace every few years with a new drive is a good idea.

              • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
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                14 days ago

                That could probably work.

                Were it me, I’d build a script that would re-hash and compare all the data to the previous hash as the first step of adding more files, and if the data comes out consistent, I’d copy the files over, hash everything again, save the hash results elsewhere and then repeat as needed.

    • shyguyblue@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Same.

      Bought a Blu-ray burner and “archive grade” disks for third location backups.

      I made a list of files that is just a text document (3MB!) that sits on the root of the Blu-ray. There’s probably a better way of doing that, but it works for me.

  • killabeezio@lemm.ee
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    14 days ago

    I decided instead to use ZFS. Better protection than just letting something sit there. Your backups are only as good as your restores. So, if you are not testing your restores, those backups may be useless anyway.

    ZFS with snapshots, replicated to another ZFS box. The replicated data also stores the snapshots and they are read-only. I have snapshots running every hour.

    I have full confidence that my data is safe and recoverable.

    With that said, you could always use M-disk.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      14 days ago

      I have automated backups including to cloud, but I want a separated manual system that cannot get erased if I mess something up (accidentally sync a delete, lose encryption key, forget to pay cloud bill). I have 3 2 1 but it’s all automated and backups are eventually replaced, if it’s not a critical failure I won’t necessarily know I’ve lost something.

      Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don’t want it encrypted.

      Based on other conversations I’m planning on using duel disks mirrored, zfs, annual updates and disk checks with disks rotated out every 5 years (unless failing/failed). Handling the need for layman retrival of data by including instructions with the hard drives.

      • killabeezio@lemm.ee
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        13 days ago

        That sounds like a really good idea. You basically get the best of everything.

        The cool thing about ZFS is the pool information is stored on the disks themselves. You can just plug them in and import the pools.

      • admin@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don’t want it encrypted.

        I have a client with a photographic studio. To give you an estimate, his data is around 14TB of mostly camera pictures with approximately 20 years or history and the owner believe it or not, relies on multiple external hard drives for cold storage, he has a 2TB Seagate thats like 2011-2012 old which still works.

        To put in a cupboard tho, M disc is your best bet.

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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    15 days ago

    For your amount, just an external hard drive attached to a NAS or something is fine, or a 2-bay synology would be more than enough. Drives are coming in 20-24TB models now, that’d keep you going for a long time.

  • Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    14 days ago

    For local backups it depends on what you want to have:

    • The cheapest option is a usb or thumb drive. But you have to regularly plug it in and copy your backup on it.
    • The lazy option is to buy a NAS and configure a backup job that regularly creates a backup. Versioned, incremental, differentials and full backups are possible as is WORM to add a bit of extra security. You can configure a NAS to only turn on specified times, do a backup and then turn off again. This will increase protection against encrypting malware. WORM also helps in this case.
      Or just let it run 24/7, create backups every hour and install extra services on it like AI powered image analysis to identify people and objects and let it automatically tag your photos. Cool stuff! Check out QNAP and Synology or build a NAS yourself.
      A NAS can also be configured to present its content in a LAN by itself. Any computer will automatically connect to it if the access isn’t secured by user/password or certificate.

    I recommend buying a NAS.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      14 days ago

      So, I have a server that has a backup drive, automated backups, and replication to laptops as well as cloud storage in Backblaze B2. What I’m looking for is something completely separated from the automation that is a backup for if I screw up the automation, as well as a backup that a layman can access (i.e. no encryption, media that is usable by anyone). I have had some very bad experiences with flash drives but I am thinking a HDD with SATA->USB cable attached (I already have the cable).

      From the other conversations in this thread mentioning many options, the hard drive option seems the best for my use case, but I’ve also been convinced of the benefit of printing out some physical photos as well, so my current plan is to get a big container, put a couple of mirrored hard drives in there (to validate against each other as protection against bit-rot), and print 100 photos each year to add to the container to have an extra layer of redundancy.

      • Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 days ago

        Printing the photos won’t help much. After 20 or so years they are all discolored. You can’t prevent that.

        I think SSDs might be the best storage medium for you. Consumer-grade ssds have a 1 year data retention when powered off. That means at least once per year you have to turn it on and copy the data around one time to refresh the cells. This way it’ll probably last several 100 years.

        You can’t exactly make it fool-proof. Outside people will never know what you did to create your backup and what to do to access it. Who knows if the drives file system or file types are still readable after 20 years? Who knows if SATA and USB connectors are still around after that time?
        For example it is very likely that SATA will disappear within the next 10-15 years as hdds are becoming more and more an enterprise thing and consumers are switching to M.2 ssds.

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          14 days ago

          The printed photos are only there as an extra layer of redundancy in case everything else fails. It’s ok if they get discoloured a bit, it never put me off going through my grandparents’ suitcases of photos. Ideally the digital files survive, if not then at least there is something rather than nothing.

          Is SSD really necessary? Everything I search up says SSDs have worse retention than HDD in cold storage. A couple TB of HDD is pretty cheap these days, and seems like a better cold storage option.

          You can’t exactly make it fool-proof. Outside people will never know what you did to create your backup and what to do to access it. Who knows if the drives file system or file types are still readable after 20 years? Who knows if SATA and USB connectors are still around after that time?

          Yes, so now I’m thinking a rotation cycle. About every 5 years replace the drives with new ones, copy over all data. If newer technology exists then I can move to that newer technology. This way I’m keeping it up to date as long as I can.

          For example it is very likely that SATA will disappear within the next 10-15 years as hdds are becoming more and more an enterprise thing and consumers are switching to M.2 ssds.

          Does this matter if I have a SATA->USB cable stored with it? Other than if USB A standards change or get abandoned for USB C, but that should be covered by the review every 5 years.

          • Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            14 days ago

            Is SSD really necessary? Everything I search up says SSDs have worse retention than HDD in cold storage. A couple TB of HDD is pretty cheap these days, and seems like a better cold storage option.

            SSDs are by design less susceptible and more robust. No moving parts and able to work in much harsher conditions than hdds will ever be able to. The standard set by JEDEC requires every consumer ssd to have a 1 year data retention while powered off at 30 °C (I think). That’s the minimum it has to archieve but usually they are better than that. Do not buy the cheapest thumb drives because they contain the all the crap that wasn’t good enough to make ssds from it.
            Btw you need to fire hdds up regularly too or the motor gets stuck. I think every 3-6 months was the recommendation.

            Yes, so now I’m thinking a rotation cycle. About every 5 years replace the drives with new ones, copy over all data.

            Don’t make it flat every 5 years. Let a software monitor the SMART values of the drives and send notifications if the values indicate an increased change of a dying disc/ssd.

            Does this matter if I have a SATA->USB cable stored with it?

            Those are the first that fail, followed by the usb controller chip in the tray. Keep it as simple as possible. Removable trays are probably the best way but I’m not sure how much wear they can take.

            Do not buy 2.5" drives. This class will die out soon™. There were no new hdds introduced in years and ssds are often replaced by M.2 ones because of the faster connection.

            • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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              14 days ago

              You are the first person who has recommended SSD for cold storage. Everyone else (including what I’ve googled) says HDD for cold storage, just spin up every year or two and they will be fine. Can you point me at further reading?

              Don’t worry, I’ll SMART check the drives each year as I update as required.

              As for types of drives dying out soon, I can reassess the situation every 5 years when I do drive replacement. I would be confident 2.5" drives will still be readable in 5 years.

              • GameGod@lemmy.ca
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                13 days ago

                Do not use an SSD for cold storage - it will fail. SSDs need to be plugged in every once to refresh the charge in their NAND, otherwise they’ll lose the data.

                This is not a theoretical thing - I’ve had a good Samsung 850 Pro drive fail while being off for 2 years.

  • Marthirial@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Thinking about this, the only ancient information we are still able to access is painted or edged on stone or clay. How about some sort huge wall with thousands of QRcode like engravings?

    • root@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      Reminds me of project Silica. Media historically was more durable (stone/ ink and cloth paper, etc) but had a low data density. As density increased, so did fragility

  • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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    15 days ago

    Just buy a spinning drive and call it a day. Follow 3-2-1 protocol and you’ll never lose anything . Check your longterm “cold storage” HDD’s 1-2 times a year. They should last 5-10 with little fuss. Some will go longer with no issues.

    If you follow 3-2-1 you’ll never lose anything and you only have to spend a few hours a year thinking about backups.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      15 days ago

      I have 3 2 1 but I want the equivalent of a suitcase of photos in the cupboard. No family member is gonna be cleaning out my house as they move me to a rest home and stumble upon my Borg backup in B2 object storage. And if they do they won’t have the key. I want something a bit closer to physical.

      I think an extra drive for cold storage is a good idea. My main backups are automated, this one I can add any new files done in the last year once a year, then back in the cupboard. I just need to make sure I’m rotating the drives so I don’t have the same one in storage for 50 years, and instead buy new ones every 5 years or so.

      • csm10495@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        If this is your fear, why not just have a will or something that specifically describes what to do and where to go?

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          14 days ago

          I have such a document, but it’s not quite the same. I’m just as worried about my dumb ass losing the borg key and all data along with it…

          I’m thinking a clearly labelled hard drive with instructions, rotating the hard drive with a new one every 5 years or so.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          14 days ago

          Exactly. I have a document for my SO that describes what to do if I pass (where the money is, how the WiFi is set up, various important accounts, etc). It’s not a will (nothing about who gets what, though that’s assumed by the state to be my SO, or my kids equally if we pass together), just a document that explains the stuff I handle.

    • philpo@feddit.org
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      13 days ago

      This is actually terrible advice. WORM media exists for a reason and telling someone with a mere 3-2-1 he will never loose data is absolutely irresponsible.

      Neither is it a good idea to use regular hard-disk for offsite-cold storage. A really really bad idea.

      • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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        13 days ago

        If you follow proper 3-2-1 you are living the four nine’s dude. A “regular” spinning HDD can last a decade or more without fuss (define “regular” please…?)

        You will not lose all 3 backups at once. When one goes down, you replace it. There’s a reason this is industry standard for media production and beyond. “Irresponsible”? Please.

        • philpo@feddit.org
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          13 days ago

          3-2-1 is the minimal consensus and not recommended anymore for everything you need to reliably have access to after a long time - the fact that some ransomware viruses intentionally have a very time they are laying low to decrypt old and rarely used files is one of the main reasons. Healthcare, finance, taxation, accounting, etc. are all sectors that heavily rely on WORM media and long term tape storage.

          You are right that a spinning disk often can work for 10 years - but there is a reason they are exchange earlier in a professional setting. Not all of them will. And you were talking about cold storage disks. This is something even the manufacturers do not recommend - for a reason.

          • LandedGentry@lemmy.zip
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            12 days ago

            Dude this isn’t healthcare this is a person’s home backups. Are you kidding me?

            And yes you swap them earlier, I am just saying what is possible. Not that you should buy 1 drive, sit around 10 years, and expect everything to be fine.

            You’re being very antagonistic here as well. I’m not sure what all the hostility is about. Either way I bet you if you follow 321 for your home backups you’ll never lose a single thing. Idk what you do at home and what you’re storing but for the vast majority of people that is more than enough.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      14 days ago

      Yes this seems to be the general theme. Main issue is sorting out a file system. I can use a self-repairing one, to recover from long term storage issues, but then it likely won’t work in Windows which it may need to if I want a layman to be able to access it. So still some refinement of the plan but it’s coming together.

      I’ve also decided to print some physical photos, aiming for 100 per year, and will put everything in a container together. The physical photos are for in case the container is lost for decades and the drives die, then there will at least be something.

      • TheHolm@aussie.zone
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        14 days ago

        If you need something which can withstand some bitrot on single drive, just use par2. As long is filesystem is readable, you can recover files even if bit of data get corrupted

  • betweenthesixes@lemm.ee
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    15 days ago

    I believe M-Disc to be the best consumer grade, optical solution out there. If you want to go commercial grade you are looking for LTO tapes, but your costs begin rising exponentially. If M-Disc claims are to be believed, they should last well longer than your requirement and be able to handle your data footprint using multiple, but not an unreasonable amount of discs.

    No matter which solution you choose, if you are targeting multiple decades, you must save not only the media, but ideally the drive, computer and software used to archive. There is no guarantee that any of the existing technology will be relevant or backward compatible across several decades.

  • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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    14 days ago

    After reading the previous discussion I think that you should get more than single drive to store cold backups. That way you can at least spread out the risk of single drive failing. 2TB spinning drives are pretty cheap today and if you have, for example, 4 of them, you can buy one now, write your backups to it and in 6 months buy another, write data on that and so on.

    This way you’ll have drives with year or two difference on purchase date, so it’s pretty unlikely all of them fail at once and a single drive gets powered on and checked every other year or so. My personal experience is that spinning drives are pretty stable on the shelf, but I wouldn’t rely on them for decades. And of course even with multiple drives you’ll still want to replace them every 3-5 years each. Plus with multiple drives, if I were to build setup like that, I’d set up some sort of scripts or other solution where I can just plug the thing in and doubleclick an icon on desktop to refresh the data and maybe get a notification automatically that the drive you’re using should be replaced.

    And for actual, long term storage, printouts are the way to go. At least in here you can get books made out of photo paper with your pictures. That’s one media which is actually stable over long period and using them doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge nor hardware. But I’d still keep digital copies around, as the printouts aren’t resistant to things like house fire or water damage.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      14 days ago

      Yeah I am thinking of getting a couple of drives and cloning across both. Update both at the same time. I didn’t think of getting two drives at different times but that makes sense, thanks for the suggestion!

      I am thinking printouts is a good idea too. I might get a big container, and keep a couple of mirrored drives as well as say 100 photos from each year. Every year I update the drives with additions and then print 100 photos from the previous year to add to the collection.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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        14 days ago

        I personally prefer printed out books of our photos. We are missing quite a few years due to life getting in the way, but the end goal is to have actual books of photos with titles like ‘Our family in 2018’ and ‘Sports of our first born at 2022’. In europe we have a company called ‘ifolor’ where you can design and order printouts of your photos. They’re not really cheap, but the quality is pretty damn good. And their offerings go to pretty decent sized photo albums, up to A3 size and 180 pages (which is over 200€). So, not cheap, but at least so far their quality has been worth the money.

        And they have cheaper options too, but personally I think it’s worth the money to get the best quality you can for printouts. And even the smallest and cheapest option is far superior over not having anything at all due to hardware failure or whatever.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    15 days ago

    ZFS with automatic snapshots and scrubbing. This will keep as many and as old snapshots as your like. It’ll ensure the files don’t rot. It’ll ensure the media doesn’t die, so long as you have enough redundancy and you replace disks as they die. This is what I’d trust for long term storage because I think I understand how and why it works. It should last as long as I feed it disks. If I delete something, I should be able to restore it from a snapshot. The hardware doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Just a Pi 4/5 with a couple of WD Elements would be fine. Could add more disks for more redudnancy. I’m running 2-disk residency.

    You don’t have to touch the software if it’s not exposed to the Internet. Whatever works today on it will work 20 years from now, so long as the hardware works. A couple of spare Pis, SD cards and power supplies should let it last for decades.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      15 days ago

      I’d rather cold storage but am thinking of looking along these lines, ZFS or btrfs on a standard HDD that I add files on to once a year and replace the disk every few years.

      I have a standard backup setup I just want something that is more point in time and not connected to all the automation, in case I automatically delete everything.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        15 days ago

        Yup, turn it on, let it do a scrub, then turn it off. I’d still use redudnancy though. Not merely to cover the case of the drive failing, but also to cover the bit rot use case. It’s exceedingly unlikely bits to rot at the exact same spot on two or more disks. When ZFS finds a checksum mismatch during a scrub (which indicates bit rot), it’ll be able to trivially recover the data from the drive where the checksum matches. It’ll then rewrite the rotten part.

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          15 days ago

          Would that be two disks under a type of RAID or does ZFS have something?

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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            15 days ago

            With 2 disks that would be type mirror in ZFS-speak, completely built-in. Equivalent to RAID1 in terms of hardware fault tolerance.

            You could do a 3-disk mirror or n-disk mirror really. The RAID5/6 rough equivalents are called RAIDzN where N is the number of disk failures they tolerate. E g. RAIDz1, RAIDz2, etc. You probably want a mirror unless you need more space than a single disk provides.

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      14 days ago

      I don’t want to sort through the 50k photos, and can’t print videos. I’m hoping in 10 or 20 years I’ll be able to feed it into AI to spit out all the best ones, then I’ll consider it.

      We do have photos printed, but only a very small percentage of the total.

        • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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          14 days ago

          I’ve decided I should have a small number of physical prints, as extra redundancy. I’m thinking I’ll print 100 each year to store with the hard drive backup.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    14 days ago

    I’m thinking of using a HDD and keeping it at work, which is climate controlled. I’d bring it back every few months to sync the latest.

    Since it’s constantly being used, I’m pretty confident it’ll be usable as a backup if my NAS fails, so it only needs to be “shelf stable” for a few months at a time. If you’re retired or something, a safe deposit box at your local bank should do the trick.

    • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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      14 days ago

      If it’s powered off, you’ll have no idea when it dies. And they do die just sitting there.

      I’ve actually had more failures of drives sitting around than ones running constantly.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        But I will because it won’t work the next time I take it home to sync. The chance that it’ll fail during the few months between a sync and an emergency is incredibly low.

        I wouldn’t leave it on a shelf for years, just a few months at a time (approximately quarterly).

    • Dave@lemmy.nzOP
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      12 days ago

      Thanks, I missed that post! Looks like the comment section would have answered a lot of my question.

      In the end I have pulled the trigger and bought an M-Disc capable burner and a stack of M-Discs, so I’m gonna give that a go and see how it works out.