[ale] Best Offsite Backup Solution for Home

[JD]

I felt the need to share my optical media story ...

I've been using the cheapest available DVD optical disks with par2 files as
protection for over a decade.  This is for non-important stuff. Some of the
"name brand" DVD-R and DVD+R media didn't work in my burners, so I've stayed
with the cheap stuff for years.

I've lost a few files - ok, 2 files, but never an entire disk.  When any issue
happens reading the old data, I pull it all off using dd_rescue, correct as much
as possible using par2, then re-burn a new copy. I've lost access to 2 files
from the 2 oldest disks in all this time.  No lost data with any other disks so
far, thanks to par2 recovery.

I will point out that I do not access every disk every year, so there may be
some bad disks that I have yet to see, but I have been slowly going through them
the last 6 months starting from the oldest disk 001 and moving forward.  I'm on
disk 083 now. About 5 discs needed "recovery work", but that is expected.  I'm
looking at files from 2004 now.

The media is stored in protective sleeves inside 300+ disc wallets, in a closet,
but nothing else is special about the storage or handling.

Certainly, if the data were critical, I'd do something different. It isn't and
this is "good enough" for this data.

If bluray discs are $1 each ($1/50GB), I need to seriously look into migrating.
 The hassle and savings could work out. The cheapest I'm finding are 10pc for $45.

DVD is still about 25% cheaper/GB when compared to BR-D.


On 02/01/2012 09:47 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
> David,
> 
> I wouldn't trust normal optical discs for long term storage.  I did some 
> research into media longevity in the past.  The dyes in an optical disc 
> can fail in as little as a few years.  If you do use optical media, look 
> into archival grade media.  (I should eat my own dog food here and 
> convert some of my old videos to archival.)
> 
> Here are some interesting links on the subject.  And, if you want the 
> best quality media, this company MAM-A looks like the place to go.  
> (Caveat, based on research, not personal experience.)
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/all_about_cds - MAM-A  archival CD's - 300 years 
> estimated life
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/page.asp?id=59&name=All%20About%20DVDs - MAM-A  
> archival DVD's - 100 years estimated life
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/blu_ray - Blu-Ray - I can't find estimated life on 
> this.  It is professional grade, but I'm not sure if archival Blu-Ray 
> exists.
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/longevity_research - Lots of good data here.
> 
> http://www.mam-a.com/technical_papers - Lots of good data here too.
> 
> http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/publications/notes/19-1-eng.aspx
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
> On 2/1/2012 4:03 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
>> I'd contemplated that idea now that blu-ray burners are down around
>> ~$120 (for an external) and discs are $1/each.  I'd just need to
>> figure out a way to split diffs off onto blurays... I need to look at
>> rdiff-backup's capabilities to optical media.  (I could use other
>> tools, but since I already use rdiff-backup and it does encrypted
>> incrementals, it seems a natural fit.)
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Jim Kinney<jim.kinney at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>    
>>> Mail a blueray disk to a local friend every few months
>>>
>>> On Feb 1, 2012 2:45 PM, "David Tomaschik"<david at systemoverlord.com>  wrote:
>>>      
>>>> As many on the list know, I'm going to be relocating to California
>>>> later this month, which has made me take a look at my backup
>>>> procedures.
>>>>
>>>> While I have good software for backups (rdiff-backup is pretty
>>>> awesome), finding a way to get the data truly offsite is easier said
>>>> than done.  The problem with most backup procedures is that anything
>>>> requiring manual intervention will eventually become an "I'll do that
>>>> later" task.  For example, the idea of storing an external hard drive
>>>> in a safe deposit box occurred to me, but that limits access to
>>>> business hours and requires manual intervention.  I'm sure it would
>>>> happen for the first few weeks, and then every now and then for a
>>>> while, and then not at all until I need the data.
>>>>
>>>> I've also considered cloud storage providers, but between my wife and
>>>> I, we have ~1TB of data to backup, and growing at ~100GB/yr.  This
>>>> makes something like Amazon S3 rather expensive: even at reduced
>>>> redundancy pricing of 9.3 cents/gigabyte, this is an annual bill of
>>>> $1100 before the bandwidth used to ship it around.
>>>>
>>>> Another thought I've had is running my own "cloud storage" by coloing
>>>> a 1U atom server with about 4 SATA drives crammed into it, but that
>>>> seems like it's not going to pay off until I get to the ~4TB space
>>>> range.
>>>>
>>>> Anyone have recommendations on a good offsite solution for home use?
>>>>