Cheapest & best way to archive data?

Ash_Pole

I need to archive about 70GB of data every 12 months. This would need over a dozen dvd's and would be a real pain.

I'm wondering what the cheapest data storage around is. It's some financial records so I would only have to access it in an unlikely scenario, but I would need some format that I would be able to use in up to 7 years.

Any ideas?

Fightsback

A raided NAS would be your best bet.

RumRat

External hard drive...You can get 2TB drives for around £60 now. Should last you a few years.
Just Google portable hard drives.

enfield_freddy

RumRat wrote: »

External hard drive...You can get 2TB drives for around £60 now. Should last you a few years.
Just Google portable hard drives.

70 g PER YEAR , over say 7 years , hell he would be better off buying a couple of small portable drives , one in the safe and one at home




however if the data is that critical , expert advice regarding safe upload/storage should be sought

zaax

The problem with magnetic medium, hard drives etc that they have a limited shelf life, and the data has to be moved to another medium quite often. DVD's also have the same problem with physically degradation over time.
On the other had paper and parchment have lasted 100's of years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_preservation

Cycrow

Have you thought about blu-ray instead of dvd's ?

you will need a blu-ray writer and some blank blu-rays, but they dont cost too much now.

however, like dvd's they can also degrade over time.

another option is tape backup, but these arn't really that cheap

enfield_freddy

what medium is still going to be in place in 7 yrs? how many machines now have a dvd/cd ? , hell I don,t think I have used one for a few yrs , decent quality pendrives are only a few quid , and much larger than dvd , however like anything else , I would not trust my life (s work) on them.


you need access to web based storage with a VERY reputable company

cookie365

What freddy said. Keep one off site and consider using encryption

Ash_Pole

Thanks everyone.

I didn't even think about USB sticks, but I'm liking that idea. Maybe keeping a couple as backups and testing every couple of years or so.

ETA: and printing off and filing the most import stuff, just in case!

cookie365

You were right not to think of usb sticks.

paddyrg

Also consider online backups, maybe using Amazon's S3 service or Amazon Glacier service. It'll cost money (Glacier is currently a US cent per GB per month), but not much and your data will be pretty safe, in a datacentre or three