Cheapest & best way to archive data?

Nilrem

enfield_freddy wrote: »

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

Whilst you can't guarantee a format will be around in 7 years, most towers still have a dvd drive, and even when a particular format dies for the mainstream it's still usually possibly to get them for many years (floppy drives were still fairly readily available until about 3-5 years ago despite having been phased out of new machines about 5 years earlier).
There is no guarantee that the USB socket format won't change in that time span

Personally I'd probably go belts and braces.

Blu-ray writer (about £50) some decent disks, and a USB stick.

USB sticks can and do just die and you don't always get any warning.

Magnetic drives for 70gb a year would be quite expensive (and much more prone to failure).

So BDR for a write once copy of the data (the op could do two or three copies to be kept safely at different locations very cheaply).
USB for a secondary copy that is easier to access and doesn't require any additional hardware.

I would be relatively wary of online services as with them you've got potential security issues, and if the service goes bust you may get little or no notice to pull the data down again or transfer it to another service (I don't really trust anyone else with my important personal data).


One thing I would note is that depending on the format of the data the Op may wish to keep a copy of the programme that can read it with the back-up.
I had a hell of a time recovering some old data from floppy standard PC floppy disks a few years back (the data had been transferred to other media fine), as it turned out that none of the then current versions of the programmes could read the really old version of the file format.

bsod

1TB/500GB portable drives are hardly expensive, and are far more resilient, faster, and cheaper than flash drives.

usb will be around for a long time to come, adapters will resolve any socket changes.

RumRat

enfield_freddy wrote: »

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

Each to their own.....:cool:

Roland_Sausage

paddyrg wrote: »

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

I would second the Amazon Glacier. At current rates, should cost you £8.40 per year for every 70GB worth you store. And that would probably be more secure than any physical media you keep in your house.

S0litaire

Roland_Sausage wrote: »

I would second the Amazon Glacier. At current rates, should cost you £8.40 per year for every 70GB worth you store. And that would probably be more secure than any physical media you keep in your house.

i third it

Also make sure you use good encryption when storing things in the cloud.

mass236

I use a Free online storage website called MEGA it's free upto 50GB which i believe is pretty reasonable, regarding security i'm not sure how secure it is..?
But size wise it's certainly large enough for most of my needs, "Mega" also has a desktop sync app, which makes syncing y,our files easy if you want to, obviously you dont have to sync anything if you don't want to.. here is the website if it's of interest to anyone mega dot nz

ChiefGrasscutter

...and you do know who runs mega don't you?
...and you do know what happened to his previous cloud storage site don't you?

the answers are
1. Kim Dotcom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
Currently fighting extradition to the USA

2. The previous cloud site was called Megaupload and one day along came the NSA/FBI with a warrant and closed down and confiscated all the servers.
So as well as the illegal stuff on it, all the perfectly legit stuff also vanished all of a sudden - and has never ever been returned.

A valuable lesson in cloud storage that was to all.......

paddyrg

I would not suggest Mega - services run by alleged criminal narcissist megalomaniacs are not going to be reliable long-term storage.

Who pays for your storage? If it's not you, then someone is, and they might stop. This is why I suggest Amazon Glacier - Amazon may not have ever turned a profit, but they are very diversified and well established, and /probably/ not going to vanish overnight. And if they do, the profitable services like AWS will be sold off wholesale as a going concern.

And that £8.40 is going DOWN not UP - the big three cloud providers are constantly undercutting one another.

AlicePhoebe

Use NAS i think