What do you think about using a hard drive for long term offline storage (remove drive and store in dry anti-static) place?

 

Is it better to do this with other media? Ive done it with cds/dvds but have found that some are now not readable after only about 2 years (or perhaps i didnt verify them properly in the first place) 

 

I was thinking of using some of my older drives for this purpose. I have a fair amount of data thais is unlikely to be needed again but want for a few more years just in case.

 

Sent from my SGH-I727R using Tapatalk

I think that HDDs are about the best you can hope for in terms of long-term storage.  Definitely better than optical discs (I've also observed a shelf-life of about 2 years).  There are archival quality optical discs that are supposed to last 100 years, but I've never used them (and of course they are expensive).  If you really want to keep your data protected in a bunch of offline disks, consider creating an offline unRAID array:

 

1) Build an unRAID array as you normally would.  Populate it with all the data you want to store long-term and run CRC or MD5 checks on the data to make sure it all transferred correctly.  Do not use a cache drive.

2) Power down the server and remove all the disks.  Carefully label them as parity, disk1, disk2, etc.

3) Store the disks and the unRAID flash drive (or at least a copy of the flash drive's contents) in anti-static bags in a cool, dry place.  For extra security, put them in a safety deposit box or some other secure off-site location.

4) Once per year (or however often makes you feel comfortable), install the disks and flash drive into a bare server and run a parity check.  Expect to replace the disks about every 3-5 years (they should last a decently long time since they will be offline most of the time).

 

That would be my approach.

If you use high quality media they should last a long time. I have backups of data, lots of audio files and ProTools, pro audio recording software, sessions on CD-ROM from 1996 that is still in perfect shape. In the last 10 years on DVD-ROM media backups of Graphics projects as well as audio.

The best CD media is the JVC, aka Taiyo Yuden, or Mitsui and the best DVD media is JVC and Verbatim.

I often have to go back to old projects and pull them off this media. With the new hard drives I not sure but in the past drives that were stored too long wouldn't spin up. An old trick would be to whack them on the side to kick start them and hope. I've been there.

I have big clients, universities, that have used cheap media or whatever they could find and now have half their archives unusable.

The life of a written CD-R all depends on the environment conditions it has been left in. If you have a climate free controlled type condition you can very well get 100 years easily. This includes Bluray also. It is the dye breakdown that happens. Buy some good brand name CD-R, make a couple copies of your life saving stuff and put them in different places. To me, storing things on mechanical hard drives doesn't make sense. Mechanical hard drives are NOT to be stored idling away with data on them. What if I have 20TB of data then, I have to buy a million CD-R's!!?? Welcome to the digital age brother.

 

 

I am not a big fan of "long term storage on HDD"....

 

I am a supporter of rotating offsite hard drives or rotating hard drives for back ups..

[Let me first say. if you are talking about say your finances or family photos, then make 2-3 hard drives and store them away. At least  one will be readable....

rotating them would be better keep one at home, one in a safety deposit box and one with a family member... also try to split-zip and par the folders on the drive so any bad bits can be rebuilt. ]

 

 

For long term storage.. Fail..

Some people will claim that sitting on the self and the sectors polarity may just flip as they loose strength over  years... changing a binary 0 to a 1...

 

As a medium for archiving data in the long term, hard disks are not really recommended - over a period of years the stored information will gradually decay and become unreadable

 

When in doubt, buy two hard drives and keep them in separate locations

 

remember I am no scientist...

 

 

My experience.

A while back I basically i had to move overnight with little warning for work. I put all of my stuff into storage, including all of my PC's and servers.

At that point I just started over.

Recently got my old servers out of storage after 7.5 years in an environmentally controlled storage center.

one 3u server had 8x 250GB and another had 5x 500GB (mostely IDE) Drives in it.. 2 or 3 drives died and the rest suffered something similar to bit rot and unreadable sectors. not a lot of lost data. but enough to irritate me. (for example movies developed big pixelglobos and MP3's had those bad bits that sounded like a pigeon in a paper shredder..etc.)

 

several desktops, and 1u/2u servers with IDE and SCSI drives. most worked. some died. probably from lack of use. again a few bad/rotted files. one lost the entire FAT table so it erased itself when i ran checkdisk.

 

granted it was nothing i care about (at this point). but it was an unplanned experiment..

I'll also consider that my storage location could have had an epic environmental fail and not tell me.

 

my current method.. Semi-Live long term storage Storage server...

 

I have a second unRAID box (Goliath), its sole purpose is to archive my more important files..

It is off 25ish days of the month (hence semi live).

On the first of the month, it fires up and runs a parity check on the drives.

On the second of the month, it starts backing up my main unraid box and several other servers and desk tops.

then it runs some beyond compare scripts... this might take a day or 2...  after it is done i'll look at the logs and power it down manually when i get a chance.

 

once in a while I'll fire it up off schedule if i have a lot of new stuff I want to keep..

 

Now i dont have to turn it off, I just do..

 

While My box is a beast.. you dont need this.

This is something you could do with your old unraid box or desktop.

Heck those guys found those 20 drive servers for $200  the other day, that would be a good use for those boxes.

 

Then as you upgrade your other PC's servers, you'll get more hand me down drives to feed your LTS box.

 

There is no science to my method. I just feel that warming up the drives and testing it all regularly out will prolong the life of my archived data. i have seen some IDE drives last 10+ years (and some last a month) and  I have yet to see a drive over 1.5 TB last a long time...

 

 

All my rambling aside.. If you are going to use bare drives for storage..

 

if you are talking old torrents or movies you don't watch..  I recommend that you split rar/zip them and par them up and store the par/rars on the drive for better chance to rebuild.

For Music. just pars.. no need to rar if you don't want to.

static bag them if you have some OEM drive packages. box them up and label them.. 

check them now and then to get the drives self lubed and bearings warmed up.. some activity on the platters.