[ale] 26G to backup

[Jim Kinney]

Tape. I can still play VHS movies I bought/made 20+ years ago. My VXA
drive(s) are 10+ years old and the data on those tapes is still perfectly
recoverable.

Research what NASA is doing to address this issue as they have nearline
data going back to the early 60's. Last I heard, some of the data was being
lost as the drive components were failing faster than they could extract it
from the tape the data was stored on.

Juggled every year is paranoia and more work than it's worth unless the
storage medium is DVD. With hard drives past the infant mortality burn-in
time, the data loss is determined by usage. More usage = more wear on the
platter. I've seen some stuff around arguing that the data "evaporates" on
a powered down drive faster than on a power on drive. I call shenanigans on
that. Magnetic domain dispersal is a known problem than is addressed with a
disk refresh process (i.e dd if=old_drive of=new_drive; dd if=new_drive
of=old_drive). The wear aspect of a spinning drive is the bearings. Once
those fail, the data is mostly lost without EXPENSIVE tech work. The drive
sitting on a shelf in a static safe container with a moisture adsorbent
pack will survive longer than one running in a system.

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Brian Mathis <
brian.mathis+ale at betteradmin.com> wrote:

> Realistically, *anything* sitting in a safe for 10 years is going to fail,
> except /maybe/ some enterprise grade tape backup. DVD will definitely not
> make it that long either. The reality is that any data you want to keep
> needs to be juggled around every year or so to keep it fresh and possibly
> move it to more modern media. I think that right now, flash-based storage
> is probably your best bet for longevity, as long as you only write to it
> once in a while.  But then, we were told that DVDs would last forever too,
> but now we know that's not the case.
>
> Generally the increase in available space on hard drives at a given price
> is enough to keep up with normal data growth, unless you are generating a
> lot of video. I specifically mean real data you are generating, not stuff
> you might be archiving from a mailing list or file downloads.
>
>
>
> ❧ Brian Mathis
>
>
>
> On Friday, December 30, 2011, Chris Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com>
> wrote:
> > Do you think that a hard disk that sits in a safe for 10 years will
> fail?
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- *2011 Noam Chomsky

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
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