[ale] Best Offsite Backup Solution for Home

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

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?
>>>
>>> --
>>> David Tomaschik
>>> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
>>> http://systemoverlord.com
>>> david at systemoverlord.com
>>>
>>>        

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
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Ron Frazier

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