The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/helloimjah on 2024-08-07 12:20:34.
I have done some research of this with help of GPT, but still would like to ask feedback from real people and people who are already doing this. My main concern is that, on paper things looks great, but when you get there in real life, some problems/issues happen that were never accounted theoretically/on paper.
I started hoarding around 4 years ago, and if 4 years ago someone told me I was about to store everything that I hoarded in DVD's I would have probably peed myself from laughing.
As of now I don't have anything huge, just couple of terabytes of recorded content that just sits on my external drives. Perfect way I imagine backup is when it is done at least 2x times so what I want is I have 1 set of everything (main backup) just sitting on my desk or somewhere safe, never touched unless, my 2nd set of backup (stored on hdd/ssd) fails or get corrupted, it would be only time, the main backup would be used to restore crashed/corrupted 2nd backup.
Because money is somewhat I issue for me, I can't afford having/buying new hdds for content I am hoarding then parallel buy more hdds for 2nd backup and then more for 1st backup. Drives also break and needs changing every X years, so I am fine doing it with hoarded content and 2nd backup, but I simply can't afford do same for 1st main/long term backup.
So solution I came up with is pretty simple, I currently have 2 external drives as of now I have 0 backup of them, so I will soon try to get 1 drive to fit them both, and it will be used as 2nd backup, and when I buy more drives, I can already use 2 external drives that I have for 2nd backup and they wont be main place I store hoarded stuff (Or it will exactly be place to store hoarded content and instead use new drive as 2nd backup still thinking on that). Only problem is, if I keep doing this, it is guaranteed that sooner or later one of my 2nd backups will fail, I would need to check HDDs constantly and they also would need to be powered at least a little bit so they wouldn't lose charge and that would be both cost expensive to keep gear of 2 set of backups alive for 10-20 years and of course would take some time so this is where Blu-ray dvd's come in.
GPT:
For long-term data storage with minimal risk of data loss, especially methods that do not rely on electric charge retention, the following options are recommended:
- Optical Discs ================
Blu-ray Discs (BD)
- Longevity: Archival-grade Blu-ray discs (M-Disc) are designed to retain data for over 100 years.
- Advantages: Not dependent on electric charge, less susceptible to magnetic interference and mechanical failure.
- Disadvantages: Limited capacity (up to 100 GB per disc), slower data access.
My main concern for 1st backup was data lose because of idle/not being connected to power, blu-ray discs pretty much solves it. Only disadvantages I see are ones GPT already mentioned, assuming writing speed is like 20mb/s would need about 80-90 minutes to write 1 full disk and these speeds doesn't bother me much, cost wise I might pay for 1TB of blu-ray dvds as much or even more than 1TB hdd, but if it guarantees me 10-20 years of data storage when in idle and perfect environment and minimal maintenance why not?