Main > Everything Else

Nightmare - External hard drive crashes to floor

<< < (7/11) > >>

Grasshopper:

--- Quote from: SavannahLion on February 20, 2010, 01:00:01 am ---Like what was mentioned elsewhere, I haven't seen any reliable data on using thumb drives for long term storage. (I had to assist someone on that research about three years ago. I'm sure there must be some research? bleh) There's been extensive studies on optical media dating all the way back to the hideous LD stuff. You see it all the time when someone bitches about bitrot on the LD games.

--- End quote ---

I looked into backup options a year or so ago (I posted a thread here about it) and noticed exactly the same thing. There is no information whatsoever out there about the suitability of flash drives for long term storage. If the manufacturers know the answer, they're not telling.

Flash drives are undoubtedly an incredibly convenient and durable method of storing data in the short term but there's a big question mark over whether they're suitable for long term storage. If I understand correctly, they use electrical charge to store their data. However, electrical charge (just like magnetic charge) tends to dissipate over time. And I'm guessing that the problem of charge leakage is likely to get worse as capacities increase.

As far as the durability of DVDs is concerned, I've seen estimates varying from 10 to 30 years for DVDs that have been properly stored. However, as the technology hasn't been around for that long, no one can really know for certain.

Personally, based on my own experiences, I'd say that the fragility of optical media has been somewhat overstated. The problem is that people tend to treat optical disks like crap and then wonder why they fail.

Most people I know think nothing of leaving disks in direct sunlight, and the disks I borrow from other people are invariably badly scratched.

I've also noticed that people often bend optical disks, sometimes quite severely. This is partly the fault of badly designed cases that won't release a disk without significant force being used. But still, people don't seem to care.

Anyway, as others have already pointed out, whatever storage method you choose to use, there's really no substitute for making regular copies of your backups.

ark_ader:
Well all this talk about backup has made me rethink my own backup strategy, and since 500gb drives are under £35 its better than two weeks of DVD burning and cheaper too.

I wonder what strategies the normal every day user has, if any?

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: Grasshopper on February 21, 2010, 07:23:18 am ---As far as the durability of DVDs is concerned, I've seen estimates varying from 10 to 30 years for DVDs that have been properly stored. However, as the technology hasn't been around for that long, no one can really know for certain.
--- End quote ---

We can make educated guesses.

LDs have been around since 1978 and exploded onto the market in the mid 80's (remember Back to the Future?) I don't have statistics at hand, but delamination and bitrot is extremely common with these. I'm not sure when the problems started, but it's been about twenty-five years for most of these discs.

CDs were introduced to the market sometime in the 80's (IIRC) and really took off in the 90's. I feel manufacturing qualities really changed. I had CD's from the late 80's early 90's that felt more substantial than current CDs sold today. That's about twenty years.

Finally, most companies cite accelerated weathering tests (similar to tests applied to cell phones and auto paints to determine product life expectancies).

It's generally accepted that pressed discs last longer than burned discs by nature of the requirements of both discs.

So..... given the studies on the accelerated weathering tests and the history of previous, similar, technologies, 10-30 years seems to be right around the mark.

Of course that is barring any extreme conditions, fire, mold, etc.

shmokes:
Whether from the motor or the arm, it needs power to move, and it needs to move to click.  The drive is getting power.

As for backup strategy, check out Microsoft's SyncToy.  This is a great utility for a basic, informal backup solution.  It allows you to keep two folders synced up, whether it's the My Docs folders on your laptop and desktop or the My Photos folder on your desktop and an external hard drive.  Changes made in either folder will automatically be reflected in the other folder in real time (or as soon as possible if the connection between folders is lost).

One thing I intend to do relatively soon, ie when I have a real job and can afford it, is start backing up to an online location for example with Amazon's S3 cloud storage offering.  I've never used it but Microsoft offers 25 GB of free cloud storage with Windows Live SkyDrive.  It requires a LiveID, but I'm pretty sure that by now everyone already has one.

As for photos, there's really no excuse to lose digital photos.  How many unlimited free services do you need before you get your photos backed up online?  Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Photobucket . . . even Facebook.  Apps exist for all of these to automate the process so you can just mass upload your photos.  Get.  It.  Done.

MonMotha:
FWIW, quality SLC flash devices (bare chips) generally specify 50-100 years retention at 25C going down to 10-25 years retention at 85C.  These are the guaranteed parameters.  You'll usually do much better.  MLC, the type used in most inexpensive, high-capacity flash storage devices, is usually only good for 10-25 years at 25C and 5-10 years at 85C.  It depends on the quality of the device.  Your high end Micron and Samsung devices will generally last longer than the cheapo no-name Chinese stuff.

Quality CD media stored in a controlled environment (dark, room temp, low but non-zero humidiity) should last 10 years or more.  You can buy special "archival" discs that will actually give you specs.  The Verbatim AZO (dark blue) are usually decent.  Quality DVD media is comparable.  All these specs assume you have a quality burner, which most people don't.  For your cheapo $35 CD/DVD burner, quarter the lifetimes.

As an anecdotal data point, I do have CDs burned more than 10 years ago that I can still read just fine, and they've just been stored in a standard jewel case in a dry basement, but they're on good media and from the era when you couldn't get crappy CD burners because they didn't exist.  I also have flash devices from the very early days of flash memory (mid 90s) that still work fine.  Again, they've just been stored indoors in a standard household environment.

You can pay more to get devices that have specified lifetimes and are tolerant of elevated temps or other environmental abnormalities.  Just expect to do just that: pay more.

In my opinion, the best backup system for your money right now is 2 external hard drives.  You do hard-link based incrementals using rsync (which are actually full snapshots in and of themselves, just only updating the stuff that's changed - this lets you go back in time while still making recovery easy) to one disk for a period (days or weeks) then swap in the other drive to do the same.  The drive that's not being used lives off-site.  Every year or two, you copy all the files to a new drive.  This builds in capacity increases and ensures that you have a "fresh" (from a physical point of view) copy of the data.  It will also let you spot any corrupted data (so make sure you check checksums when you do that) so you can attempt to recover that backup from your hopefully still good primary hard disk.  Total cost is a couple external hard drives every couple years, or about $200-300/yr.  Not bad.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version