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Storage for Home Long Term Data Storage

T

TIWizard

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
Messages
420
We've been trying to figure out what the best way to store DVD movies is long term. We have a bunch of DVDs right now with some in the safety deposit box, safes, and in a DVD case in our living room.

Recently, when trying to play one of the older DVDs, we noticed it wouldn't play on the Xbox. But when trying it on the computer, it worked (presumably because of better software?).

We also are trying storing the MOV/MPEG files on 64GB flash drives, but that is pretty expensive and there is some concern of bit rot.

What's the best way for video files to be stored long term, but for the home user? Basically, we can't use special tapes for archiving or whatever large companies use for long term storage. Should bit rot be a concern?

It'd probably be better to stay away from cloud storage, but if that is really the best way to store stuff longer term and offsite to prevent data corruption, then it'd be a consideration.

EDIT:
Note, these are home DVD movies, not ripped DVDs :p
 
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Assuming hdd prices ever go back to "normal":

Buy large capacity hard drives with known reliability. Always have at least enough hdds for 2 (two) copies - one at home and another offsite (safety deposit box perhaps, or at least some where not too close physically).

When you rip your DVDs, use WinRAR to make multipart rar archives of them. For example, a dvd requires 6 GB of space. After you rip them, have winrar, in "store" mode, make 100 MB rar files from it - this will yield about 60x100MB rar files. Make sure you have winrar apply 4-10% recovery records as well, so that if a couple of files are damaged because of read errors, winrar could still recovery the information.

If you have time, also use QuickPar or par2cmdline or multipar to make .par2 files - I suggest 10% parity.

Copy the rar and par2 files onto your hdds and your backup hdds.

If you wish to upload them to the cloud, you may wish to consider encrypting them by assigning a good password when using winrar to make the rars.

You may use 7zip instead of winrar, but I am not sure if 7zip supports recovery records - you can always use quickpar instead for that.
 
Hard drives are not used for long term storage.

You need to use either tape or long term storage grade DVD's or Blu-ray discs.
 
danman said:
Hard drives are not used for long term storage.

You need to use either tape or long term storage grade DVD's or Blu-ray discs.
Click to expand...

I use hard drives for long term storage. I have done so for 20 years. Using hard drives appears to be both reliable and reasonable cost.
 
danman said:
Hard drives are not used for long term storage.

You need to use either tape or long term storage grade DVD's or Blu-ray discs.
Click to expand...

um . . . are long term storage grade dvd's or blu-ray discs labelled as such? where would you find such discs?
 
I'm not sure I understand the question. DVD movies in a safe and a safety deposit box ?

Are you talking home made sextapes or something ?
 
Aesma said:
I'm not sure I understand the question. DVD movies in a safe and a safety deposit box ?

Are you talking home made sextapes or something ?
Click to expand...

dvds/blu-rays can be used to store data. I think he meant put your important data on a good quality writalble dvd/blue-ray and put it in a safe place (ie. the safety deposit box at the bank).
 
Yeah hdds by themselves are not the best for long-term storage - interfaces keep changing, for one thing!

However, you could make a habit of recopying your hdds onto newer media as technology advances. mechanical hdds -> flash storage devices, DVDs -> Blu-rays, etc.
 
I've pondered this question myself a few times.

I'm a bit hesitant to use DVDs, I've had some go bad over the years even though they were supposed to be "high grade" discs.

I think the idea of using hard drives makes the most sense, at least from a cost and management standpoint. If someone had 2GBs of data, that would be a hell of a lot of discs. Make copies to an minimum of two different hard drives, set them in a safe place and take your chances I guess.
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
However, you could make a habit of recopying your hdds onto newer media as technology advances. mechanical hdds -> flash storage devices, DVDs -> Blu-rays, etc.
Click to expand...

This needs to happen, regardless of what the data is stored on, and no single platform should be utilized for more than 10 years at a time.
 
Red Falcon said:
This needs to happen, regardless of what the data is stored on, and no single platform should be utilized for more than 10 years at a time.
Click to expand...

A word of caution as well: always make at least two copies when converting to new media, or at a minimum, retain the original copy for a time. Issues with media (CD/DVD degradation) and the like only seem to become apparent after the media has been around for a while.

Remember when we used to burn CD's endlessly? Turns out they were not that resilient, but it took time to come to this conclusion. And it is this time factor that can cause the biggest issue! The old adage: "You don't know until it's too late!"
 
The advantage of keeping the data online on hard disks is of course that you can get warnings when you start having media faults - and make a move to fix it. It also prevents you from getting into a situation where the medium your data is stored on becomes so outdated you can't reasonably deal with it.

(This is assuming the data will be kept "hot", and not just hard drives in a safety deposit box).

For offsite storage an online backup service is a fairly easy solution - unless your data volume is very high - then the easiest is probably just to build two small servers and physically rotate them.
 
Aesma said:
I'm not sure I understand the question. DVD movies in a safe and a safety deposit box ?

Are you talking home made sextapes or something ?
Click to expand...

...home videos of vacations, wedding(s), etc.

Thanks for your input everyone.
 
you need something that will really last, use MO drives
 
TIWizard said:
...home videos of vacations, wedding(s), etc.

Thanks for your input everyone.
Click to expand...

So essentially sextapes :p

you need something that will really last, use MO drives
Click to expand...
Oh those were the days, especially with the first Resident Evil games and the Mission Impossible movie. :D
 
I'd say the answer depends on the size of the data, then. But in any case, some kind of hash has to be performed and stored along the data, allowing to check its integrity with ease. Hard drives allow several terabytes to be stored and checked in one go, very practical.
 
Problem with hard drives is counting on them to spin up after a long period of inactivity. Often they do not, you are depending not only on the integrity of the media itself but also the mechanism, this is a failure point that doesn't come into play on removeable media like tape or optical. The ability to store loads of data real cheap is tempting, but the truth is that unless these disks are kept online and monitored continually for problems your data is not particularly safe on them.
 
i do not use tapes any longer.
whenever i tried to read old tapes, i got read errors or the (single) tape drive i had was dead.

Old disks can be dead also but in most cases they worked for me.
Look for redundancy in datasets and for backups in a second/third dataset on another physical place.

Use several external and removable ZFS disk pools with redundancy and regular scrubbing to repair silent data failures.
Check them regularly and replace a faulted disk or copy data to a new pool if needed. For very important data, use 3 x mirrored data pools.
For single disks you may use ZFS property copies=2 to be able repair single block failures.
That is what i would do, especially at home.
 
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