Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.

I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It’s mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).

I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I’m looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.

My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that’s quite outdated and DVDs don’t hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I’m unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I’m looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.

I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?

What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?

Cheers

  • DasFaultier
    2•3 days ago

    Yeah, you can always go crazy with (off site) copies. There’s a DigiPres software system literally called LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).

    The German Federal Office for Information Security recommends a distance of at least 200km between (professional) sites that keep georedundant copies of the same data/service, so depending on your upload capacity and your familiarity with encryption (ALWAYS backup your keys!), some cloud storage provider might even be a viable option to create a second site.

    Spare drives do absolutely work as well, but remember that, depending on the distance, data there will get more or less outdated and you might not remember to refresh the hardware in a timely manner.

    A safe deposit box is something that I hadn’t considered for my personal preservation needs yet, but sounds like a good idea as well.

    Whatever you use, also remember to read back data from all copies regularly and recalculate checksums for fixity checks to make sure your data doesn’t get corrupted over time. Physical objects (like books) decay slowly over time, digital objects break more spontaneously and often catastrophically.