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Some email gets printed out, stuck in various binders, and kept for awhile. Then usually set on fire in a ritualised celebration of the impermanence of reality.

Some email gets printed out, stuck in various binders, and kept for awhile. Then usually set on fire in a ritualised celebration of the impermanence of reality. This is also known as scheduled secure destruction. The majority of serious email get copied (IMAP or for the email server we run, just sftp) to a pair of DVDs on periodic basis as an encrypted filesystem archive. We then stick it in a dvd swapper drive for offline access. The other copy gets put off site.

awiesenhofer 7y ago
Dvd swapper drive? Does it work like a tape library? Do you have any pointers where to find these?
- rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Commercial solutions can hold 60-300 disks or more. Expensive. For home use just get a bunch of usb dvd drives and go nuts, or go full tape. Once you go tape you get addicted to capacity. But it gets pricey. Cost/density is interesting. At home I just use a stripped down version. Literally a bunch of usb dvd drives hooked up to a raspi. I can insert a disk and poke around or have it auto copy the whole thing and auto-eject. I have 10 slim drives connected... ebay is kind. The raspi pipes to a different server full of ssd/hd/ram depending on what I'm doing.
rs23296008n1 7y ago
To expand a little: Just a computer with a LOT of dvd drives. Add a few high capacity local ssd, harddisk and plenty of ram. Insert disk, optional full copy to local as cache, then server just reads. If it copied it auto-ejects. Also got a tapes as a backup. Works similarly. Insert tape, it gets copied to the libraries local storage then ejected. We can also just use the tape without copying first. Why optical for email? We can easily store them in a human accessible way. They're supermarket cheap. Quicker than tape as well. Everything on optical is also on tape with no exclusions. Its a pity optical media hasn't reached the point where I can just go buy a pack of 1TB disks from the supermarket. I'm not holding my breath for Sony's Archival disks either.

awiesenhofer 7y ago

Dvd swapper drive? Does it work like a tape library? Do you have any pointers where to find these?

rs23296008n1 7y ago
Commercial solutions can hold 60-300 disks or more. Expensive. For home use just get a bunch of usb dvd drives and go nuts, or go full tape. Once you go tape you get addicted to capacity. But it gets pricey. Cost/density is interesting. At home I just use a stripped down version. Literally a bunch of usb dvd drives hooked up to a raspi. I can insert a disk and poke around or have it auto copy the whole thing and auto-eject. I have 10 slim drives connected... ebay is kind. The raspi pipes to a different server full of ssd/hd/ram depending on what I'm doing.

rs23296008n1 7y ago

To expand a little: Just a computer with a LOT of dvd drives. Add a few high capacity local ssd, harddisk and plenty of ram. Insert disk, optional full copy to local as cache, then server just reads. If it copied it auto-ejects. Also got a tapes as a backup. Works similarly. Insert tape, it gets copied to the libraries local storage then ejected. We can also just use the tape without copying first. Why optical for email? We can easily store them in a human accessible way. They're supermarket cheap. Quicker than tape as well. Everything on optical is also on tape with no exclusions. Its a pity optical media hasn't reached the point where I can just go buy a pack of 1TB disks from the supermarket. I'm not holding my breath for Sony's Archival disks either.