4 ms·

Thumb drives. Financial stuff, copies of legal documents, large libraries of PDF books, reports, etc., etc. And then back the main drive up to FOUR thumb driv

by ga3h 5y ago

Thumb drives. Financial stuff, copies of legal documents, large libraries of PDF books, reports, etc., etc. And then back the main drive up to FOUR thumb drive backups. Reasons: (1) USB drives are huge now. (2) Convenient - can move from one PC to another easily. (3) Convenient - I do NOT have time to mess with other solutions. (4) Safety - valuable financial stuff almost always OFFLINE reducing hacker vulnerability. (5) All PCs eventually fail - I'm old and have a collection in my basement - plus I have two fairly new ones awaiting repair in my home office right now. Only disadvantage - I do have multiple legal copies of Microsoft Office on multiple PC to make moving thumb drives around practical.

shreddit 5y ago
Doesn’t thumbdrive data decay over time? Like all flash based storage types do
- gen3 5y ago
  That is my understanding. I've heard numbers around 10yr +-5, but I've never seen a study on it. I wonder if storing them zip-locked in a freezer would help (but I guess you could just use a magnetic hardrive :D )
  - mceachen 5y ago
    That the number I've personally experienced (I also replied to GP). It's an interesting idea to deep-freeze your drives, but the thermal stress from modern frost-free freezers that automatically dethaw periodically may negate the benefit of chilly bits... If you don't have that much to store, and are worried about data durability, I'd suggest looking into M-disc instead.
- dangerface 5y ago
  Yes they do. I used pen drives for backups after I found one that was like 10 years old and still had my old cv on it. I stored my backups on two identical pen drives I stopped doing this when I went to backup and discovered one of the pen drives was corrupt and lost all its data. They are super cheap and fairly reliable but not quite reliable enough for backups.
noveltyaccount 5y ago
I'll add - drives from different brands. I had a mirrored RAID 1 fail at one point (in the '00s, spinning magnetic hard drives), two identical drives, and they failed within days of each other. One drive died, I ordered a replacement, and before the replacement arrived the second drive died. The shock and disbelief I felt of my foolproof RAID solution going belly-up on me! And I still can't believe I didn't turn off the machine while I waited for the replacement to arrive.
- mceachen 5y ago
  This is good advice, and isn't just anecdata: see "correlated failures": https://photostructure.com/faq/raid-is-not-a-backup/#4-data-loss-from-correlated-failures https://photostructure.com/faq/raid-is-not-a-backup/#4-data-...
mceachen 5y ago
Make sure you periodically refresh your backups that are stored on flash memory devices. Depending on the media, cell voltage drift can cause data corruption that overwhelms the built-in ECC in as little as 5-7 years.

by ga3h 5y ago

shreddit 5y ago

Doesn’t thumbdrive data decay over time? Like all flash based storage types do

gen3 5y ago
That is my understanding. I've heard numbers around 10yr +-5, but I've never seen a study on it. I wonder if storing them zip-locked in a freezer would help (but I guess you could just use a magnetic hardrive :D )
- mceachen 5y ago
  That the number I've personally experienced (I also replied to GP). It's an interesting idea to deep-freeze your drives, but the thermal stress from modern frost-free freezers that automatically dethaw periodically may negate the benefit of chilly bits... If you don't have that much to store, and are worried about data durability, I'd suggest looking into M-disc instead.
dangerface 5y ago
Yes they do. I used pen drives for backups after I found one that was like 10 years old and still had my old cv on it. I stored my backups on two identical pen drives I stopped doing this when I went to backup and discovered one of the pen drives was corrupt and lost all its data. They are super cheap and fairly reliable but not quite reliable enough for backups.

noveltyaccount 5y ago

I'll add - drives from different brands. I had a mirrored RAID 1 fail at one point (in the '00s, spinning magnetic hard drives), two identical drives, and they failed within days of each other. One drive died, I ordered a replacement, and before the replacement arrived the second drive died. The shock and disbelief I felt of my foolproof RAID solution going belly-up on me! And I still can't believe I didn't turn off the machine while I waited for the replacement to arrive.

mceachen 5y ago
This is good advice, and isn't just anecdata: see "correlated failures": https://photostructure.com/faq/raid-is-not-a-backup/#4-data-loss-from-correlated-failures https://photostructure.com/faq/raid-is-not-a-backup/#4-data-...

mceachen 5y ago

Make sure you periodically refresh your backups that are stored on flash memory devices. Depending on the media, cell voltage drift can cause data corruption that overwhelms the built-in ECC in as little as 5-7 years.