4 ms·

> some of my CDs are older than most of today's "cloud" servers and can be read just fine. And if you're happy being able to recover "some" of your data that's

> some of my CDs are older than most of today's "cloud" servers and can be read just fine. And if you're happy being able to recover "some" of your data that's a perfectly legitimate option. Write CDs and DVDs, save to HDDs and SSDs, to the cloud, print on paper, or a combination of all. Only you know your data and its importance. But what you'll want to ask yourself though is how many CDs written since than can't be read just fine. I have books from before electricity was a thing and still am thoroughly convinced paper is not the best for long term preservation. My oldest cloud stored data that I can verify is a 25 year old email in my Yahoo mailbox. I have stamped CDs that survived that long, no written CD that I can think of.

self_awareness 2y ago
Well, Yahoo is one of the few e-mail providers that survived the last 25 years. I had e-mails on multiple providers which don't exist since a long time. That brings another question, how do you even know that the cloud company will even exist in the next 25 years? I think Yahoo is now enforcing OAuth authorization. Maybe next step is to remove IMAP? How do you know that they're not planning it? The point is that it's impossible to try and predict how the cloud will look like in the future. One day we can end up receiving an e-mail that we need to download all data from the cloud because they're ending their operation. And the future of paper/CDs can be predicted easily. If anyone's worried about the lifespan of CDs, it's always possible to copy the collection once every few years. Also I think that paper could be a viable backup solution, at least for e.g. family photos -- print, encapsulate, hide in a dark and dry place.
- buran77 2y ago
  > how do you even know that the cloud company will even exist in the next 25 years You don't and trying to guess which technology or provider will still exist in 25 years is probably pointless. If you want to keep your data for extended periods of time (decades) the best strategy is to a) define what you want to protect against and don't go for "everything" or it will be prohibitively expensive and impractical, b) have at least one redundancy (an ECC file, a full copy, whatever helps you recover the data if one data set is affected), and c) ensure that the data sets cannot fail at the same time, statistically speaking, by using completely different methods. A CD will fail suddenly because you probably can't check it often enough. A major cloud provider doesn't disappear over night though. Keep the parity file in two completely unrelated clouds maybe even for free, or keep the whole data in highly compressed archives with recovery record in multiple clouds for a cost. Keep a full copy of your data on different HDDs with (different?) resilient file systems, and connect them periodically for a sanity check. Check periodically that you can still use the data, having an intact file isn't enough if you can no longer open that format used in 1993. There is no one size fits all and the is no set and forget "this backup will be guaranteed for the lifetime of the universe" answer. Choose what you protect against and choose how much you're willing to pay in time, effort, money. Then play whack-a-mole as some of your backups are no longer viable and you replace them to always have that +1 minimum resilience.
Suppafly 2y ago
>My oldest cloud stored data that I can verify is a 25 year old email in my Yahoo mailbox. I'm surprised by that, yahoo mail has went through several cycles of randomly deleting people's emails and contacts. I think of of the times they did it to me, it was because I hadn't logged in within 90 days.

self_awareness 2y ago

Well, Yahoo is one of the few e-mail providers that survived the last 25 years. I had e-mails on multiple providers which don't exist since a long time. That brings another question, how do you even know that the cloud company will even exist in the next 25 years? I think Yahoo is now enforcing OAuth authorization. Maybe next step is to remove IMAP? How do you know that they're not planning it? The point is that it's impossible to try and predict how the cloud will look like in the future. One day we can end up receiving an e-mail that we need to download all data from the cloud because they're ending their operation. And the future of paper/CDs can be predicted easily. If anyone's worried about the lifespan of CDs, it's always possible to copy the collection once every few years. Also I think that paper could be a viable backup solution, at least for e.g. family photos -- print, encapsulate, hide in a dark and dry place.

buran77 2y ago
> how do you even know that the cloud company will even exist in the next 25 years You don't and trying to guess which technology or provider will still exist in 25 years is probably pointless. If you want to keep your data for extended periods of time (decades) the best strategy is to a) define what you want to protect against and don't go for "everything" or it will be prohibitively expensive and impractical, b) have at least one redundancy (an ECC file, a full copy, whatever helps you recover the data if one data set is affected), and c) ensure that the data sets cannot fail at the same time, statistically speaking, by using completely different methods. A CD will fail suddenly because you probably can't check it often enough. A major cloud provider doesn't disappear over night though. Keep the parity file in two completely unrelated clouds maybe even for free, or keep the whole data in highly compressed archives with recovery record in multiple clouds for a cost. Keep a full copy of your data on different HDDs with (different?) resilient file systems, and connect them periodically for a sanity check. Check periodically that you can still use the data, having an intact file isn't enough if you can no longer open that format used in 1993. There is no one size fits all and the is no set and forget "this backup will be guaranteed for the lifetime of the universe" answer. Choose what you protect against and choose how much you're willing to pay in time, effort, money. Then play whack-a-mole as some of your backups are no longer viable and you replace them to always have that +1 minimum resilience.

Suppafly 2y ago

>My oldest cloud stored data that I can verify is a 25 year old email in my Yahoo mailbox. I'm surprised by that, yahoo mail has went through several cycles of randomly deleting people's emails and contacts. I think of of the times they did it to me, it was because I hadn't logged in within 90 days.