3 ms·

When it comes to text (though I do include Word, PDF, text files, markdown, tex) I like to burn them to dvd. I have one of those big dvd "catalogs" that takes

When it comes to text (though I do include Word, PDF, text files, markdown, tex) I like to burn them to dvd. I have one of those big dvd "catalogs" that takes 4 discs per side of a page. Keep one at home and one at my parents' place. I trust them more than usb-sticks. Though that may be irrational. But the time for burning files to dvd seems almost over. It is hard /impossible to buy a computer with a dvd drive. That is no problem for me since I have a collection fo externals as well as internals. and life is good now since blank dvd media is cheap . But again, you need a dvd reader, and in the future, that may become difficult.

tpmoney 2y ago
The trick with burning optical media is the disks themselves can physically fail with time. I have a huge archive of various burned media from the early 00's and a number of them have developed literal holes in the material over the years. If these holes hit data tracks, the files on those tracks are lost. If you're burning to optical media, you should probably be checking them regularly for degradation.
- ThinkBeat 2y ago
  This is true. And a real problem. In my experience hard drives, USB sticks fail and regular hard drives fail. It has been many years since I have had any involvement but backup tapes probably have issues as well, but the rapid production of new tapes and new formats is an issue already I dont have any data to evaluate the best choice is SSD drives? No matter what technology is picked, at some point to preserve the data it needs to be migrated to whatever comes down the line.
  - tpmoney 2y ago
    Honestly, so far if you can afford the up-front investment for the space you need, and the ongoing power costs, a NAS with a RAID array (or similar redundancy scheme) that can tolerate more than one drive failure at a time is probably the best long term archival storage. Spinning rust disks in my experience rarely completely fail without warning so you can usually catch and replace failing media before data loss occurs. Additionally if you don't, I've found that recovering data from failed HDD is also usually "easier" and "cheaper" for most values of both compared to other media storage (admittedly with no experience with recovering tape media)

tpmoney 2y ago

The trick with burning optical media is the disks themselves can physically fail with time. I have a huge archive of various burned media from the early 00's and a number of them have developed literal holes in the material over the years. If these holes hit data tracks, the files on those tracks are lost. If you're burning to optical media, you should probably be checking them regularly for degradation.

ThinkBeat 2y ago
This is true. And a real problem. In my experience hard drives, USB sticks fail and regular hard drives fail. It has been many years since I have had any involvement but backup tapes probably have issues as well, but the rapid production of new tapes and new formats is an issue already I dont have any data to evaluate the best choice is SSD drives? No matter what technology is picked, at some point to preserve the data it needs to be migrated to whatever comes down the line.
- tpmoney 2y ago
  Honestly, so far if you can afford the up-front investment for the space you need, and the ongoing power costs, a NAS with a RAID array (or similar redundancy scheme) that can tolerate more than one drive failure at a time is probably the best long term archival storage. Spinning rust disks in my experience rarely completely fail without warning so you can usually catch and replace failing media before data loss occurs. Additionally if you don't, I've found that recovering data from failed HDD is also usually "easier" and "cheaper" for most values of both compared to other media storage (admittedly with no experience with recovering tape media)