I've got many large family movies which I'd like to confirm won't be subject to bit rot. There are also photos that I'd like to keep safely as well. Thoughts were using a NAS and RAID 5 or RAID 6 (only for a larger unit with 5 drives) and also alternatives. After looking through everything, it seems that using plain old PAR and Windows or plain Linux is the best bet IMHO because in the event something goes wrong with the controller of the NAS or RAID controller, everything is probably lost. It might not be if I can get an identical device to put the drives into, e.g. if you had a DROBO Model XYZ you'd need another one or a Synology 2019PLAY, etc.
My thought was to have a big USB drive that has 4 disks and shows them as individual disks in standard NTFS format. This is much quicker than Ethernet and this is for long term backup, not needing to put on the network. I'd copy files to 3 of the drives and leave the 4th for a Parity drive holding Quickpar or Multipar (PAR2) files which can be used for parity rebuilds should files fail. I can also use Checksum software to create an additional hashing file to determine whether bits have changed / corruption. I'm not sure how I'll automate the PAR creation but, for now, with the videos that I'd add onto the drive I would drop them onto the Quickpar app which would then use my settings to generate PAR files on the fourth drive holding my parity files.
Seems there is no clear consensus but, in the event of major failure, this provides for the most likely chance of success in recovering data in native format off of a hard drive. The ONLY thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get a map that could let me know if any individual files have been corrupt (or possibly I can run the Checksum app to do that automated.)
Would love go hear insights.
My thought was to have a big USB drive that has 4 disks and shows them as individual disks in standard NTFS format. This is much quicker than Ethernet and this is for long term backup, not needing to put on the network. I'd copy files to 3 of the drives and leave the 4th for a Parity drive holding Quickpar or Multipar (PAR2) files which can be used for parity rebuilds should files fail. I can also use Checksum software to create an additional hashing file to determine whether bits have changed / corruption. I'm not sure how I'll automate the PAR creation but, for now, with the videos that I'd add onto the drive I would drop them onto the Quickpar app which would then use my settings to generate PAR files on the fourth drive holding my parity files.
Seems there is no clear consensus but, in the event of major failure, this provides for the most likely chance of success in recovering data in native format off of a hard drive. The ONLY thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get a map that could let me know if any individual files have been corrupt (or possibly I can run the Checksum app to do that automated.)
Would love go hear insights.
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