DVD vs HDD LONG TERM STORAGE

[roderickng]

I need some advice on very long term storage.

Right now I would like to save about 200gb of reference material. Am thinking of putting my reference data into one (or two) 5400rpm 2.5 drive then into a safe it goes. An external copy will be available for general use. Over the long term, I may need to delete some information or add some into this reference storage, I do not know, but I do know that the drive would be off for months. I have read that 2.5 drives are made for frequent power on/off. So the question is which method have the greater risk of data loss, an infrequently used hdd or DVD rot? Thnx for any info.

Roderick

 

[SpadeM]

Frankly you could go with 3.5" drives, the "green edition". I have 4 x 500GB drives that i use as floppy disks to store my anime and video/audio projects.

 

[apache_lives]

every time i burn crap off to a dvd (including nero check the disc for any read errrors) by the time i rip it back out to get the data off it never reads properly - iv given up burning my stuff because of it its useless for long term.

I use servers with RAID1 or RAID5 and just dump my stuff there, got two servers for that etc (just energy efficent Celeron 420's with 2gb, freenas etc) - perfect!

 

[ixion]

I need some advice on very long term storage.

Right now I would like to save about 200gb of reference material. Am thinking of putting my reference data into one (or two) 5400rpm 2.5 drive then into a safe it goes. An external copy will be available for general use. Over the long term, I may need to delete some information or add some into this reference storage, I do not know, but I do know that the drive would be off for months. I have read that 2.5 drives are made for frequent power on/off. So the question is which method have the greater risk of data loss, an infrequently used hdd or DVD rot? Thnx for any info.

Roderick

It might be worth looking into Blu Ray for stoarage of that amount of data, they were designed for a longer shelf life than DVDs due to scratchproof coatings and better dyes, the downside is they are more expensive. Failing that I would go with a redundant copy on a hdd. If you go the DVD route it's approximately 43 DVDs assuming your files fit exactly on each disk, more likely to end up as 50!

 

[tecmo34]

IMO, I would recommend going with 3.5" External drive. A nice WD MyBook Mirror 2TB External Hard Drive ( http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4082295&CatId=136 ) would be very useful for long term storage, specially if you are adding and deleting data overtime. This gives you an external with Mirror 1 setup for additional data backup.

With DVD's, you run the greater risk of data being lost each time you reburn the information.

 

[roderickng]

every time i burn crap off to a dvd (including nero check the disc for any read errrors) by the time i rip it back out to get the data off it never reads properly - iv given up burning my stuff because of it its useless for long term.

I use servers with RAID1 or RAID5 and just dump my stuff there, got two servers for that etc (just energy efficent Celeron 420's with 2gb, freenas etc) - perfect!

That is interesting. Only within the last few months that I have been reading seriously about DVD rot, but now I wonder how are movie DVDs different? Or if I were to go the optical storage path, BR should be it as suggested.

 

[roderickng]

IMO, I would recommend going with 3.5" External drive. A nice WD MyBook Mirror 2TB External Hard Drive ( http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4082295&CatId=136 ) would be very useful for long term storage, specially if you are adding and deleting data overtime. This gives you an external with Mirror 1 setup for additional data backup.

With DVD's, you run the greater risk of data being lost each time you reburn the information.

Thought about that as well. I read that WD is inserting 2.5 platters into 3.5 housings. This is a small wall safe and that is why I consider using 2.5 drives. The drive will be idle for months, start and run for a few minutes, then back in storage again. If data integrity issues does exist with this type of infrequent usage, then may be this mirroring route is the better. Wonder if any of the major manufacturers done this type of research and publish their findings.