I've got two 1TB backup / archive external drives that I use for all my photos. Usually fire them up once a year or so to load the year's photos on both. Just found out that one is toast. Not quite sure how, they were both stored in the same climate controlled space right next to each other, are the same model and almost same manufacture date, etc. Glad I had two, would be very sad to lose all my photos.

Figured it was time to up my archive game and spent some time learning about the options. The high effort stuff like Blu-Ray, LTO, etc seem like overkill and a pita to get going, so I'm mostly deciding between HDD / SSD / 3rd party storage.

3rd party via something like Amazon Glacier is probably what I should do, but that seems like a lot of effort, requires a good internet connection (which I don't always have), and I'm always reluctant to trust a 3rd party with data, even if it's just photos of random fish or whatever.

So most of my time has been reading about HDD (traditional hard drives) vs SSD (solid state drives), and how they differ for this kind of use case.

The use case being: about once a year or every other year, copying all the photos and vids I've taken since the last backup to a storage device and leaving that device unpowered in a climate controlled area until next time.

Was initially planning on just using SSDs due to lack of moving parts, greater resilience to environmental stressors, etc. Then I started learning how they store data and how bit rot works via electron loss for the data gates if they are unpowered for extended periods of time, and now I'm not so sure what to do. Have found conflicting info on this, most of which seems to agree that unpowered SSDs are fine for at least 2 years, and possibly as long as 10 years, though it is best practice to re-write the data at least every two years. 2 years is about as long as I'd go without using one so that should be fine. HDDs need to be powered on at least once every 2 years as well for bearing lubrication.

Thinking at this point to just get two 2TB HDDs and maybe two 512GB SSDs, and going that route with 4 different physical backups, one or two of which gets stored in a safety deposit box.

Not sure exactly how much data I have because I'm now paranoid of turning on the working drive without being ready to instantly back it up, but I'm guessing I'm somewhere in the 200GB range for my photos, and no more than 250GB range for total stuff I care about getting backed up, so the 512GB SSDs should certainly be adequate. The 2TB HDDs definitely will be.

Looks like manufacturer choice is mostly either WD or Seagate. The 2TB HDDs are running about $60-70, and the 512GB SSDs about $100. So about $330 total cost for a 4x unit approach, which seems quite reasonable.


secret fish:

If I read this correctly you only backup your running photo collection once a year right, so why would a reliable internet connection be needed more often than once a year for 3rd party storage? I personally really enjoy cloud photo services and google seems not too pricy for 2tb, why wouldn't that do it for you (other than the secret fish)? Physical hardware is such a chore imo, is 3rd party still an open option or are you sold on physical 100%?

my dad's computer fried itself a while back and it turned out that he thought "backing up your data" meant saving a copy of the files in a different folder on the same computer

I am going through all of my old files and data this month and was debating the same thing.

I’m going full cloud fwiw. I just don’t have the patience for backups of backups of backups anymore. If trump wants to look at my fish pics then so be it.

Curious which cloud platform gets the most love itt

I have a RAID array from Synology (Diskstation).

But I also have no qualms about just using Dropbox. I trust them not to lose my data more than I trust myself not to **** something up .

I thought I had a couple multiple GB (GIS) projects lost, but remembered I emailed them to myself. Saving **** multiple times, even if it just a flash drive is worth it, but I'll probably be mocked for stating the obvious and being out of my element.

Use Amazon Glacier

You can multipart upload to S3 so you dont need some screaming connection.

http://s3browser.com

2TB will be around $8 a month.

It has 99.999999999% durability. You won't be losing ****.

It depends on how important the data is and what your budget is.

For smallish stuff I use Spideroak, a Dropbox competitor. You take w picture, it's on Spideroak. Dropbox works the same way. I'm not sure if a real dslr with Bluetooth could be linked to the phone so
It's also constantly uploading. Set it to WiFi only, no data charges.

For huge stuff I have a spare HDD I keep in a closet. This is not perfect but still far better than nothing.

The thing about raid or zfs is that its biggest benefit isn't security it's availability. If your house catches fire or you wind up getting hit with ransomware you just wind up with three copies of ashes or locked files.

Just use a cloud backup. They all give some free so you could have five accounts and get a ton of free storage. If you want to go the extra step do backups as frequently as you feel is necessary and store them in a safe deposit box. Casinos give em out for free.

i dont see why youd think AWS isnt a safe option, its literally their job and im sure they have backups of your backups.

if you really are so concerned, for less than $8/mo you could buy a new 2tb hdd every year and transfer everything over. more realistically doing it every 5 years should have almost no failures, and you'd still have the old one in a box.

Just use AWS. Why in the name of god would you consider Blue Ray or LTO? I say this as someone who used to work in the tape archive industry.

S3 is the clear winner if you care mostly about durability and don’t actually need to use the data. They’re not losing your data. You can encrypt it if you’re worried about privacy or anything (but that’s crazy overkill).

I ended up paying Apple. It’s overpriced but it works seamlessly with my phone and computer. I do literally nothing and have access to all my pictures most of the time. I’m sure the other cloud services work well too.

4tb seagate usb drive for $90 on amazon rn

400 dvd's, obv.

Chopstick, don't let this happen to you:

I know you're joking, here. But, just in case other folks don't know, DVDs and other discs are terrible for long term media storage. Even the ones rated for archival storage have a rather large chance of losing data after only 20-30 years.

and in 20-30 years you'll be spending $1000 to find a dvd player