Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 53 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#41

Post by lockhouse »

borplk wrote: post #36
lockhouse wrote: post #8

Stone tablets are the only media I know of that lasts 1000s of years. In all seriousness, this isn't a popular opinion around here, but cloud storage. I back my photos up to both iCloud and OneDrive. This way there is triple redundancy if you include the local copy. I trust Apple and Microsoft a lot more than myself to protect my data from spilled beverages, floods, fires, other acts of god, or just my own stupidity…

Bad idea because even if they don't lose the data you may lose your access to the account due to things like random account suspensions.

Which is why I recommend redundant cloud storage. There's a lot of options out there, pick 2. I like iCloud for the integration and convenience and OneDrive because it comes bundled with Office 365.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#42

Post by amerkhalid »

jbarham wrote: post #29

For photos or documents like wills I think the best long term storage solution is still physical prints in a shoebox. Yes, they'll fade slowly over time, but will still be viewable for decades, or even centuries if printed using pigment inks on archival papers. Of course there's still a chance that physical prints can be lost, stolen or destroyed in a house fire. But I think overall that's statistically much less lik…

100% agreed.

The chances of losing digital and physical copies at the same time are pretty low.

I have gotten into habit of printing photos and ordering photobooks for not just us but also for relatives. The idea is sort of distributed backup of physical photos. Also they love it.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#43

Post by wmf »

elamje wrote: post #23

I’ve been considering this for over 5 years. So far, cutting edge commercial is https://www.piql.com/ , the Norwegian company that did the GitHub Arctic code vault. Their tapes have instructions on how to decode the data inscribed on the tape itself. Truly cutting edge (non-commercial) is Microsoft’s Project Silica optical storage as well as DNA storage. I’ve been thinking about building something in this space since…

Piql and Silica are interesting at a civilization level but they aren't useful for personal archiving. You won't have a reader and you probably won't be able to build or buy one.

For the economics of storage see https://economicmodel.dshr.org/ and DSHR's other writing about archiving.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#44

Post by wmf »

m-p-3 wrote: post #19
wanderingstan wrote: post #18

MDisc DVDs and Bluray discs are supposed to last for a thousand years. https://www.mdisc.com/ I’ve been thinking of this question too, and think a combination of cloud storage (GDrive + iCloud), HDs, and these MDiscs is what I’ll do. Just haven’t bought the MDrive writer yet.

And more specifically "pressed" discs, not those you can burn at home. Those you can burn at home relies on a chemical reaction which will degrade after several years, faster if exposed to sunlight.

It's not necessarily as bad as you think: https://blog.dshr.org/2022/08/optical-media-durability-updat...

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#45

Post by wmf »

mindbyte wrote: post #38
seized wrote: post #9

I use AWS Glacier Deep Archive for exactly this, a few TB of photos, documents, etc. RClone takes care of uploading to it. Works out to barely over $1/TB/month and AWS takes care of the media lifetime and all that. I didn't bother with burned disks because then the backups are too local to me, nevermind spanking TBs across multiple disks.

That sounds like a very good p/l. But I'm still not convinced as it is still common for cloud providers to 'randomly' close accounts without warning and the possibility to appeal.

No, it's not common for B2B IaaS providers to randomly close accounts.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#46

Post by wmf »

brudgers wrote: post #16
PaulHoule wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that writable Blu-Rays are thought to be much more durable than all but the best DVD-R.

I wouldn’t doubt blue ray media being at least as reliable as DVD. I don’t think the hardware was/is as widespread and I don’t expect blue ray was/is as commonly specified in government contracts, integrated into medical devices, etc. My primary consideration with all digital media is what will the ecosystem be like in twenty years. How easy will it be to start with only a disk?

Blu-ray drives are in Playstations and Xboxen; if those drives can be cannibalized and used in a computer there will be millions available in the used market. Or you could jailbreak a console and install Linux just to use the drive.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#47

Post by wmf »

dehrmann wrote: post #30
mepian wrote: post #5

I've heard good old magnetic tapes (LTO nowadays) are the medium of choice for long-term storage within large organizations.

What's the oldest tape a drive still in production can read?

It's not good. For example, LTO-9 drives can only read back to LTO-7. If you want to read a 20-year-old tape you'd need a ~15-year-old drive.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#48

Post by xupybd »

mkj wrote: post #39
xupybd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I would pay for is a way to engrave my SSH keys into thin steel plates as a QR code. I have a safe with my critical keys in it but that is only fire proof for 3 hours. If things got really hot those are gone. In theory it shouldn't be an issue as I have them backed up other places but it would give me peace of mind to have them on a fire proof media.

Signing keys like ssh keys aren't so important, you should be able to replace those out of band. Decryption keys are more important to back up.

If I lose my ssh keys the business I work for will no longer have access to their production sites.

They can rebuild them from backups somewhere else but that is about it. They're printed on paper in a safe because of this.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#49

Post by brudgers »

wmf wrote: post #46
brudgers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t doubt blue ray media being at least as reliable as DVD. I don’t think the hardware was/is as widespread and I don’t expect blue ray was/is as commonly specified in government contracts, integrated into medical devices, etc. My primary consideration with all digital media is what will the ecosystem be like in twenty years. How easy will it be to start with only a disk?

Blu-ray drives are in Playstations and Xboxen; if those drives can be cannibalized and used in a computer there will be millions available in the used market. Or you could jailbreak a console and install Linux just to use the drive.

Right now, today, I can just buy a Blu-ray burner at my nearby big box.

In 1997, I could say the same about Zip because Zip drives were everywhere until they weren’t because consumer behavior changed and CD-RW replaced the market.

There are still working Zip drives, but not a terrible many. Running one is only a matter of conjuring up a parallel port or scsi connection. Nevertheless most people who bet on Zip archives have regretted it sooner or later…and probably sooner.

Drives that read CD-R are almost anything that reads DVD or Blu-ray, plus all but the earliest CD drives. There’s not going to be a need to compete with gamers or retro computing enthusiasts.

That’s what I want in an archive strategy based on my experience over almost forty years. For me, archiving is enough of a project without involving jailbreaking a game console.

But that’s me and my bet. Other people have other priorities and I respect that.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best media for long term archival storage?

#50

Post by brudgers »

dehrmann wrote: post #27
brudgers wrote: post #2

I would place my bets on: CD-R because it is still around after more than two decades and the media is still in production, there are many drives and they are repairable. My second choice would be DVD-R for similar reasons, but less history. Third choice would be FAT formatted spinning disks used as write once. But they are much more susceptible to environmental flux. Anything that is expensive or hard to come by or…

> But they are much more susceptible to environmental flux. Sadly, magneto-optical discs never caught on.

Really sadly if magneto-optical was your bet twenty years ago.
Post reply on HN