How to best store 200GB of data for tens of years?

Question

As an electronic musician I've amassed a large set of composition files, a set of data that only gets bigger. I don't ever want to lose this data or have a project I've written end up corrupted and unavailable.

Should I use archival (gold) DVDs? What a hassle (with 200GB+ of files, and each DVD only ~5gb, thats 40 tedious burn operations, asumming all of them work perfectly!).

How about a 200 or 300gb hard drive? How long will inert, unused data stay around uncorrupted on a regular consumer hard drive?

I'm expecting that in 10 years or so, I'll move this data somewhere else, so the longevity of the media only needs to be guaranteed up that point.

Thanks!

Answer 1

look at MS and its online storage scheme
http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/011870.html

I suggest

blu ray disc burner
50gb on dual layer disks.
so thats 4-6 tedious burns
its expensive, but it might help you in the future too.
not sure about how long HD drives will be good for, but I wouldn't risk it. If you bump it, you could crash the head ya know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=blu+ray&Page=4&c=&srt=t&view=&his=0&paging=1&mpi=&mpc=&sci=0
don't put all your eggs in one basket.

make duplicates of your blu rays, and keep a hd copy just to be safe.

also, I always backup my data about ever two months. that way, at the end of the year I don't have TONS of data to backup at once. It'll just suck me away for a week burning that much data at once.

Answer 2

The facts:

1) Online storage

One could upload the data in an encrypted file to some sort of data hosting company online , such as X-drive , These types of services are equipped with thing like large disk arrays , that have measures put in place where if one drive fails , the data can be rebuild by another drive ( disk mirroring) and or partiy bit on others ( raid 5)

2) Dvd's:

Dvd's allow a user to handle large amount of data and are pretty inexpensive , with 200 gigs of data it would take you about 100 dvd's to successfully save the data ,I know it sounds like alot However with current prices and compression programs such as winzip the total cost of this method would be less then 50 bucks.

3) Hard Drives:

Depending on how many drives you currently have on your computer , It may be an opition to use a large compacity hard drive. This method will allow you to save large amounts of data relitivly cheap however , your data could be lost due to fire , flood , natural distaster etc. or stray emp , or magnetic fields .


My personal suggestion:

Although it may seem like a dumb idea , any method of storing any data has it's faults , an online company could go bankrupt and your data could be lost , dvd's can degrade over time , and hard drives can fail or magically make your data disappear , in my opinion their is only one correct answer , REDUNDANCY if i personally felt that the data was truly dear to me i would definitely do at least two of the methods above. that way if by some odd chance something where to happen , I would have a plan b method to recover my hard work.

Answer 3

You can buy a 320gb Seagate (best HD's) for $80.

You could also buy a Blu-Ray burner and burn them off, then return the burner to the store....That would be archived lol.

You can also buy storage space online that are on dedicated servers. A gmail account give you 2.8gb of free storage.

Any way you go, do multiple backups if the data is important to you.

Answer 4

Best way to store data - from what I understand, no one answer I would store on CD and in some other secure facilities temp controlled. Make sure the CD Disk are clean no smudges, dust free and store in cool dark place, I have heard sending files through email will preserve data, the coding that email uses.

Answer 5

buy a usb hard drive, probably 300 gigs or more depending on what you need. then it will show up on your computer and you should just drag and drop the files into it.