Root Access

@oldmud0 I understand the problem. I just don't believe anyone is going to handle this for you any cheaper than what you already found. At least, I wouldn't trust them

satibel

good HDDs will stay for 10s of years as cold storage.

Bob

@OliverSalzburg I vaguely recall seeing what you're after but I think it was in the other direction

satibel

if you want to "cheap out", ask someone with a band drive, and buy a magnetic band cartridge.

Bob

2:16 PM

@oldmud0 idrive.com/idrive-express idk how trustworthy they are

> * This service comes FREE for Express Backup, once a year for Personal users and thrice yearly for Business users. Subsequent backup requests will be subject to the $59.95 charge.

they ship you a 3 TB drive you return

DavidPostill

@BenN It was briefly undeleted ...

Bob

they charge storage at $70/TB-year

$52 the first year

oldmud0

I looked at it but it seems a little pricey. Not sure how decent their client software is.

I mean for biz users it's very cheap. But dunno.

Bob

@oldmud0 $70/TB-year is pretty typical

with the once-per-year free ship-in, it's cheap even

assuming I'm reading this right

oldmud0

Isn't it recommended to make offsite backups more frequent than that though? Like every 4 months?

Bob

2:20 PM

@oldmud0 typically the idea of seeding is you only do it for the initial image, and then upload changes as they occur

Journeyman Geek

lol

Bob

ahhh

Journeyman Geek

I'm wondering if there's some kind of untapped market here

Bob

@oldmud0 crashplan used to have it. discontinued 2015. helpdesk.code42.com/hc/en-us/articles/…

oldmud0

This frustrates me. If I just buy an external drive, people will say, "backup offsite too!" but if I can't backup offsite efficiently, then what do I do

There's no reason for me to make a home datacenter

Journeyman Geek

2:23 PM

@oldmud0 backing up offsite's mainly for when your worried about keeping your data after your location catches fire

Bob

@oldmud0 I usually qualify that with "if your data is really important, keep an offsite copy"

oldmud0

And what about the external drive failing? Home external drives are probably the least reliable drives manufactured

Bob

for me, personally, out of >10 TB of data I've got maybe 500 MB that's in that category.

probably < 100 MB even

I just keep those on onedrive. easy, done.

There's very little data that's that important.

Journeyman Geek

@oldmud0 the idea is... you usually won't have two drives failing at once

Bob

If it's something big like childhood videos... toss it on a HDD and leave it at your parent/friend/child's home

Oliver Salzburg

2:25 PM

Hah!

Journeyman Geek

lol

@Bob I'm debating talking my brother into hosting a copy of my backups

Oliver Salzburg

You always have X+1 drives failing if your solution can handle X drive failures

Always!

Bob

@oldmud0 if your external drive fails? unlucky. but you've halved an unlikely event already.

if you go down the track of "but it can still fail, so I might as well not back up at all!", well, it's your data, and your risk.

personally? I have enough backups to absorb 1.5 drive failures, probably

1 failure without loss, a second failure with partial recovery

that's more than good enough for me

actually, I'm generally more worried about software issues than hardware failure

it's very useful to be able to restore an OS image after something breaks badly

satibel

I have my data split between 2 1TB drives, and those are backed up on a 3TB drive.

oldmud0

So where did all the seeded backup services go?

Journeyman Geek

2:28 PM

clearly they didn't make sense since most places that needed it have fast internet

Oliver Salzburg

@oldmud0 aws.amazon.com/snowmobile

satibel

user grade offsite backups are : give a 64 GB key in a labeled shoebox to a few people you know.

it works surprisingly well.

oldmud0

then what's the point of storing backups in a datacenter

Bob

no one ever said it has to be a datacenter

oldmud0

why do people make big fat datacenters in their houses to store their backups

Bob

2:30 PM

pretty sure you just made that part up yourself

satibel

@oldmud0 mostly for photography, design and video editing.

Burgi

and they just use NAS

oldmud0

so just go the regular consumer route and buy another regular consumer-grade drive, and backup your stuff to a single consumer-grade drive?

satibel

@Burgi sometimes 400TB raid 0 NAS, but still NAS

Burgi

or a ton of USB drives

satibel

2:32 PM

yup

oldmud0

like a regular human being?

satibel

if you Really need security, buy cold storage drives.

Bob

@Burgi I still think external HDDs are better than NASes for backups

unplug the HDD and you're not damaging it by keeping it on, and it's immune to ransomware, power surges, etc

a NAS is only good for file sharing or availability

oldmud0

what about magnetic decay

Burgi

fair points

lol?

Bob

2:33 PM

@oldmud0 meh, rewrite the drive once a year

a decent HDD should be able to last minimum 5 years, probably 10+, without any decay

I've yet to see any reports of decay tbh

Burgi

is that really a thing?

satibel

cold storage means storing offline btw.

Bob

@Burgi in theory. a little bit of bitrot can happen.

oldmud0

32

A: Does an unplugged hard drive used for data archival deteriorate?

Hard drives are unsuitable for anything other than short term archival storage. The problem is not one of data retention, it's the fact that stored drives have a bad track record for not spinning up. Contrary to what Vilx- wrote, many of us know what happens to a drive that's been stored for 20 ...

Bob

if you're really concerned, use parity drives/archives

@oldmud0 look, if you're not accessing your data for 5 years, let alone 20, in a home situation, chances are it's a useless backup

just make a new backup every month. year if you're lazy.

I'd also love to see some evidence/numbers for the "drive not spinning up" claim, tbh

satibel

2:37 PM

a bunch of those

drive storage cases

and some cheap 1TB drives.

Bob

because that answer is literally the only place making that claim that I can find with a cursory search

actually, spin-up failure is a relatively benign thing too

satibel

regular HDDs are fine with semi-cold storage as long as you refresh them every couple of years.

Bob

the data is physically intact and isn't too hard to recover if you really need it

but. I've gone through 5 pages of google.

three forum posts (incl. SF) making that claim

not. one. single. source.

I call bullshit.

sounds like an old wife's tale

here's the SU version of that Q

40

Q: How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?

Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade? To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on the hard drive, like every 5 years or so. Is it true?

in which the top-voted answer amusingly references that SF answer's claim for spin-up failure and goes on to say they don't believe it's likely

anyway. rewrite once a year. easy, done.

Paul Vargas

> Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions.

^^^ Isn't that great?

satibel

probably the best way is to get rolling backups, buy a new drive every 2-5 years, and copy to that.

@oldmud0 backblaze.com offers cloud backup service for 5$/month and hard drive shipping for recovery.

Bob

2:56 PM

oh hey. new Surface Pro.

Introducing the new Surface Pro

►

kinda meh this time. CPU refresh I suppose.

satibel

meh, I prefer these youtube.com/watch?v=tyyCMROS66I

Bob

still mostly the "creator"-targeted stuff

oldmud0

3:09 PM

@satibel My internet is really, really slow. Hence I'll just probably go to best buy, buy the least shoddy seagate usb 3.0 hard drive I find (prob for something overpriced like $160) and backup the drive with it. Then I'll wait for the internal hard drive and ssd to come in from amazon.

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