Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.

I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It’s mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).

I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I’m looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.

My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that’s quite outdated and DVDs don’t hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I’m unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I’m looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.

I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?

What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?

Cheers

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
    21·
    2 months ago

    This is a very, very bad idea.

    SSDs are permanent flash storage, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can leave them unpowered for extended periods of time.

    Without a refresh, electrons can and do leak out of the charge traps that store the ones and zeroes. Depending on the exact NAND used, the data could start going corrupt within a year or so.

    HDDs suffer the same problem, though less so. They can go several years, possibly a decade, but you’d still be risking the data on the drive but letting it sit unpowered for an extended time.

    For the “cold storage” approach you should really be using something that’s designed to retain data in such conditions, like optical media, or tape drives.

    • Extras
      1·
      2 months ago

      Yeah that’s why I said it needs to be refreshed and also edited in an option for m-disc in case they want to go the optical route

      Of course you can use another storage media, like m disc,

      You’ll just have to dig it up and refresh everything every couple of years, think 3 years at most iirc for consumer ones