It's 2020, what is your backup solution?

Malware does not destroy all five copies of my data (7 drives, if you count the two upgraded unit this year), particularly when one or more of the units is not powered up or even plugged in under continuous operation. Even if infected, the non-operational units have secure data copies if never plugged into the infected PC.

Wilt wrote in post #19113684
Malware does not destroy all five copies of data, particularly when one or more of the units is not powered up or even plugged in under continuous operation.

Yeah, if it’s not powered on, and there’s no way to trigger remote wake on LAN, you’re solid.

Wilt wrote in post #19113680
Interesting, that PCs (particulary the laptops that are so common (unlike the less common desktop PC in homes) today so SELDOM come with optical drives in them. 3 years ago, I gave all of our daughters families a USB connected DVD read/write unit, because NONE OF THEM could read the optical media with photos that I distributed to them after a 'family' vacation gathering somewhere.

I gave up on optical media quite some time ago just because most of the folks I would distribute photos to can't read them. I still have a family member that sends DVDs from time to time and we keep telling him, no one can read them. I opted for One-Drive because I can easily send a link and the photos are available to all no matter what the device, PC, laptop, phone, tablet, smart TV, if it can connect, it can display anywhere.

Now that I am restoring very old 8mm home movies it's a easy way to distribute rather large files to a large group of people. The only downside was that I had to spend some time with the older crowd teaching them how to access the material and how to navigate the site, but one they get past that, a simple email announcing a new movie has been restored is all that's needed.

USB-connectd DVDs were dirt cheap thru Amazon...I did not break the $100 mark in buying four DVD units to give as stocking stuffers on Xmas! Simple solution that transcends them buying new laptops/PCs and keeps them media compatible.
It is fascinating that four families can go without DVD readers, even in loading purchased software. I know I have been able to load Microsoft Office 2003 even now, as I hated the revised user interface of Word 2007 and later! Now you get sucked into paying fees for Office 365 thru eternity (or until Microsoft obsoletes it).

idkdc wrote in post #19113667
I think with all mediums, including LTO, it’s important to also have back ups of the the reader, the computer hardware and specific OS version and island it (to prevent hacking from an out of date service) so that you have previous version of OS’es available in case there are updates that phase out older equipment. This is not as much of an issue with standard computers that take disk drives, like Windows and Linux builds that take standard disk readers. This is not an issue within one’s lifetime with less important data, probably, too. It’s more of an issue for national/cultural, corporate back up, or perhaps even backing up of something of immense importance to you such as a digital journal.

I think with Apple’s push to drop standard Blu-Ray support on most consumer computer models (Apple has been the standard setter for years including USB from PS/2), this is a risk that hasn’t yet been proven, but to me it still seems like a non-zero risk. There are also issues if you pick the wrong standard, for example, UMD or HD-DVD, but I think those are all issues you can alleviate by transferring the data if you’re actively maintaining those optical back ups.

Optical disks should be low cost enough at low-density to have identical booklets too in two locations of a house.

From the software side, I think my main annoyance is with specific standards other than simple FAT-32 storage (again, an issue with video files than photos files which can be under 4 GB). For example, ExFat formatted storage drives created on Windowsnot (in my anecdotal experience) being compatible with Linux and Mac, etc. Little bugs in future updates that are esoteric with very few customers reporting can wreak your back up retrieval plans. In addition, using software from old days or technology that dies or is discontinued such as DVD Menu support by Adobe Encore DVD, is kind of wonky. Not so much an issue for data, but in case you count on a specific DVD or Blu Ray player standard to support a certain UI presentation. There is no telling what future players are compatible with.

Agreed; one would want to have at least two read/write drives capable of handling this. They're inexpensive enough to not be a hassle for the extra redundancy. For file system, again, optical is often using ISO/UDF, not FAT/exFAT, so that's less of an issue and has been a standard for a very long time (which is impressive, the more you look into it, the more it's less the picture of things changing over time to obsolete and actually we have held fairly common standards across the medium this entire time). Lots of mobile devices and mobile centered computers will lack an optical drive, along with floppy, etc, and is entirely USB/network and other. That's true. But it hasn't stopped the availability of affordable USB/other controller based CD/DVD/BD optical drives to be available. That's again pretty impressive that nothing has actually gone away and is nearly completely backwards compatible. Only a few optical mediums were pretty much obsolete, but the standard CD-R and DVD-R and now BD-R haven't faded out and are really accessible on all hardware platforms really, with cheap hardware access if needing to buy new.

I mean.... laser disc? Hah!

Wilt wrote in post #19113680
Interesting, that PCs (particulary the laptops that are so common (unlike the less common desktop PC in homes) today so SELDOM come with optical drives in them. 3 years ago, I gave all of our daughters families a USB connected DVD read/write unit, because NONE OF THEM could read the optical media with photos that I distributed to them after a 'family' vacation gathering somewhere.

This is not for lack of support but rather for size/space concerns. Few people need optical media for typical software now. It will be downloaded via internet now. But, the hardware is still readily available and affordable and still works with external controller connections, like USB, etc. The interesting thing is that this hardware is still available and common and backwards compatible with 30 year old media. This is not true for most software or file systems from the same 30 years ago! Let alone hardware. So in reality, optical has completely outlasted and been far more stable with the least change and hasn't become defunct, compared to even software and hardware that ran the software.

It's also one more thing to sell you later (an external optical drive); something Apple likes to pioneer. Take it away. Don't make it cheaper. Then sell you the same thing you used to already get for the same price, for more.

So from a backup standpoint, you can see an obvious trend in which mediums are more likely to last. We cannot see the future, only predict it, and using historical trend and metrics we can at least take an educated guess at a prediction of what will be both common, affordable and still reliable in the next 20~30 years. The real question will be if and when solid state tech will finally become stable over a long period of time in controlled conditions. Until then, it's a constant game of refreshing media that is redundant (like what you're doing with your RAID/NAS/Mirrors and multiple physical copies, only giving you uptime) versus including a true backup solution that will survive time.

Of note, those NAS/RAID solutions, unless they're using file systems that do data validation, checksum and have error correcting memory will easily destroy data its meant to protect and hold. So the separate physical copies is actually the better approach in your current pool of redundancy. This is not the case with commercial NAS systems, unless you specifically buy and/or build one with server grade hardware with ECC memory and use a file system that has data validation, like ZFS. I would not trust data to those Synology, Buffalo, etc, systems, they lack all of this; they're just good for basic uptime redundancy, but will write errors without any hesitation).

Anyhow, I'm not criticizing at all. I'm actually far more interested in the concept of backups. The idea that if you were to stroke out right now, could your kids handle your hard drive arrays and get the data, after it sat for 5 years for example. This concept is what is more interesting to me. We all have our needs for data redundancy and backups maybe. But I'm really interested in the idea of what's going to last, what's affordable, and what can easily be dealt with by someone that is not already into this tech to retrieve and read it, in 20~30 years. This is the medium I'm super interested in. Your daughter for example, could she get your array(s) in 5 years or more, and will they work, will she be able to use it, get the data, say if she really wanted priceless family photos that were lost everywhere else by happen stance?

Very best,

Wilt wrote in post #19113688
USB-connectd DVDs were dirt cheap thru Amazon...I did not break the $100 mark in buying four DVD units to give as stocking stuffers on Xmas! Simple solution that transcends them buying new laptops/PCs and keeps them media compatible.
It is fascinating that four families can go without DVD readers, even in loading purchased software. I know I have been able to load Microsoft Office 2003 even now, as I hated the revised user interface of Word 2007 and later! Now you get sucked into paying fees for Office 365 thru eternity (or until Microsoft obsoletes it).

I did sign up for office 365 family plan. It works out to a $1.39 per license per month and includes 6tb of cloud storage. That's well below my pain threshold. Of course I am only using 5 of the 6 licenses so my cost is about $1.66 per license per month.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19113690
The real question will be if and when solid state tech will finally become stable over a long period of time in controlled conditions. Until then, it's a constant game of refreshing media that is redundant (like what you're doing with your RAID/NAS/Mirrors and multiple physical copies, only giving you uptime) versus including a true backup solution that will survive time.

Of note, those NAS/RAID solutions, unless they're using file systems that do data validation, checksum and have error correcting memory will easily destroy data its meant to protect and hold. So the separate physical copies is actually the better approach in your current pool of redundancy. This is not the case with commercial NAS systems, unless you specifically buy and/or build one with server grade hardware with ECC memory and use a file system that has data validation, like ZFS. I would not trust data to those Synology, Buffalo, etc, systems, they lack all of this; they're just good for basic uptime redundancy, but will write errors without any hesitation).

Very best,

Yeah, the immense popularity of SSD today, even in RAID enclosures, is fraught with issues. When used to simply 'store data' and not used to rewrite new data frequently, the finite lifetime is less an issue than when used as an active drive in a PC, but as write-once storage, the SSD has its current 10 year calendar age limit.

Since RAID 1 merely makes two copies of the disk, rather than using some scheme for 'striping' data across two or four drives, I feel a bit more secure in not using some proprietary data spllitting algorithm. Nevertheless your words of warning are good for everyone to keep in mind.

MalVeauX wrote in post #19113636
This is a very valid point. The idea of having data (images in this context) survive us, only to be unwanted or not important to the receiver and the next generation. This is very true to an extent. I recently had a conversation about just this concept.

That said, I think there's another paradigm to this. Many of us were born into a world without photography at our fingertips, without internet sharing platforms, without the idea of carefree consumption of media. Most of us do not really have family photos beyond a handful, if that, of our families from just 4~5 decades ago, unless someone was an enthusiast back then. I lack most of my childhood photos, they're long gone on kodak film and a few polaroids. We had to scan most of any surviving photos we had from the 50's to the 90's basically. So many of us of course do not really worry about having photos laying around in the decades to come, of ourselves. But, this new generation is born into a world with internet, handheld cameras with instant sharing online, and consume more photos than we imagined. If you were to take your family's photograhpic history and put it on social media, hordes of people would thumb through it, even if it were not their own family. But in the context of family, our next generation may indeed have a much different idea of wishing they had images from back in the day of their family, carefree existing in a mega cloud and accessible over social media or something that we abhor or don't care about, but they do.

So the idea of our photos, especially personal family photos, surviving us and not being important to the next generation, I'm not sure if that's true, maybe from our paradigm from being born prior to this, but for everyone after this, hording thousands of photos and sharing them endlessly seems to be a thing now. So perhaps, more so than ever, it will be important to actually have photos of our loved ones from time periods before the advent of camera phones and social media.

Printing of course makes a physical media; but they're gone in a house fire, damaged in a storm with flooding perhaps. Also not really going to survive time (exceptions exist of course). This isn't an archival or backup solution unfortunately.

Very best,

I think you missed the part where I said that I immediately distribute everything that others might want to keep, rather than hoarding them in a personal archive than I expect someone to comb through after I'm dead.

I doubt anyone is going to spend time sifting through my data files when I'm gone.

RDKirk wrote in post #19113731
I think you missed the part where I said that I immediately distribute everything that others might want to keep, rather than hoarding them in a personal archive than I expect someone to comb through after I'm dead.

I doubt anyone is going to spend time sifting through my data files when I'm gone.

Which brings us back around full circle to the discussion of optical media seeming to be enduring for accessiblity of data via readers, but most thin laptops fail to have optical media reader, and cheap ones that plug in via USB are available thru sources like Amazon and many others.

Wilt wrote in post #19113733
Which brings us back around full circle to the discussion of optical media seeming to be enduring for accessiblity of data via readers, but most thin laptops fail to have optical media reader, and cheap ones that plug in via USB are available thru sources like Amazon and many others.

Most people in my particular family are not computer-as-passtime folk. If it's not available to their phones, it doesn't exist, even though they use computers extensively at work.

I've had a computer on my work desk (or at least a terminal) since the early 70s, and a home computer since 1982. I've been building them since '88. But I'm the only computer hobbyist in my family. In fact, I don't even have any physical friends who'd go with me to MicroCenter just to see what's new.

Dang. I'm still a unicorn. Just as I was in the 60s when I was the only Star Trek fan I knew.

I have a son-in-law who is a techie...with lots and lots of home automation, the highest res huge screen TV, but not an audio fanatic. He is also the head of IT for his company. But I can hardly say that he is into home computing in any visible way...what is work is not pasttime pleasure.; there is not a visible 'computer area' in the house.
Other sons-in-law are similarly disinterested in computers as pasttimes, none of them own cameras apart from smartphones. Daughters are similarly disinterested in photography as anything more than 'family pictures', not even for memories of beautiful places visited on this planet.
As I said, we have one daughter who creates collages for memorial gatherings when someone passes, and while she does transfer images from phone to some storage device, that's about it. So I know she will want to mine the photos I have, for my memorial and for my wife's. No one else will have any interest in my photos, digital or on film.

Wilt wrote in post #19113797
I have a son-in-law who is a techie...with lots and lots of home automation, the highest res huge screen TV, but not an audio fanatic. He is also the head of IT for his company. But I can hardly say that he is into home computing in any visible way...what is work is not pasttime pleasure.; there is not a visible 'computer area' in the house.
Other sons-in-law are similarly disinterested in computers as pasttimes, none of them own cameras apart from smartphones. Daughters are similarly disinterested in photography as anything more than 'family pictures', not even for memories of beautiful places visited on this planet.
As I said, we have one daughter who creates collages for memorial gatherings when someone passes, and while she does transfer images from phone to some storage device, that's about it. So I know she will want to mine the photos I have, for my memorial and for my wife's. No on else will have any interest in my photos, digital or on film.

I have become our families archive and have probably close to 15k old photographs, slides, negatives and maybe 200 or so movies. For the past few years I have been scanning and restoring images and now movies and have noticed that the images of interest are those of people and to a lesser extent, homes. No one wants vacation photos, pictures of flowers or gardens, wildlife, landscapes or places so I no longer bother restoring those unless there are people in them. Also, unless they are accessible by phone or tablet, they don't get seen. Since I have switched over to One Drive traffic on our family chat site has sky rocketed especially when I put out new material. Even the youngsters are chiming in the discussions asking who is who and wanting to know more.

IOW, unless one's income is dependent upon photos that are carefully preserved with the safety of offsite backup of data, it really does not matter how long it takes for bit rot to afflict harddrives or SSD

I shoot less photos these days. I would rather have a few stupendous photos than a stupid amount of mediocre ones, for many of the same reasons.

gjl711 wrote in post #19113805
I have become our families archive and have probably close to 15k old photographs, slides, negatives and maybe 200 or so movies. For the past few years I have been scanning and restoring images and now movies and have noticed that the images of interest are those of people and to a lesser extent, homes. No one wants vacation photos, pictures of flowers or gardens, wildlife, landscapes or places so I no longer bother restoring those unless there are people in them. Also, unless they are accessible by phone or tablet, they don't get seen. Since I have switched over to One Drive traffic on our family chat site has sky rocketed especially when I put out new material. Even the youngsters are chiming in the discussions asking who is who and wanting to know more.

This was very related to the point made above; while we are born into a world sometimes without the need to go through lots of photos of people so we don't care too much to worry about keeping lots of photos long term in an archival way, there's today's generation and tech and even folk from before this time can appreciate as you experienced that if you have images of family or friends and they're accessible, easily, people do actually want to see them. We are story tellers after all and we like to look back at our long story. Not everyone does of course. But really, as you experienced, if you put it in a place to be accessed, they will eventually want to. And it's nice that your family has access to that thanks to you.

Very best,