About Data Rot - Storing a Hard Drive for ~10 years

[Litargirio]

So I am going to be storing a PC in a storage vault for ~10 years. I have:

 

(SSD) Crucial MX100 256GB - good health status, not much has been written to it

(HDD) WD Caviar Blue 1TB

(HDD) WD Caviar Red 1TB

(HDD) Seagate Barracuda 500GB

 

The truly relevant data comprises about 300 GB, so I can copy it across all three hard drives, but I'm still worried about the data fading over time due to lack of use, and getting lost.

 

Anyone have any insight about this type of long term data storage?

 

I have of course considered the use of an online storage service, but since nobody will log into the accout in those 10 years, I fear it might get suspended due to inactivity, or the storage service stop existing altogether during that time.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Use something like BTRFS, REFS, ZFS, or APFS, and power it on every year and have it srub the data.

[imPixelTV]

dig it out every year or so and pull a random file off and read it. also write a random txt file when you do that

[Litargirio]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Use something like BTRFS, REFS, ZFS, or APFS, and power it on every year and have it srub the data.

There will be no way of accessing, much less powering the thing in the given time.

 

If I (or anyone else) could have access to it, I wouldn't be asking this question.

[imPixelTV]

Just now, Litargirio said:

There will be no way of accessing, much less powering the thing in the given time.

 

If I (or anyone else) had access to it, I wouldn't be asking this question.

whoops, i have no idea then. i'd just leave it. good luck

[Enderman]

Use tape drives or CDs.

[glitchmaster0001]

8 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

So I am going to be storing a PC in a storage vault for ~10 years. I have:

 

(SSD) Crucial MX100 256GB - good health status, not much has been written to it

(HDD) WD Caviar Blue 1TB

(HDD) WD Caviar Red 1TB

(HDD) Seagate Barracuda 500GB

 

The truly relevant data comprises about 300 GB, so I can copy it across all three hard drives, but I'm still worried about the data fading over time due to lack of use, and getting lost.

 

Anyone have any insight about this type of long term data storage?

 

I have of course considered the use of an online storage service, but since nobody will log into the accout in those 10 years, I fear it might get suspended due to inactivity, or the storage service stop existing altogether during that time.

normally for archiving the industry standard would be to use tape or floppy disks since they hold data for a long ass time. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

It's recommend to power up HDDs once a year to ensure their contents are valid.  There are "archival grade" HDDs, but you'll just have to take their word for it. There are also "archival grade" DVDs if you want to go that route.

 

Or you can just get archive tapes.

[SLAYR]

9 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

So I am going to be storing a PC in a storage vault for ~10 years. I have:

Why???

 

If you have data you don't want to access for 10 years you should consider storing it in hard physical copy form, raw pictures, and videos on dvds, and getting a safe for them.

 

[glitchmaster0001]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

Why???

 

If you have data you don't want to access for 10 years you should consider storing it in hard physical copy form, raw pictures, and videos on dvds, and getting a safe for them.

 

what? like a safety deposit box or something? isnt that expensive though? 

[NumLock21]

Got some old IDE drives that haven't been used for a long time, around 8 years or so. They're in my storage box. Decided to check out if they still work or not. Yes it does and my stuffs are still on it. Is there data missing? Don't know, but most of my stuffs seems to be there.

[SLAYR]

2 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

what something like a safety deposit box or something? isnt that expensive though? 

It doesn't have to be a safety deposit box like at a bank, lots of places sell waterproof / fireproof safes, depends on how secure the "storage vault" it.

[PlayStation 2]

I had an old hard drive that was last used in 2010 or something. 6 and a half years later, I pulled a bit of shit off of it, and guess what. Still worked.

[Litargirio]

14 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

what something like a safety deposit box or something? isnt that expensive though? 

Something like a box in a warehouse, yes. I can get it for just 40 bucks a month, but it's pretty secure.

 

15 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

If you have data you don't want to access for 10 years 

It's more like I can't. Think of it as a time capsule of sorts.

 

 

@Enderman @M.Yurizaki

 

How do they work? I assume you need a drive reader + the tape itself?

 

Any recommendations?

[Litargirio]

Would these two work, for example? (first thing I came across, no clue what I'm doing)

 

https://www.amazon.com/HP-Sdlt-External-Tape-Drive/dp/B000EPYA2K/ref=lp_172485_1_13?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1479157322&sr=1-13

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014ROK9RI/ref=pd_day0_147_12?ie=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B014ROK9RI&pd_rd_r=6QQKY5ZWPJPMNYHK4C95&pd_rd_w=6CCAQ&pd_rd_wg=xr8mM&psc=1&refRID=6QQKY5ZWPJPMNYHK4C95

[Gonio]

SSD might be a different thing however to store for 10 years, would be wise to not let improtant data on that. Your SSD might be fine, but would suck if it just misses a few things that are important?

 

As for the 300GB important dat, suggest you copy it on all 3 HDD drives if there is room for it as a tripple buffer.

 

 

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, Litargirio said:

Something like a box in a warehouse, yes. I can get it for just 40 bucks a month, but it's pretty secure.

 

It's more like I can't.

 

 

@Enderman @M.Yurizaki

 

How do they work? I assume you need a drive reader + the tape itself?

 

Any recommendations?

well if you are willing to store data like that for a long period of time like that then i would assume that it must be mission critical data so if i were in your shoes id store it across the 3 HDDs in the PC, along with storing it on a enterprise tape drive and you would also need an enterprise tape reader to access the data HPE makes those tape drives and readers but i will warn you it wont be cheap

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

@Enderman @M.Yurizaki

 

How do they work? I assume you need a drive reader + the tape itself?

 

Any recommendations?

It works like any other removable media. The problem is they're really expensive since they're normally for enterprises.

 

1 minute ago, Gonio said:

SSD might be a different thing however to store for 10 years, would be wise to not let improtant data on that. Your SSD might be fine, but would suck if it just misses a few things that are important?

SSDs are actually worse for archival, since you can think of NAND as a slowly leaking capacitor. PC world pegs it at two years at best at room temperature abouts.

[NumLock21]

Best option today for long term backup is still the tape drive. So almost everyone had one, when Iomega came out with a personal tape drive for home users. They are long discontinued. They are popular in the early 2000s, other products are the zip drive and jaz drive.

 

Why can't you not access them for the next 10 years? Is this some type of project or something?

[Litargirio]

Just now, NumLock21 said:

Why can't you not access them for the next 10 years? Is this some type of project or something?

Because I will be unable to get to the location where it is stored. I prefer not to disclose the details.

[mariushm]

Unless you will store those in a place with controlled humidity and temperature, I would worry that the platters would get stuck after a few years of no use. Also, components on the circuit boards like ceramic capacitors could degrade after years of non-use, the risk of having the drives damaged at first start (when you push a lot of current in something that wasn't running for some time) is much higher.. 

 

If you plan for offline storage, I would have at least two separate hard drives with all the information on each drive and every 4-6 months I would take them out and run them for about an hour and while they're running i'd do a surface scan of the hard drive or maybe copy all data to computer and write back to hard drive to refresh the information on the drives.

 

With increased densities of data on platters, I just wouldn't be 100% sure data would stay correct for years. In 2-3 years of staying in a safe, a few bits may be too weak for the electronics of the drive to reliably determine their correct state and you may get them read incorrectly.

 

You could get a bigger hard drive, copy the files once on the hard drive, then create an archive with no compression of the data (basically just to have all files in a single big file) and now you have the data and a copy of the data... and then use something like PAR2 to create error correction information for the archive (something like 20% of file size of archive in error correction information would make it possible to recover single bit errors in the whole archive)

 

[Litargirio]

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

every 4-6 months I would take them out and run them for about an hour and while they're running i'd do a surface scan

As I said, accesing the PC will be impossible in the ~10 years.

 

As previously suggested I will probably be using either a tape drive or a few of them Milleniata M-Discs.

[NumLock21]

16 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Because I will be unable to get to the location where it is stored. I prefer not to disclose the details.

Well then if your data are extremely important, then back them up to multiple drives and then put them in a anti-static bag. Also throw in some silica gel packs while your at it.

[mariushm]

11 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

As I said, accesing the PC will be impossible in the ~10 years.

 

As previously suggested I will probably be using either a tape drive or a few of them Milleniata M-Discs.

You would also have to pack a couple or more  tape readers and/or cd/dvd readers.

Think about IDE cd drives ... in 10 years we may still have SATA ports, but would you still be able to buy sata optical drives to read your discs? 

 

And your tape readers... maybe your computers in 10 years won't have the required ports anymore .. think how usb 1.1 devices are barely supported these days and some laptops don't even have regular USB connectors anymore, only usb 3 type c or some of these miniaturized ports. who knows what kind of thunderbold 6 or usb 5 or some other connectors we would have.

I guess best bet would be to find some kind of old laptop with some usb ports and maybe a couple of external usb drive boxes in which you would insert your drives and then you'd be able to access the contents in 10 years using that laptop and usb connection. From laptop you'd be able to transfer data through regular ethernet cable or usb or wireless if in 10 years you'd still have devices supporting 802.11 b/g/n/ac

 

Almost laughing, but probably the safest storage would be to encode your data in some kind of Base64 or some similar code and print your data on archival paper with some OCR font and very small font size with laser printers... when you want the data back, you put the paper into a scanner and scan the page at high resolution and do OCR on the characters and get your binary files back.

 

Youtube uses Base64 (or something similar) for their youtube ids... so you can see already long numbers which would otherwise take 16-32 bytes or more into a few characters.

 

 

 

[Litargirio]

6 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Think about IDE cd drives ... in 10 years we may still have SATA ports, but would you still be able to buy sata optical drives to read your discs? 

I'm sure there will have to be SOMETHING.

 

Just like, you know, we still have original Apple and Commodore 64 computers around.

 

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

You would also have to pack a couple or more  tape readers and/or cd/dvd readers.

Yes, obviously I will do that. I plan to store the entire PC and its peripherals plus a few other thingies, and see how well that goes.