Storage question.

I have a lot of data i want to backup and i have an idea how i want todo it. Have a few questions first.

If i was to say buy a 1TB sata internal harddrive connect it to both my pc's one after the other. Backup all my data onto it. Remove it and put it in a draw rarely to be touched. Will it last a very long since it will almost never be used?

Blackmesa8

Your drive would be in the drawer a very long time indeed before you'd lose data. The ultimate problem with it would be finding yourself in world where SATA was some obscure interface format that no one had used in decades.

How much data do you really need to back up?

Personally I think the file format issue would come in prior to any physical interface issues.

lol wut.

Methinks the data would be out of date long before that, unless all he wants to backup are Media Files

You assume a media file will last long as a supported format? I have no more expectation that an MP3 or AVI will be supported by mainstream technologies in 20 years than being able to find a player then for the DVDs, CDs or BD discs I have today.

The major challenge that digital archivists are encountering is finding software that supports the files they have in their myriad formats and being able to convert them to newer formats fast enough to keep up with the increasing churn rate of formats. For historians this is a worrying trend. The deluge of data we think we have today, and that might otherwise enlighten our descendants about our times, is extraordinarily transient compared to the acetate, silver bromide, paper, velum, wood and ink, clay or stone that our forebears used. What remains of that can in some cases still be read thousands of years after it was laid down. All this is made worse by how frighteningly easy digital data is to delete.

Exactly my point.

Both wrong. There'll still be plenty of conversion programs available for jpgs, mp3s, docs, pdf, (you name it) in 20 probably even 50 years. You have no evidence to the contrary. Every format that has been in widespread use since the 80s can still be readily accessed today.

Every format that has been in widespread use since the 80s can still be readily accessed today.

betamax ?, 8inch floppy?, rl02 ?,

1TB sata internal harddrive

an external drive would be more practical for this...

In reply to a post by ggremlin:

betamax ?, 8inch floppy?, rl02 ?,

Widespread was the key word

SInce the 80's maybe, but the 70's or 60's or 50's?

in 20 probably even 50 years.

Such a short view of history. We are not necessarily talking here of JPEGs or episodes of Heroes as MKV files, although historians will find any they can find (assuming they have not been deleted) fascinating. We are talking about what are often bespoke file formats and some are also encrypted. In the decades to come, it is quite possible that the last records of profoundly important people, events and the rest might as well have been written in some proto-Cro-Magnon script because they are utterly indecipherable to man or machine.

Punch cards? I'm not sure if anyone else encountered this one, but there was a period in the 70's (I assume that it was some transitional point between punch cards and mainstream magnetic media) when it was not uncommon to find these things littering the streets. Who knows what was hidden therein and whether all of it made its way into newer formats or was just dumped?

A perfect example here. Only 25 years and the data is practically unreadable.

Having said that, in this case the situation is entirely under the control of the OP. He only has to make sure that as well as storing the data he stores the programs necessary to access that data and the hardware to run them on.

We're talking file formats here, not hardware type. If you need to be able to ensure that you can read the hardware in 50 years, just keep the computer along with the disk. Simples.

Empty assertions.

That depends on what you call 'external'. I'm sure I'm not alone in using caddyless drive trays and eSATA.

Not al all. I have encountered an issue where there were CAD files for a building. Unfortunately, they were the original architects had used some software to create them that few had heard of and then archived them on tape in a format that even fewer people had heard of. Try as we might we couldn't find anyone who could make all this into DWG (aka AutoCAD) files. Our last hope lay in the structural engineers, who used DGN (aka Microstation), which can be readily converted to DWG, but unfortunately, they had ceased to be and all their electronic files had gone with them. Thus we were reduced to scale rules and at significant cost employing a team of surveyors.

8 inch floppy disks were extremely widespread in their day. They were the de facto standard for storing and moving data on minicomputers.

One problem: computers, like most things, are subject to decay of one sort or another. If you expect to shove one in a cupboard and expect to plug it in and just work in 50 years from now then you might be disappointed. This is made all the worse since unlike something like paper, which is homogenous and requires just a single constant set of conditions, electronics are formed from a whole array of things which all require different conditions to store long term. Some of it would fair far better in conditions that other parts will not tolerate for nearly as long.

Neanderthal man, the Babylonians & Egyptians; to name just a few; left their 'data' in formats that can still be deciphered today.

Makes you think.

Have we really progressed?

I recall the whole thing being launched: Tomorrow's World, Blue Peter, Government Ministers, national press......

The simple fact is that there is so much data about this country sloshing about in so many databases today as to make the Domesday Book look... well..... archaic.

In a thousand years from now, I suspect that the Domesday Book will be a better record than the Land Registry's last backup. There may well be then a record of who owns what and where, but who owned what and when now will be another matter entirely.

I read a book recently that wondered whether in the future there might be archeologists trying to decipher our world today by looking for the likes of the theme tune from 'I Love Lucy' being reflected from far off stars since that is one of the few things we created that outlasted us.

Widespread. Not some niche cad file.

If you are setting about archiving data today, you'd naturally pick the most common format to store it in. One that isn't going to be impossible to convert later.

The second part of my sentence was quantifying the first part, in other words the data would be out of date quicker because most data changes day by day, except media files, which in that case your comment would stand, as would simonh_ comment

If you are setting about archiving data today, you'd naturally pick the most common format to store it in

paper

Who says it was a niche CAD format then? AutoCAD was unleashed in 1982. Its DWG format was a niche one itself for some time after that.

You might also want to encrypt your data it to keep some of it out of the public domain for the moment..... Problem there being who knows the password? OK for your subscriptions to porn sites , but what if it was the 1971 census?

All this excludes databases or whatever that are by design saved in bespoke formats for whatever reason.

All data is 'media' here. It records something. Whether that is your date of birth and death or all the episodes of Dynasty or today's weather really is irrelevant.

for what its worth, I class external as being able to connect/use it without opening the case or restarting the machine.

eSATA is your friend.

Yep!

And it's more common now than ever. Whoever invented the idea of the paperless office obviously never envisioned the likes of the printer/copier we use at work. It daily vomits vast volumes of beautifully printed paper...... and almost all of it gets sent for recycling!

Funnily enough we had a problem a with some drawings too - you've just reminded me that it's something I need to check back over. Thanks Des!

And we had some problems with some WordPerfect documents.

A USB SATA docking station would be far better.

Paper isn't very good for archiving. You need acid free paper, archival inks, humidity/climate controlled rooms. Expensive in the long term.

Don't be so bl**dy pedantic, you know what I mean, songs, video etc.

With word processor files I've had problems with old microsoft Works as well.

Circa 1989/1990 TIFF and PCX files have caused problems too.

Maybe, maybe not. See posts elsewhere regarding unacceptable external disk failure rates - thought to be due to absence of cooling.

And guys posting on amazon forums have had probs with seagate, wd, maxstor and buffalo.