Hard Drive Underground

[LOST6200]

i may need to archibve the data. How long will teh hard drives last if sealed appropiately at low humdidty and buried under the ground? Everything would be enmcrytped of course in case the drivesa re not restored. TIA

 

[mubs]

If it's that important, you shouldn't bank on one medium only. I'd suggest also burning DVDs on archival quality media (Verbatim Datalife, etc.), and having multiple copies on each type of media. Temperature also plays a part. You may want to look into having it stored not underground but in humidity/temperature controlled facilities that are also earthquake resistant. Large companies usually send their backup tapes on a regular basis to such facilities. Back in the days when I was in charge of stuff like this, the best company was Arcus; I think they have since been bought out by Iron Mountain.

 

[LOST6200]

I know of no trust woprhty palece to store it.

 

[ddrueding]

A safety deposit box at a bank is a pretty trustworthy place. But burying it underground is an interesting option. You would need to go deep enough that the temperature stabalized, and do something to insure the humidity was stable as well, perhaps vacum-seal it in an anti-static bag with some absorbant material?

 

[MaxBurn]

If you are in an area that freezes you might want to go deep to get below the frost layer. Below that the temp stays nice and stable. Samsung listed a non-operating temp of -40C so it shouldn't be a problem. I think I read somewhere that if you go down 15 feet or so the temp is around 50F and stable? Anyone know more about that?

I would look for a couple of those surplus ammo crates, air tight and tough. Put the drive inside several ziplock bags with some desiccant packs.

After all that is done I see no difference between this and setting it on a shelf somewhere. Should be able to expect a couple years no problem. I would store a couple drives with the same info as long as some burnt DVD's. With all that you should easily be able to go 5 or 10 years and still have one of those still readable. It has been discussed elsewhere you might want to save a computer to use these with, but I think optical drives are going to be around a long time. PATA might not though.


So, you have some "evidence" on someone?

 

[LOST6200]

Yes but how lng would that last and nobdy with the accoutns for pay for it. But in teh undersgrund faults could casue tremors too, and there could be natural disasterss. Oh teh irony if I were to survive hyet teh drives would be buried! Maybe some small coffin for the psets animals.

 

[Sol]

I think the ammo box idea is probably a good one. A large size ammo box would leave plenty of space for packing. With each drive independantly sealed with a moisture absorbing pack it would take some fairly substantial seismic activity to upset all the drives. And if you need more space you can use more boxes, they shouldn't cost a great deal...

These guys have some military grade storage solutions including some solid state drives which are aparently rated for 1,000,000 hours MTBF. Shock shouldn't pose a problem if they're rated for battlefield conditions...

Obviously expense would be a down side and I would suggest the use of at least one alternate backup medium. The only information I could find on the archival properties of solid state media is that they are 'not well understood".

 

[Adcadet]

Burn to DVD as stated, but re-burn copies periodically. That, and invest in a spell checker before burning any text documents. :mrgrn:

 

[LOST6200]

Even If i toss the uninportant stufs there will be 2.5Tb of the data to store. So withf duplicates I should burn nearly 1200 DVds? Good griefs.

 

[Pradeep]

Just get an LTO2/3 drive and be done with it. I'm sure your time is worth more than the time to burn 1200 DVDs.

 

[LOST6200]

They seenm to be only SCSI.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm sure I have an Adaptec 3940 or something I could donate to that cause.

 

[LOST6200]

But waht will survive is five years or more? Surely not teh LVD?

 

[Pradeep]

There will still be LVD controllers in 5 years, if not in retail, there will be thousands on ebay. LTO3 will be fully maxed out with a U160 controller.

 

[LOST6200]

What abvout teh flash memory lifespan? For example if the more critical data is stored in underground etc., and the vicvtim cannot return for 5+ years due to the incarcerations or survives surgicl procedures, will the dat be intact?