Help with safe, secure storage of video footage

[lasereyes]

We have a lot of video footage (5TB+ and will grow with time) from our various vacations. As you can imagine it is precious stuff we don't want to lose! We want to store this (hopefully) for years (20-30 years+ if possible). We edit the footage and make DVDs of the finished movies. But we need a robust solution to store backup copies of the original footage in case the DVDs fail. Looking for a hard medium storage method, rather than online.

Looking through various sites on the internet, I am not clear on what the most robust and reliable storage method.

Some considerations:
1. Internal vs. External: I know Internal is cheaper, but which is likely to last longer?

2. Docking Station for Internal Hard Drive: a friend recommended this, but my concern is won't the Internal Drive degrade if you either: (i) leave it sticking out of a docking station; or (ii) continually insert it and remove it.

3. External Drive with Enclosure: is this worth considering, and how would it compare with (2) for longevity and reliability?

4. Data Redundant/Auto-backup solutions: from what I have read, these sound very appropriate: automatic backup of files to more than 1 backup drive so if 1 fails, you have the other. I have heard about RAID as a way of achieving this, but have no real idea how to set this up. What would I need and how would I set it up?

5. Tape storage: is this worth considering? Somebody mentioned this is the most reliable long term storage medium. How much would a solution cost and what devices would I need?

6. Is there anything else I should be thinking of?

Sorry for the barrage of questions, but would appreciate any help you could give!

 

[ddrueding]

I don't consider any offline storage safe. Bits degrade, parts fail. The best practice is to keep the data online and monitored. My suggestion is what I do myself: Stick enough storage in two computers that each can store a complete copy of your data. Update the backup whenever changes or additions are made. Test these computers from time to time to make sure nothing has failed. As components fail (on that time scale they will), replace them and restore from the other copy. I suggest making at least one of these computers something you use regularly, so that any failure would be promptly recognized and delt with. The other machine can be a beater with some big drives in it. Keeping it offline except when performing backups and testing components will protect it from viruses and accidental deletion.

 

[Stereodude]

I have a much simpler & cheaper idea. Burn a copy of the DVD's onto 100 year archival grade DVD-R blanks and store those those in a temperature and humidity controlled location.

 

[ddrueding]

I don't have any faith in any burned optical media or magnetic tape media being read reliably in even 7-10 years.

 

[Stereodude]

I don't have any faith in any burned optical media or magnetic tape media being read reliably in even 7-10 years.

I do. I've got a lot of 10+ year old recordable media that still reads fine. In fact, I'm not sure I have any 10+ year old recordable media that doesn't read. I haven't found any of my old CD-R's that aren't readable (excluding ones that have scratches / gouges from poor treatment). I don't have any reason to believe that even standard media won't be readable in 10 years let alone the better archival stuff.

I bet it'll be far more robust / reliable than your hardware solutions.

 

[ddrueding]

I bet it'll be far more robust / reliable than your hardware solutions.

The difference is that mine is constantly monitored and redundant, with replacement and upgrades part of the lifecycle. You don't have to cross your fingers when the time comes to try and read one.

 

[LunarMist]

The difference is that mine is constantly monitored and redundant, with replacement and upgrades part of the lifecycle. You don't have to cross your fingers when the time comes to try and read one.

For most users monitoring and maintenance is impractical and quite expensive compared to archiving. And anything online still needs backups somewhere.

 

[Mercutio]

Tape is indeed the best option for your circumstance. Since you'll need the data potentially for decades, you'll probably want to purchase at least two devices that are capable of reading your tape format, or perhaps you might need to avail the services of a company that can transfer to new intermediate formats during your data's lifespan.

But tape is stable for longer periods of time than anything else and additional storage is dirt cheap once a drive has been purchased. Figure that you'll spend $1200 on a drive and a few tapes, but additional tapes will probably only be $25 or so. Yes, the up-front cost on a few hard disk drives is considerably lower, but hard disk drives aren't exactly made to sit in a safe for a quarter century either.

 

[tazwegion]

But tape is stable for longer periods of time than anything else and additional storage is dirt cheap once a drive has been purchased. Figure that you'll spend $1200 on a drive and a few tapes, but additional tapes will probably only be $25 or so. Yes, the up-front cost on a few hard disk drives is considerably lower, but hard disk drives aren't exactly made to sit in a safe for a quarter century either.

I recall a local Public University modifying a VCR to enable use of tape media for backup purposes (VAX/VMS main frame) back in 1989~1990, just how long could someone rely on tape media to remain 100% undegraded? would that translate to all tape media ie. Zip drives & Beta/VHS format cassettes?

 

[Tannin]

Don't agree about the tape - there is just too much risk of not being able to find a reader for your data somewhere down the track.

Best option is SATA hard drives - they are cheap (probably cheaper than tape once you factor in the cost of the readers), very reliable, and easy to store - any place that is dry and a sensible temperature will do. Doesn't really matter how you connect them - external drives, internal via docking station, bare internal, whatever you like.

Store them NOT attached to a machine, but plug them into something now and again just to spin them up and check that everything is OK. About once a year is good.

You need at least 2 sets, I recommend three sets. They are very cheap, so why not?

 

[Tannin]

At $1200 for a tape solution, suited to 5TB+ of data, I reckon that's a non-starter. That same $1200 would get you enough hard drives to back up the entire dataset four times over, with room to spare.

If we were looking at, say, 30TB or 50TB, tape would look a lot more attractive.

 

[Mercutio]

He does say the data set will grow with time, something that legitimately favors tape as the capacity increases. Most vendors claim stable data storage for 25 or 30 years.

 

[tazwegion]

Most vendors claim stable data storage for 25 or 30 years.

Thanks



Seems the downside to last Century's digital revolution is the increased risk of loss in terms of historical (and personal) data which in the previous period would have been allocated to alternate media ie. photographs & books/journals

 

[timwhit]

Unless your house burns down. Or all your photographs fade.

 

[ddrueding]

Unless your house burns down. Or all your photographs fade.

Indeed. I keep a current live copy of my data 30 miles away. That would have been much tougher in the age of print media.

 

[tazwegion]

Unless your house burns down. Or all your photographs fade.

Funny you should mention that... I was listening to ABC overnight radio last month and they were talking about how the chemicals used in modern photographic production (paper etc.) have changed and they won't be able to resist the effects of aging anywhere nearly as well as pictures taken say during the 1900~1970's period, not being much of a photographic enthusiast I can't expand on that any further however it's still food for thought


Oddly enough they were also discussing this potential risk to historical media r/t digital storage medium failure rates, people's attitudes towards data preservation (failure to back up data) & the ramifications of the digital revolution on the photographic industry in general including the fact that one of their very own inventions (the digital camera) would lead to the demise of the photographic film market of which Kodak was a massive stakeholder (irony eh?) :lol:

 

[Mercutio]

I still have at least one Travan drive that I got in 1994 and a DC2120 that is even older than that. Now I'm kind of curious to see if I can recover any of my old homework from those tapes.

 

[blakerwry]

@Work (ISP/Hosting provider) we used a lot of tape in our backups and with the increased capacity of SATA drives we've since moved to online backup instead of tapes.

I will say that dealing with older tape drives was a PITA. The drives would constantly have one problem or another. However, the more open Ultrium standard drives seem to have fixed most of my qualms with Tape. I think all the drives now are based on Ultrium.

The decision to move to disk was easy for us, since we don't need long term (greater than 1 year) archives. Disk also makes it much faster to perform recovery or comparison of individual files (a tape often requires reading the entire tape to pull one file)

My personal solution for long term archival involves duplication and diversification. I use a WHS server to backup data online to disk, but also burn data to optical disc every year or two. Any video footage is further stored as an authored DVD "master", and of course any duplicates that are distributed to family/friends.

 

[Howell]

Tape media is very stable, not as sensitive to shock, and relatively inexpensive.
LTO drives are relatively expensive and backward compatible from the large sizes to small.

Tape really is the way to go for long term storage; paying attention to proper storage conditions and environmantal safety. Maybe a safety deposit box.
Consider a combination of tape for long term storage with new video making a pit stop on spinning media. You can mitigate the costs of the drive by buying used and reselling. Maybe you buy and sell a drive once a year if that cost is hard to swallow. It would also help you stay on top of the availability of drives.
Additionally, once you have data on media there are bound to be transfer/ media conversion services available.

In the end it really depends on how much the video is worth to you.