Comment on What do people use for a shelf-stable backup
Dave@lemmy.nz 2 months agoThe printed photos are only there as an extra layer of redundancy in case everything else fails. It’s ok if they get discoloured a bit, it never put me off going through my grandparents’ suitcases of photos. Ideally the digital files survive, if not then at least there is something rather than nothing.
Is SSD really necessary? Everything I search up says SSDs have worse retention than HDD in cold storage. A couple TB of HDD is pretty cheap these days, and seems like a better cold storage option.
You can’t exactly make it fool-proof. Outside people will never know what you did to create your backup and what to do to access it. Who knows if the drives file system or file types are still readable after 20 years? Who knows if SATA and USB connectors are still around after that time?
Yes, so now I’m thinking a rotation cycle. About every 5 years replace the drives with new ones, copy over all data. If newer technology exists then I can move to that newer technology. This way I’m keeping it up to date as long as I can.
For example it is very likely that SATA will disappear within the next 10-15 years as hdds are becoming more and more an enterprise thing and consumers are switching to M.2 ssds.
Does this matter if I have a SATA->USB cable stored with it? Other than if USB A standards change or get abandoned for USB C, but that should be covered by the review every 5 years.
Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
SSDs are by design less susceptible by design. No moving parts and able to work in much harsher conditions than hdds will ever be able to. The standard set by JEDEC requires every consumer ssd to have a 1 year data retention while powered off at 30 °C (I think). That’s the minimum it has to archieve but usually they are better than that. Do not buy the cheapest thumb drives because they contain the all the crap that wasn’t good enough to make ssds from it.
Btw you need to fire hdds up regularly too or the motor gets stuck. I think every 3-6 months was the recommendation.
Don’t make it flat every 5 years. Let a software monitor the SMART values of the drives and send notifications if the values indicate an increased change of a dying disc/ssd.
Do not buy 2.5" drives. This class will die out soon™. There were no new hdds introduced in years and ssds are often replaced by M.2 ones because of the faster connection.
Dave@lemmy.nz 2 months ago
You are the first person who has recommended SSD for cold storage. Everyone else (including what I’ve googled) says HDD for cold storage, just spin up every year or two and they will be fine. Can you point me at further reading?
Don’t worry, I’ll SMART check the drives each year as I update as required.
As for types of drives dying out soon, I can reassess the situation every 5 years when I do drive replacement. I would be confident 2.5" drives will still be readable in 5 years.
GameGod@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Do not use an SSD for cold storage - it will fail. SSDs need to be plugged in every once to refresh the charge in their NAND, otherwise they’ll lose the data.
This is not a theoretical thing - I’ve had a good Samsung 850 Pro drive fail while being off for 2 years.