Archiving to external hard disks.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » January 14th, 2009, 17:45

So as it stands now, everything I download I throw on my external till I feel like having a dvd burn session or the season is over, ect. Now that you can get 1TB externals for cheap, well cheaper, I'm thinking of dropping the put everything on dvd and just store externals.

I googled a few things and really could not find a decent answer if it was a good idea or not. I'm not really sure how time would affect a hd just sitting around, would it start to unmagnetize? Hmmm, in ten years could I still use eSATA, usb, or firewire? It would be nice to get rid of the stacks of spindles I have.

So just thought I'd throw it out there and see what you all think about it. Who knows, maybe I should just wait till blu-ray burners drop, or ssd drives. How does a block of memory hold up in a closet for 10 years hehe.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 14th, 2009, 18:51

Blu-ray burners are about 100 quid, I've had one for about a year and a half, the problem is the media is ridiculously expensive per gig.

I store video stuff on USB-connected hard drives plugged into a PC running Windows Media sharing and watch it all on the TV downstairs with the PS3 or 360 and it's plenty fast enough for HD viewing. If USB ever became obsolete, I'd just buy new drives and copy the data over. Does need a bit of conversion, as you can't watch files in say, a raw DVD format.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 14th, 2009, 19:09

Problem you've got is none of your options are really archive happy.

DVDs rot in UV light, so not great, HDDs need spinning up every so often to remain functional.

What I'd do would be buy a nice big USB drive, then replace it once something twice the size appears, repeat forever, not really cost effective in the grand scheme of things, but pretty futureproof.

of course, if the stuff you're saving is that important, I'd also burn dvds, usb sticks and any other storage media i had to hand.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » January 14th, 2009, 20:09

It's not that that important, I'm just a pack rat I guess. I have a habit of wanting to watch something I swept 3 years ago then digging through 100s of disks looking for the right one heh.

Post by **Joose** » January 14th, 2009, 21:30

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:What I'd do would be buy a nice big USB drive, then replace it once something twice the size appears, repeat forever, not really cost effective in the grand scheme of things, but pretty futureproof

This is what I do. I'm also a bit of a pack rat, so ive just kept adding HD's when I run out of space.

I have a tendency to download every episode ever of a program, and I can never bring myself to delete them, which explains why I'm now getting into multiple terabytes of HD space and still I don't have enough.

Makes streaming stuff to the 360 easy though. All I have to do is have the computer on, and everything is available across the network, minimal fucking about.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 14th, 2009, 21:54

Joose wrote:This is what I do. I'm also a bit of a pack rat, so ive just kept adding HD's when I run out of space.

I have a tendency to download every episode ever of a program, and I can never bring myself to delete them, which explains why I'm now getting into multiple terabytes of HD space and still I don't have enough.

I'm just happy 2tb drives are on the horizon, 5 of them should give me enough storage for another year or so.

Fred Woogle · Post by **Fred Woogle** » January 14th, 2009, 23:55

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:I'm just happy 2tb drives are on the horizon, 5 of them should give me enough storage for another year or so.

Your doing it wrong

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 14th, 2009, 23:59

Meh, it's all I can really afford

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » January 15th, 2009, 3:56

Joose wrote:
I have a tendency to download every episode ever of a program, and I can never bring myself to delete them, which explains why I'm now getting into multiple terabytes of HD space and still I don't have enough.

Me too, and I watch alot of anime, I wonder how many shows I have that have over 200 episodes heh. I have a few hundred cds from before I got the dvd burner, now I have a few hundred dvds too. I'm thinking HDDs are my way forward.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 15th, 2009, 11:16

I'm looking at getting some kind of external enclosure, either with RAID5 capability, or attached via a RAID controller, for SATA disks.

That way I have a lump of storage, and can replace (or lose) disks one at a time without losing the intergrity of the array. The downside is that the array is only [size of smallest disk]([number of disks]-1) so only increases in size when all disks are upgraded, but there may be more flexible RAID levels that could be used.

Haven't found much so far - there's an eSATA RAID controller card with four ports but the non-stupid-price enclosures only have a standard SATA port as their output.

cheeseandham · Post by **cheeseandham** » January 15th, 2009, 21:10

It's a problem.
Regarding Bluray, I've always found that first generation media is terrible. The first CD's and DVD's I burnt rarely lasted a couple of years.
I think drives are the best as a backup solution as they are so cheap per Gb, but it requires management in the form of checking the drives still work periodically (before you need them)
USB will still be around in 10 years I reckon as USB 1.0 came along over 10 years ago and USB 3.0 is on it's way. They are all downward compatible. It'll be fun to see some message complaining about the speed, "Your USB 3.0 legacy device is plugged into a USB 5.0 port"

I don't have the time to be a bit whore now, and simply archive with the "delete" key. It's really fast. Photos I periodically transfer to a RAID5 NAS at work via VPN or USB drive.

Lastly, MozyHome offers "Unlimited" backup for $5 a month (although it won't backup network drives) it'll be fun to stretch the unlimited definition to breaking point. I don't fancy downloading 2Tb over ADSL though if/when it's needed.

cheeseandham · Post by **cheeseandham** » January 15th, 2009, 21:20

Interestingly enough, I was looking at http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html this today.

"A clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk I/O. Identical files across multiple backups of the same or different PCs are stored only once resulting in substantial savings in disk storage and disk I/O"

Entertain this idea if you will.

Get 5-10 people together.
Pool the money for:-

* 6-10Tb server running RAID5
* installation of an ADSL2+ line (hopefully with Annex M rather than Annex A) - or run on a hosted line but that could cost more.

Said 5-10 people then backup their media to the server.
Assuming that said people have some overlapping of tastes in film and music then the backup of these files should be (i) fast (no bandwidth) (ii) take no storage as it's aggregated.

Just a flight of fancy...

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » January 15th, 2009, 21:53

cheeseandham wrote:Assuming that said people have some overlapping of tastes in film and music then the backup of these files should be (i) fast (no bandwidth) (ii) take no storage as it's aggregated.

If Berk takes part nobody will have to upload anything at all.

How does it determine whether files are the same? As widespread as copying is, the chances of people have the exact same copy of any song is quite slim, especially when you get people who like to correct tags and other meta data. I have a feeling the saved bandwidth would be much smaller than suggested.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 15th, 2009, 21:57

Stoat wrote:If Berk takes part nobody will have to upload anything at all.

How does it determine whether files are the same? As widespread as copying is, the chances of people have the exact same copy of any song is quite slim, especially when you get people who like to correct tags and other meta data. I have a feeling the saved bandwidth would be much smaller than suggested.

all of that.

Same if ty gets involved, I think he has 5tb of music.

cheeseandham · Post by **cheeseandham** » January 15th, 2009, 23:03

Stoat wrote:How does it determine whether files are the same?

I imagine it'll be some form of hash.

Stoat wrote:As widespread as copying is, the chances of people have the exact same copy of any song is quite slim, especially when you get people who like to correct tags and other meta data.

With songs you're almost certainly right, about that and I hadn't thought of tags. I was thinking more along the lines of video media (TV series/films) where the most people do is change the filename (which wouldn't matter with hashing)

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Same if ty gets involved, I think he has 5tb of music.

What? I'd banked on people have 2-500Gb max of music! Isn't that more music timewise end to end than most of us have actually lived?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 15th, 2009, 23:11

cheeseandham wrote:What? I'd banked on people have 2-500Gb max of music! Isn't that more music timewise end to end than most of us have actually lived?

Bit of an exaggeration there to be honest, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's closer to 1TB than 500GB

Fred Woogle · Post by **Fred Woogle** » January 15th, 2009, 23:27

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
Bit of an exaggeration there to be honest, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's closer to 1TB than 500GB

I've got about 950gb or so. 316gb of that is properly organised and tagged, and I do a bit more everyday. Only thing missing is album art for some stuff.