Storage Solutions Where to store memorable data?

I doubt the OP is a celebrity to worry about data privacy :p Have there been any cases of data going missing on cloud storage? As @avi says, cloud storage operators do all the work figuring out data redundancy.

booo said:
if data is so very important.. just invest some money and buy some 128 G sd cards
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SD cards use similar NAND flash as on SSDs. However considering they cram so much data in such a small space, the quality of such NAND will be far inferior, not to mention they could be using TLC. Data retention was already an issue on inferior NAND like on the 840 Evo. I suspect SD cards might have the same problem.
 
Lots of discussions and suggestions and I have zeroed down to go for an extra external backup drive.
As far privacy is concerned, yes my data is very private and whose data isnt? Its me and my families memories and occasions captured so its obvious to be private and confidential. :cigar:
 
Crazy_Eddy said:
SD cards use similar NAND flash as on SSDs. However considering they cram so much data in such a small space, the quality of such NAND will be far inferior, not to mention they could be using TLC. Data retention was already an issue on inferior NAND like on the 840 Evo. I suspect SD cards might have the same problem.
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Had a microsd give up with just a year of use. They are crap and only for temp storage.
 
I have a 32gig micro sd from sandisk i backed up my Pics to the card and didnt use it for almost three years and today i just checked the data everything is fine no data loss i dont know how your card gave up in an year
 
Cards are uncertain no matter what brand and class. Even a local card can last for a decade and or even a hi brand card can konk off in no time.

Some people who store big movies/videos on their backup cards and forget actually regret later as their video files get corrupt or it lags and slutters while playing after a long long time.

I still have 5-7 year old micro sd cards (1gb-8gb)and they still work just prefect. I just insert them into digicam once a year or transfer some random data to it using card reader.
 
superman01 said:
I have a 32gig micro sd from sandisk i backed up my Pics to the card and didnt use it for almost three years and today i just checked the data everything is fine no data loss i dont know how your card gave up in an year
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Because he 'used' his card, whereas you, just copied data once and never used it
 
My suggestion would be - invest in 3 of those 5TB drives Seagate is selling for $120 and put them on a raid mirror mode. The odds of all three failing at the same time is next to 0.
This will take care of both your 'expanding storage' needs whilst providing you fairly fail proof backup.
 
JMP said:
My suggestion would be - invest in 3 of those 5TB drives Seagate is selling for $120 and put them on a raid mirror mode. The odds of all three failing at the same time is next to 0.
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But two failing at the same time will take out everything. RAID is not backup its about availability. Offline storage is necessary and has to be done regularly.

Data security is a job in itself. It does not come for cheap and requires maintenance.
 
blr_p said:
But two failing at the same time will take out everything. RAID is not backup its about availability. Offline storage is necessary and has to be done regularly.

Data security is a job in itself. It does not come for cheap and requires maintenance.
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I was talking about having the same data mirrored on 3 drives, not alternate striping. And these are external drives, so it is OFFLINE
This level of backup is good enough for OP's purpose, the odds of all 3 drives failing at the same time is miniscual.
Also, these are mechanical drives, there is a good chance they will show signs of failing before they actually fail.
 
Yes, SSDs can and do go bad. Each SSD is rated for a particular amount of read/write.
But the newer SSDs have greatly improved reliability - some good ones should last 5-10 years at least.
 
JMP said:
I was talking about having the same data mirrored on 3 drives, not alternate striping. And these are external drives, so it is OFFLINE
This level of backup is good enough for OP's purpose, the odds of all 3 drives failing at the same time is miniscual.
Also, these are mechanical drives, there is a good chance they will show signs of failing before they actually fail.
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It was not clear in your post whether you meant internal HDD or external.

external drives is a bunch of drives (BOD) there is no raid.
 
the most sensible option for non mission critical home data is multiple USB hard disks. If you are more paranoid, buy of different make like seagate and WD. Both hard disk going bad at the same time is very low. If you still want to take it up a notch, back them up to DVD so now you have 3 devices from which you can recover data. Anything more and you would just end up spending more than what your data deserves
 
^The most important Disaster recovery funda is that you dont keep data and backup at the same location.
 
You must have at least a 2-tep strategy (Recommended is 3-step if your budget allows).

I will discuss the 3-step first.
  1. Have the data on a local disk (your PC disk doesn't count - that's the 0th step and most vulnerable and is to be disregarded) - it can be an external hard disk (which is not in constant use) or it can be a home NAS set-up. Whatever floats your boat.
  2. Pay for an online backup service (I pay for CrashPlan.com, came at ~ Rs 5000 for 4 years - I am backing up ~600GB there; there are other services - BackBlaze etc).
  3. Pay for an online archiving service - kinda backup and forget - costs really really less. (I've a Amazon Glacier setup for that and I backup only most important photos and videos that are like ~40GB).
2-step: you can choose either of 2 or 3 from above steps. 3rd will be a lot cheaper but it is assumed that you'll need data really really rarely otherwise the cost of retrieval will run high.

Dropbox and Google Drive are not backup solutions, please remember that.

PS. Another feature of CrashPlan, that very few people know and make use of, is that you can use it to backup to a friend or family member's PC or disk for free, over the internet, if they too have the free CrashPlan app installed. And your data will be encrypted there all the time - so no worry of privacy. You just have to find a trustworthy friend who will tell you in case he is removing the data or have lost it. You can offer to do the same to him. So if you do this you can have a 3-step or 4-step backup strategy w/o any extra cost or headache. My friend and I have set 200GB aside for each other on our disk and we have our gentlemen's agreement over this that any change (un)intentional will be notified ASAP.
 
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