disaster secure hard drives

[Manolito]

I am not a computer guy just a user of computers. I see at Costco a 3 terrabite external hard drive for sale that guarantees a disaster will not harm this cube. Submersion in water (ten) for three days. 1200 degree fires etc. and it appears to be a cloud with a mirror drive.

It doesn't say if it can be used wireless but it sounds like something that would be useful I am looking for a secure way to back up documents and all the photos a family collects over several generations.

Any input from those in the know which seems to include everybody but me.

Thanks in advance we have two HP pavillion entertainment pcs on a phone supplied server with Frontier. I don't know if that information is needed.

Keep the responses in a basic level please I am not the brightest penny in the IT box.

Bill

[billofrights]

"Several generations" is kind of absurd. What were they using several generations ago? Paintings. The idea that someone 200 or 300 years from now will have the ability to read media produced today, even if it's still working, is silly.

If you're talking about a repository of stuff, how much room do you need? Best case scenario is have a copy locally, have an external drive you can keep elsewhere (one at work, one at home) and one FAR away, like 'relative on the other side of the country' far. But then, how do you keep the data synched?

Document wise, an entire family is not going to generate THAT much data that's critical to keep, from a data storage perspective. Unless you're in public office you're not going to fill a terabyte drive with 'critical' files.

Pictures are different. Is this just a dump of every single one? People now keep a LOT of stuff, simply because we can. When you had a 110 camera with 12 shots, you picked your photos more carefully than when you can fire off 50 snaps at a party. So my question is, are you archiving everyone's photos for the future? Or are you taking multiple folks who are pooling family photos and sharing it? In that case, you're ALL going to need some kind of secure/ safe data repository.

[Manolito]

I have taken all the old photos and converted them to digital hence the several generations may not be important in context to what you deal in for our family it means a lot for the travel from the dust bowl to Idaho dry farm to California.

I appreciate to you it is absurd have a nice day and thanks for the comments.

Respectfully,
Bill

[superbarnie]

"Several generations" is kind of absurd. What were they using several generations ago? Paintings. The idea that someone 200 or 300 years from now will have the ability to read media produced today, even if it's still working, is silly.

If you're talking about a repository of stuff, how much room do you need? Best case scenario is have a copy locally, have an external drive you can keep elsewhere (one at work, one at home) and one FAR away, like 'relative on the other side of the country' far. But then, how do you keep the data synched?

Document wise, an entire family is not going to generate THAT much data that's critical to keep, from a data storage perspective. Unless you're in public office you're not going to fill a terabyte drive with 'critical' files.

Pictures are different. Is this just a dump of every single one? People now keep a LOT of stuff, simply because we can. When you had a 110 camera with 12 shots, you picked your photos more carefully than when you can fire off 50 snaps at a party. So my question is, are you archiving everyone's photos for the future? Or are you taking multiple folks who are pooling family photos and sharing it? In that case, you're ALL going to need some kind of secure/ safe data repository.

For the sake of posterity.

[billofrights]

Let me clarify, because it seems my post was misinterpreted. Wanting to preserve your family history/ memories for generations is an admirable project. The idea that any electromechanical storage medium will be relevant to the point of usability is what's absurd. Every couple of generations it will have to be converted to the medium of the day. You took the first stab at that, pics to digital. Excellent.

What I was getting at, is are YOU going to be the caretaker of this data, and is it for archival storage for future generations, or will you be passing things around to others.

Maybe I'm overthinking it and should have just said "yeah that's a good solution." What I was looking for was clarification on your purpose and how often you or others would be accessing the data, not bashing the idea. My apologies if it came off that way.

[paul0660]

I (try to) make a trip to the bank and inventory the safety deposit stuff every six months. I have a 1T external drive there and bring it home, do an incremental backup, and return it. I have a couple back up drives at home too.

This is just for pics, docs, and my music library.

Bill is right, we take a lot more pics than we need now. I hope some grandkid has a LOT of time to sort them. The most important thing we can do is to label the files.

[msound]

I'll tell you the same thing I tell everyone, usually after something bad happened. Get an online backup service. It sounds like you have a lot of important pictures and need to protect them. A local backup drive will only protect form hardware failure not from fire, flood, theft, etc. A local backup is a good idea but needs to be combined with some kind of cloud storage to be fully protected.

There are any number of company that offer this service for nominal fees. This is by far the easiest way to have a fool prof backup method. Most come with software that will automatically backup your data so you don't have to think about it.

[hcbr]

Any hard drive can be damaged to any extent.

I'm not sure how much "vital" data you have to backup, but definitely agree with some, that a good way to backup for disaster is using the cloud and an online storage service.

[Manolito]

[odysseus]

Honestly, to really preserve them you may need a layered approach - and one that overtime you update anyway as you maintain your backups. Since most people for personal use are using various flavors and methods that are not enterprise based.

For one, a "cloud" based storage solution for easy online access to them, in whatever flavor or mode of security you need. These of course then live on redundant storage devices in a data center (or spread over several) somewhere else. Of course you are flying by wire over the internet, which for some people doesn't work for them - that and good services are ones with monthly service charges.

USB hard drives are fine, often people use them now as snapshot devices to wholesale copy large amounts of TB level data at a time and store them away. They are relatively cheap now too, so you can do this over several drives and even use some strategies in doing so. It is also easy to plug in, and simply update your latest snapshot via whichever tools you use. However they will fail over time. You can swap and store offsite. But don't count on this as truly archival material, but it is a useful tool.

Optical drive media, these have always been pretty reliable at longer term archiving. With Bluray data drives in the 24GB storage sizes now make larger stores easier to burn, and easily stored. This is very decent long time archival material. You can swap and store offsite.

Importantly is an offsite storage plan of some kind via cloud services or snapshots on some media you move somewhere else. As in an example of a home fire, the heat and water damage are mitigated by having these archived backups somewhere else.

[superbarnie]

I'll tell you the same thing I tell everyone, usually after something bad happened. Get an online backup service. It sounds like you have a lot of important pictures and need to protect them. A local backup drive will only protect form hardware failure not from fire, flood, theft, etc. A local backup is a good idea but needs to be combined with some kind of cloud storage to be fully protected.

There are any number of company that offer this service for nominal fees. This is by far the easiest way to have a fool prof backup method. Most come with software that will automatically backup your data so you don't have to think about it.

And what if whatever "online backup service" goes out of service? Or goes out of business?

[ldivinag]

trick is having 3 or more copies of anything your life depends on, or priceless data.

i use POGOPLUG as my own personal cloud. this is a device that you plug in USB external drives to it and then from anywhere in the internet, you have access to your files.

they cost like under $30.

this is what i use:

http://www.rakuten.com/prod/pogoplug-multimedia-sharing-device-classic-pink/219855865.html

what you do, is make a data dump of all your personal files onto an external USB drive. then setup the POGOPLUG device.

then, bring the entire setup to like your best friend, relative, etc, who is willing to house this setup in their house. for even safer setup, use a cheap UPS power strip.

that way, all your files are somewhere else. if your house burns down, broken into, etc; your data is somewhere else safe.

you also run another setup like that in your house for the secondary copy.


now, there are companies that do cloud based storage also. but POGOPLUG is just limited to the size of the external HD attached to it.

[sdkevin]

Keep the responses in a basic level please I am not the brightest penny in the IT box.

What is the weak point of a HD... there is your answer.

[Brianguy]

use online backup if you don't mind the fbi looking through your files

[Evanski9]

i can crack progoplug in 10 mins. not secure at all. would not recommend it