Hardware

5011 readers

1 users here now

This is a community dedicated to the hardware aspect of technology, from PC parts, to gadgets, to servers, to industrial control equipment, to semiconductors.

Rules:

Posts must be relevant to electronic hardware
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml

Best choice for long term external storage? (lemmy.pt)

submitted 1 year ago by silas@lemmy.pt to c/hardware@lemmy.ml

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking for a trustful method for offline (external) storage. I used to save stuff in 4 GB DVDs because they are cheap, although have very small storage limit for nowadays standards.

If I go for external HDDs, I'll probably have to buy a NAS or something, so I'm considering go for DVDs again. Are they considered reasonably trustful?

Any suggestions, considering I'm look for a not very expensive solution?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ono@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Magnetic media are still the best for offline backup. A good tape drive, or hard drives if tape is not your cup of tea. If you don't want a NAS, you can get a hot-swap SATA drive bay that allows plugging one drive into your computer at a time.

Recordable optical discs are a bit of a gamble for long term storage. Sometimes they last for ages, and sometimes they don't. There are some made for "archival" purposes, but those are generally expensive and as far as I know not exactly well proven. Another drawback is that you need a lot of discs, all of which will eventually become plastic waste.

Don't use flash drives for offline backup. Their charge decays when left unpowered, and your data with it.

Whatever medium you choose, be sure to make more than one copy, in case one of them fails.