Archiving HD Video: What's the best External HD for long time storage?

[Chris Dukes]

I'm archiving a non-profit's video projects and the Seagate Expansion drive they bought turned out to be unreliable. The drive will mostly be used for storing and transferring files but they may need to edit from it.

It needs to be 1-2TB and preferably under $200. But, pretend price is no object because it's more important that the media can be stored indefinitely on a reliable hard drive.

Chris

PS - We'll probably buy two if that matters any.

[mshilly]

No hard drive will store data reliably "indefinitely". I would suggest anything you do be stored reduntantly, whether it be to HD or BD/DVD or flash. All media can fail at any given time for various reasons. I store my entire library on a server w/4x750GB (2 Seagate, 2, WD) and back the critical data to a few USB drives, and even make DVDs for absolutely unreplaceable stuff (tax returns, family photos/videos, etc).

When I replace my 4x750GB drives I will be getting Hitachi not just for the reliability, but for the low power/heat and low noise characteristics.
That's just my $.02 and preference.

[edDV]

#1 Redundancy on different media.

#2 Redundancy at different locations (e.g. theft, fire, flood, earthquake risk).

[ranchhand]

they may need to edit from it.

If they really mean safe storage, burn to DVDs and put in a bank Safe Deposit box, and DO NOT edit from it. Use for emergency restoration only. Use copies to source edit. Extreme? Sure, but if the data is truly irreplaceable....

[Moontrash]

use blank dvd/BR media

store it in a safe place

[creakndale]

I've been using these 2TB external drives for archiving with good results.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136471

After archiving, I put them in Ziplock ESD bags and store them in a safe.

creakndale

[Nelson37]

Get your own external chassis, ~ $30.00, and fill it with a Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. $89.00 for 1TB. For long-term storage, wait a year or two and then buy more. Repeat as necessary.

[magillagorilla]

I find writable optical media to be an unreliable archiving format. I have 600+ DVD and CD archive discs, some of which are 13 years old. Some of the older discs won't read anymore. The quality of the blank definitely matters. Most of my failed discs were odd brands and you can see uneven dye spread on the recording surface which indicates poor manufacturing. Writable optical media is based on light sensitive materials. Some of my old cheep discs hove shown a darkening of the dye even when stored out of the light and in a temp controlled environment. This leads me to believe the discs were made with unstable chemicals. However, optical media is cheap, impervious to magnetic destruction and mechanical failure and fairly resistant to water (if your basement floods or something).


Magnetic tape, while I have 30-40 year old tapes that still work, are prone to oxidizing and are extremely sensitive to temp and humidity. Plus you need to maintain hardware for playback/retrieval.


HDDs are a good solution but are prone to mechanical failure. The other downside to HDDs is the obsolescence factor. For instance, I recently moved all my data off of my older PATA drives to newer SATA drives. I see the end of the road for PATA. On the upshot, HDDs are cheap. I've been buying 1TB Samsung Spinpoints for $50.

Solid state, non-volatile RAM based storage (memory cards and such) are just way too unreliable.

I don't think there is a 1 shot solution. Archiving data is a big concern with a lot of money behind finding a solution. Faster internet connections and inexpensive internet storage hold promise but still need some maturity (I can't imagine trying to archive several TB across a DSL line). I'm sure one will come along soon. Until then, a little bit of knowhow will help skip your data along in to the future.

Always make multiple backups. Redundancy is key but it does not cover everything. For instance, you may have a mirror drive (RAID 1) in your system. While this is a good idea it does not help you when your computer is hit by lightening or a virus and all of your drives are lost. You may have a copy of your data on an external DVD/HDD, but again, if your house floods or burns down, your data is gone. Keep an offsite copy. If you maintain external HDD copies, don't be that guy who leaves his USB drive plugged in and on all the time. Back it up and then stick it on the shelf.

I keep 3 HDD copies of everything. 1 live HDD in my system, 1 HDD on the shelf, and 1 HDD offsite for every data set. I don't fuss with optical media anymore (once your archive exceeds 1TB, optical media becomes cumbersome). I try to refresh (replace) my drives frequently. This may sound expensive but it really isn't. I buy a new HDD every 12-18 months for $50-90 (Arguably similar cost to DVD or BD blanks). The good thing is that the TB/$ ratio is increasing in our favor. So as my storage needs increase so does the HDD capacity. Last year I was maintaining 7 HDDs but now I'm back down to 4 thanks to capacity increase.

[edDV]

...

I keep 3 HDD copies of everything. 1 live HDD in my system, 1 HDD on the shelf, and 1 HDD offsite for every data set. I don't fuss with optical media anymore (once your archive exceeds 1TB, optical media becomes cumbersome). I try to refresh (replace) my drives frequently. This may sound expensive but it really isn't. I buy a new HDD every 12-18 months for $50-90 (Arguably similar cost to DVD or BD blanks). The good thing is that the TB/$ ratio is increasing in our favor. So as my storage needs increase so does the HDD capacity. Last year I was maintaining 7 HDDs but now I'm back down to 4 thanks to capacity increase.

Sony has warned of another HDD risk based on their experience with broadcast archives. HDD spindle and head dry lubricants degrade over time from non-use so if one puts a hard drive on a shelf for several years without spin up, the disk may fail on access forcing an expensive "clean room" disassemble recovery. For this reason, they recommend a cycle of copying archive data every few years.

[TBoneit]

There are external drives that have raid built in which will help protect against one drive dieing.

[magillagorilla]

edDV, good info. In 10 years I've had 2 HDDs mechanically fail on me. At $50/TB I consider HDDs expendable. The importent part is having multiple copies and rotating in new drives. I seem to have no problem selling old drives to people at work for $10-20.

[magillagorilla]

There are external drives that have raid built in which will help protect against one drive dieing.

RAID requires multiple drives. I have seen external RAID drives, they have 2 or more drives in the case. Still, RAID does not save your data when the drives get hit by lightening or a virus. Keep in mind that RAID 0 offers no redundancy. Common RAID 1 and 5 offer data redundancy. For most consumer applications RAID is not the best rout. RAID is suited for enterprise servers to provide failover redundancy for uninterrupted service. Some power users leverage RAID 0 which teams 2 drives together to act as one for performance gains, but this offers no data integrity.

In my opinion saving your data to 3 seperate drives is your best bet. They don't need to have any fancy RAID setup. Now if you are building a storage area network server that's a different conversation.