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Topic: LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy? (Read 80777 times) previous topic - next topic
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LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

We know that most media will degrade over time. And bit-errors may even happen with perfect media (i.e. due to some noise in cable, etc.)

So what hope do we have if we want to create a truly long-term audio archive?

I'd like to hear your inputs, re: media, file format, refresh strategy, etc.

e.g. "Store FLAC in Phase-Change Disc protected by QuickPAR2, refresh every year" and things like that.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #1 –
The standard stuff, multiple physical backups (either burned discs and/or solutions like RAID).

I've heard of people including par2 blocks on DVDs that they burn in addition to recovery software.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #2 –
RAID 5 at home, and if you are really paranoid, a live backup at another location.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #3 –
Redundant tape backups stored with IronMountain

Or just a simple Raid-5 setup.  Whichever.  The first will protect your music collection from nukes, though ;*)

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #4 –
Quote
' date='Aug 21 2006, 16:08' post='422978']
Redundant tape backups stored with IronMountain

Or just a simple Raid-5 setup.  Whichever.  The first will protect your music collection from nukes, though ;*)


You must be kidding....   
You know, it's just music!! It's not like critical NASA data or anything.
I believe most people here exagerate on the audio backup issue.
For me, I backup to DVD and if I lose any DVD I just re-rip the original CDs. If I lose both (the CD and the backup DVD) I buy the CD again. Plain, simple and muuuuch cheaper.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #5 –
RAID5 1 TB set w/ weekly backup to 1 TB NAS.

EDIT: "up" was missing.
WavPack 5.6.0 -b384hx6cmv / qaac64 2.80 -V 100

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #6 –
Quote
' date='Aug 21 2006, 21:08' post='422978']
Redundant tape backups stored with IronMountain

Or just a simple Raid-5 setup.  Whichever.  The first will protect your music collection from nukes, though ;*)


Every storage system can fail and, given enough time, will. I heard that in the server room in my university, a RAID (5?) system failed one hot summer day after both air conditioners in the room stopped working. Now we have a second RAID mirroring the first and two additional ACs if I remember correctly.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #7 –
2 x dvd/flac/par2

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: MedO on
Every storage system can fail and, given enough time, will. I heard that in the server room in my university, a RAID (5?) system failed one hot summer day after both air conditioners in the room stopped working. Now we have a second RAID mirroring the first and two additional ACs if I remember correctly.


This shows a RAID is not the same as a backup. And the new solution still doesn't have the backup in another location...

My favorite link in this context: http://www.taobackup.com/

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #9 –
I operate a digital archive, and we use two forms of backup. For general use, we back up to two DVD-R copies, one stored off site. For our most important material, we copy the material to two hard drives, then put the hard drives back in the boxes and put them on the shelf in two locations. We maintain DVD-R backups of the most important material too.

Because of the low cost of DVD-Rs, we use them most frequently, but in ten years, we will have to migrate them all to whatever the current storage format of choice is.

Hope this helps
Steve

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #10 –
I've got a few Infrant ReadyNAS units for CD and DVD image storage.

I also picked up a Disc NSM 6000 unit that I plan to upgrade to blu-ray once the drive and media prices come down.  Right now it's just 2-3TB of storage, but with a couple of blu-ray drives, it should provide 30TB or more of storage in the long run. 

-brendan

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #11 –
Two copies in two different locations.  RAID only counts as one copy (and in general its pointless for this sort of thing anyway).
 

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Two copies in two different locations.  RAID only counts as one copy (and in general its pointless for this sort of thing anyway).


Finally someone sensible. There is an unbelievable cluelessness about RAID around here.

Just delete something accidentally, or have a memory error or other hw error that corrupts your RAID, or someone stealing your gear or some disaster striking your place, and your RAID will not save you.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Triza on
Finally someone sensible. There is an unbelievable cluelessness about RAID around here.

Just delete something accidentally, or have a memory error or other hw error that corrupts your RAID, or someone stealing your gear or some disaster striking your place, and your RAID will not save you.

Yes, but this should already be common sense.

RAID does save you from a drive failure or do you think that since it's all in one location you might as well not use RAID at all?

EDIT: Do you like the word cluelessness? It's pretty insulting.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: greynol on
RAID does save you from a drive failure or do you think that since it's all in one location you might as well not use RAID at all?


I feel that RAID is only useful to keep your storage system online while you're working to replace a failing drive (and, if we include RAID-0, also to speed up systems, but let's not go there ). The security offered by an off-line, off-site copy is so much greater, that RAID would only add a marginal amount of extra safety if you already have that. So for this application, where keeping your storage system available is not really a requirement, I think RAID is a waste of money and time.

My view on anything other than hdd storage for music archiving: a waste of time. I guess it's true that DVD-R storage is about 2-3x cheaper than hdd storage, but it takes more space, more handling time... sitting waiting for a burning session, getting the parity stuff on there, loading the discs regularly one-by-one to check their integrity... in the end, you could have earned the money you saved in the time you've wasted.

I have this idea for cheap off-site (but not off-line) storage, and I wonder what you guys think:
Find a good friend with a pc that has a spare s-ata socket or two, buy some backup disks, and get him to host those (and, in return host his backup disks). Get the pc's together for a big syncing operation once. After that, you only need some rsync-like system to keep the two systems synced.

This way you get off-site backup at the price of the disks - no expensive second pc (or cheap unreliable pc) needed and no extra internet connection either. And if you and your friend can't trust eachother with the data, you can use an encrypted backup (e.g. Duplicity may be useful). How's that?

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #15 –
Drives can up and die without warning in which case RAID (not -0 ) can save you.

Why bother a friend to host your data on-line?  You're probably better off keeping a separate drive uplugged off-site.  It's not like it's hard to connect it up ot a machine when you need access.

I hear you about DVD backups.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: greynol on
Drives can up and die without warning in which case RAID (not -0 ) can save you.

Yes, if you're doing more than just archiving music (but who does anything else around here ) you may have important data that changed between backups. That's safer on a RAID.

Quote
Why bother a friend to host your data on-line?  You're probably better off keeping a separate drive uplugged off-site.  It's not like it's hard to connect it up ot a machine when you need access.


It isn't hard, but in practice, manual backup schemes will fail... that's why despite the risks of on-line backups, I prefer those over off-line backups. You can minimize the risks by making the backup server only accept uploading and not deletion of data.

Reality fact: I still use offline firewire disks lying around... backup theory is always ahead of practice here

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #17 –
Ah, a lively debate about backup, I see...

In this case, only RAID with disc-mirroring will (maybe) save you, and it will only save you if just one of the drives corrupts.  Anything else like theft or natural disaster and you're still f***ed unless you kept a backup off-site.

My choice is CDs that are ripped and then put away, a HDD to keep it all on, and if I'm feelin' really paranoid, another USB HDD or DVDs kept off-site for an additional backup.  I'm not feelin' too paranoid right now, though.  I figure if the drive fails, I'll re-rip.  It'll be a pain, but I'll deal.  I might pick up a HDD + USB enclosure when I'm not broke.
It's due for a good DEGAUSSIN'

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #18 –
I have a 300 GB disk in my pc only for backups, which I sync. manually simply with total commanders sync function. The most important music is also on my notebook, but this has only a 100 GB disk.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: bhoar on
I've got a few Infrant ReadyNAS units for CD and DVD image storage.

I also picked up a Disc NSM 6000 unit that I plan to upgrade to blu-ray once the drive and media prices come down.  Right now it's just 2-3TB of storage, but with a couple of blu-ray drives, it should provide 30TB or more of storage in the long run. 

-brendan
ReadyNAS (NV) user here too  !
WavPack 5.6.0 -b384hx6cmv / qaac64 2.80 -V 100

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: Triza on
Finally someone sensible. There is an unbelievable cluelessness about RAID around here.

Just delete something accidentally, or have a memory error or other hw error that corrupts your RAID, or someone stealing your gear or some disaster striking your place, and your RAID will not save you.

Yes, but this should already be common sense.

RAID does save you from a drive failure or do you think that since it's all in one location you might as well not use RAID at all?

EDIT: Do you like the word cluelessness? It's pretty insulting.


Well the post is about archiving. RAID is not for archiving. I tried to show you that drive failure is a tiny portion of all the worries one has to deal with. Besides RAID for data that constantly changes. Music archive is not something that constantly changes. Lastly even in the worst case individuals do not need more than RAID-1, which I have for the daily stuff. Not for music though.

Insulting or not these are hard facts. It would be nicer if these internet matra-s would not pop up all the time and we were a bit more thoughtful when one asks for advice. Especially when encouraging wasting serious money on RAID-5, which probably makes only sense in corporate systems.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Triza on
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on

Two copies in two different locations.  RAID only counts as one copy (and in general its pointless for this sort of thing anyway).


Finally someone sensible. There is an unbelievable cluelessness about RAID around here.

Just delete something accidentally, or have a memory error or other hw error that corrupts your RAID, or someone stealing your gear or some disaster striking your place, and your RAID will not save you.

My only concern is that my HD dies. If my house gets burn, i would have more issues to worry. RAID5 gives you the piece of mind of knowing that if one of the HD fail, you still have safe copy. You just need to replace the failed device. There is nothing against human stupidity. I added that if you are really paranoid, you can have an off site backup.

PS: with "disaster recovery policies", the sky is the limit. What if your country gets a nuclear attack? Then you would have to think of moving your off site backups to other country, continent, or even better, another planet.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: Triza on
Finally someone sensible. There is an unbelievable cluelessness about RAID around here.

Just delete something accidentally, or have a memory error or other hw error that corrupts your RAID, or someone stealing your gear or some disaster striking your place, and your RAID will not save you.

Yes, but this should already be common sense.

RAID does save you from a drive failure or do you think that since it's all in one location you might as well not use RAID at all?

EDIT: Do you like the word cluelessness? It's pretty insulting.


Clueless is the correct word. Most people intersted in RAID (don't take this personally) think its equivilent to a backup.  Its not, and this is a problem.  I can see very little use for RAID in this situation.  Even given two identical disks, I would not use it.  It adds complication while providing no benefit.

If you have two disks, put one in an external enclosure (they're dirt cheap) and keep it unplugged.  If you're going to spend hours ripping and tagging, you can spend 30 seconds to plug in an external disk, and this will cut the number of disaster scenarios ten fold.  But with two disks plugged in, even something as simple as a bad driver, defective stick of memory, or overheating CPU can corrupt your entire RAID array, and theres no way to recover from it.  This is what I mean when I say its not a backup.

Quote from: greynol on
My only concern is that my HD dies. If my house gets burn, i would have more issues to worry. RAID5 gives you the piece of mind of knowing that if one of the HD fail, you still have safe copy. You just need to replace the failed device. There is nothing against human stupidity. I added that if you are really paranoid, you can have an off site backup.


The advantage of RAID is being able to tolerate a fault and keep running without rebuilding the software.  You don't need that for long term storage, you need that for crtical systems.  If you lose one disk in two, you can afford to reboot your home PC, put in a new one, and xcopy everything over.

You also should not be getting piece of mind from RAID5.  You should be getting it from a real backup.

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #23 –
I'll share a little story that happened not long ago in our corporate environment.

We have a RAID 5 array that stores some corporate data. Our IT was confident that the data was safe because of all the parity stored in the discs and stuff. They also kept some tape backups of the same data.

One beautiful morning one of the RAID drives failed. Ok. IT follows the script and calls tech support and they promptly replaced the faulty drive. Now the sign of God: while restoring the data from the array using the parity data another drive of the same array also fails. Bye bye to all the data in the RAID array.

I would say that if we had no backups on tape a lot of people would loose their jobs. Besides having a hard time explaining to senior management why all the bucks put in the RAID solution did not keep the data secure.

So repeat after me: RAID IS A HIGH AVAILABILITY SOLUTION AND NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION. ALWAYS KEEP EXTERNAL BACKUPS IN WHICHEVER MEDIA YOU LIKE.

Of course, as I already said, this is just your music. You won't die if you loose it (unless you are a naughty p2p guy/girl that do not own the original CDs).

LONG-TERM audio archiving strategy?

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Quote from: greynol on
EDIT: Do you like the word cluelessness? It's pretty insulting.
Clueless is the correct word. Most people intersted in RAID (don't take this personally) think its equivilent to a backup.
I didn't.

Quote from: Mike Giacomelli on
Quote from: greynol on
My only concern is that my HD dies. If my house gets burn, i would have more issues to worry. RAID5 gives you the piece of mind of knowing that if one of the HD fail, you still have safe copy. You just need to replace the failed device. There is nothing against human stupidity. I added that if you are really paranoid, you can have an off site backup.
I did not say this, kwanbis did.