I work in a niche inside a niche. I deal with terabytes of storage, massive servers, a variety of storage tech, and I’ve been in interested in computers in general for… Around 40 years. (Yeah, I’m old.)

I have my own single person company and have worked in 40+ US states, done assignments in the UK, Norway.

AMA.

  • BCsvenEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    In your opinion what would be the best archival format for storing photos and videos of the family. Without relying on a ZFS server running for 20 plus years, but a “hard” copy like Blueray M etc

      • BCsvenEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        So no suggestions? dealing with data yourself you must have your own best storage go to? no?

        • TemporaryBoyfriendOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Honestly, I’m “storage agnostic” – in my office I have Hard drives, SSDs, NAS, servers with various types of RAID, Linux boxes with disks in LVM, magneto optical platters, and various tapes.

          It’s less about the media and more about the process. As I described elsewhere, I have a large NAS, an onsite copy, and an offsite copy on tapes. It’s the process of keeping offsite copies, regularly updating them, and verifying the copies that protects me, not some sticker on a box that says “100 YEAR STORAGE LIFE” from a company that might not exist next month.

          • BCsvenEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, just curious. i have heard tape is a decent option or Archival DVD. Running a server and backups what I do now, but it is not really a way to pass on family data like you could with a photo album. Especially when they are less tech savvy family.

            • TemporaryBoyfriendOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Every media is subject to failure. It’s the process that protects.

              If you’re keeping something for your family, consider putting it online on a sharable cloud storage system, or using software that distributes the data to everyone’s computer (BitTorrent / Resilio Sync / DropBox, etc.)

              If you want something physical, I’d get a ‘tough’ or ‘high endurance’ USB stick or SD card, and keep updating it quarterly. Flash doesn’t have a great reputation for longevity/durability, so I’d wipe the USB stick clean with zeros then re-write everything with each update.