this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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Hello,

my total dataset is now 2TB and it grows about 1TB/year.

Is this a sound backup strategy:

- buy 3 hdds today, rotate backups between them, so I have at least 2 previous versions of a file

- replace them every X years, say every 3 years, so the chances of catastrophically losing all data are very very low

I have been looking at tapes also but the drives are quite expensive, and my dataset size probably does not justify them - or does it?

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[–] smstnitc@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

Hard drives are fine. But replacing them every few years for fear of failure is a waste of money. Drives can last over 10 years, or 1 day. Just have more than one copy and you'll be fine when one does fail.