11bravo

Agreed, why I have 2 enterprise Ultrastars, each in its own Rosewill RX-358 external case with fan.

My caution with media is formats change - 8" floppies, 5.25" floppies, 3.5" floppies (not so floppy), zip drives, I even had a magnetic tape drive that fit into a 5.25 slot on a windows computer. I spent a decade with Kennedy tape drives at work... And then, all media requires readers, software drivers change, older models no longer supported... Storage is a headache for librarians and archivists... Yes, the cloud is there, but which cloud...

goldstar46 Loc: Tampa, Fl

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Agreed Bravo

I got away from "RAID" a long time ago.... Simple 1 to 1 exact copies... X's 3 at least and the cloud


Cheers
GeoVz
####

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Funny, but going through my collection of "old" drives, I came across a Seagate 2TB. When I ran it, it was the only one of more than a dozen that got a yellow "Caution" from CrystalDiskinfo. It has some sort of count issues. I don't know what computer came with the Seagate inside, but I've never bought one.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

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TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

An excellent (and previously unheard of) shot of a RAID 5 machine fighting off a drive failure

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

Btw, rather than all those drives plugged into hubs via USB, why not use either mirrored enterprise class internals or a RAID, and rather than your DR in a “fireproof” safe (none are good for more than 30 minutes or so in a real inferno) and hoping it will start after being powered down, why don’t you use an off-site DR copy in the cloud like best enterprise practice?

The safe is rated for protection of 1,700 degrees for one hour.
Plus my drives are in a protective sleeve rated to protect whats inside them to 2,000 degrees.
So safety from a fire is there.
And it sits on 2, 8" high concrete blocks
even though it is rated to keep water out while sitting in 8" of water for 24 hours.

Why no web backup?
Haven't come to trusting them yet.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

So you're relying on the "good luck" strategy?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

If you get a chance, I would like to see a link to those sleeves - never seen anything like that, and I would like to. Regarding the safe, I obviously haven’t seen yours, but my fire chief son says in a real structure fire, while the safe may survive, nothing inside does, and from the images I’ve seen from some of the Florida and California wildfires and reports from owners, nothing does. I have a fire rated safe also, but after actually having a fire destroy my woodworking shop years ago, I don’t think I’d have much confidence in a safe - even the big iron machine tools were completely destroyed and that included the steel and iron bases weighing in the hundreds of pounds.

As far as trusting the cloud (or not), I won’t take the time to repeat my pro cloud arguments for a DR (disaster recovery) copy of your data. It isn’t likely to convince you even though the majority of major US companies use the cloud (including govt. the three letter Intel agencies) and most of your critical data (SSN, credit cards, banking, medical and military records) is already there.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

Here you go.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083FDWDM1?pf_rd_r=QKWZ3XG41AX80QFQF6VY&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee

Put your drives inside and then inside the safe.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/SentrySafe-SFW082DTB-0-8-cu-ft-Fireproof-Safe-and-Waterproof-Safe-with-Dial-Combination-SFW082DTB/300953580

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I know these fireproof boxes and they are good, but not invulnerable - under high heat the edges of the lid melt shut and you saw them open afterwards. Although the box will not burn at 1700 deg for an hour, it doesn’t mean the inside temp won’t rise to a point that the disc won’t melt or wrap, and it only needs to warp a few thousands of an inch to be unreadable and that can happen at ~125 deg. I use the boxes inside my gun safe for a higher level of protection, but for papers which don’t burn below maybe 300 deg F. Secondly while those fireproof zippered bags themselves aren’t flammable, they provide very little protection from the heat against those items inside.

I think bottom line is this is about as good as home fire protection gets, but a bank safe is better and the cloud, where multiple copies of your data are stored at separate geographic locations for protection and stored on redundant systems with redundant power and networking in hardened data centers with Halon protection administered by professionals is best of all.

Mr. SONY Loc: LI, NY

'I think bottom line is this is about as good as home fire protection gets, but a bank safe is better
and the cloud, where multiple copies of your data are stored at separate geographic locations
for protection and stored on redundant systems with redundant power and networking in
hardened data centers with Halon protection administered by professionals is best of all.'

Yes and I agree with everything you say.
But I am trying to help people who usually have no experience with backup software or think RAID
is anything but a bug killer.
I give away my outgrown backup drives to anybody who needs one.
Trying to them to understand the importance of backing up is foreign to them.
Sometimes you can't even get more experienced photographers to understand that relying on a single
backup drive is crazy. Back in the day I've known some companies who only would do one backup!
And a few companies who almost close shop because their one backup was defective after hda crash.
I try to keep it as simple as possible for people looking here for some help.
There is no way to know their capabilities or desires than something very basic.

BTW I've been using these inexpensive drives like this for years and years.
After 12 hours running barely warm.

therwol Loc: USA

Magnetic hard drives are only safe to 125 to 150 degrees F. Here is an article.

https://www.macworld.com/article/3219649/should-you-keep-your-backup-data-in-a-safe.html#:~:text=Fireproof%20safes%20are%20fireproof%20with,conditions%2C%20not%20against%20all%20fires.&text=Fireproof%20safe%20also%20have%20to,as%20a%20fire%20rages%20without.

I have a large, multi-use safe (documents, guns, hard drives etc.) , and I have no idea how hot it would actually get inside during a house fire. I wouldn't rely on it to protect my external hard drives. I have my external hard drives backed up in triplicate, and I keep one copy of my pictures at my son's house. I have some in the cloud as well, but not a total backup. By the way, my important paper documents are inside of a fireproof lock box that I have inside of the safe.

k2edm Loc: FN32AD

if you are worried about fireproofing you photos I suspect that ,if becomes necessary, loss of you photos will be the least of your problems..

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Maybe so, but losing your family photo history and all your documents just makes recovery harder (and in some respects impossible), and it’s unnecessary. You can protect all of that for a few dollars per month. Just keep repeating the NASA mantra: “triple redundancy”, or for data storage: “3 copies, one off-site”, “3 copies, one off-site”...

k2edm Loc: FN32AD

bingo! much better than worring about a fireprof safe.. Ed