Archiving Data Permanently

[Mike McCarty]

Reuben D. Budiardja wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm wondering if people could give me suggestion about the most economical 
> ways to archive data more permanently. Often time we want to clean up some 
> harddrive from machines in our offices, and we want to archive the data first 
> before we wipe it out, just in case we need them in the future, though 
> unlikely. What's the best way to do this in cases like that ? I am talking 
> about 20GB - 75GB size data maybe. 
> 
> What I've done so far is just tar-bzip2-ed all the files and directory to a 
> single .tar.bz2 file. Then I am planning to use 'split' to split it and then 
> write them to like CD or DVD, but this could easily takes many discs. Are 
> there any other more economical ways ?  
> 
> Thank you for any help.
> 
> RDB
> 

Evenutally, a tape system will probably be more economical.

The jury is still out on data longevity of CDs and DVDs. Tape
is known to have 20+year longevity. OTOH, obtaining a drive
capable of reading a 20 year old tape may be problematical.
I would definitely not use re-writable CDs or DVDs. These have
been known not to be readable on the hardware that wrote
them after a year or two.

One thing to consider with regards to using compressed
images... they are intolerant of defects in the storage medium.
If you just use tar, then if there is an error in the storage
medium, you lose a file or two. If you have an error in
a compressed archive, you may lose extensive amounts of data.

When talking about *archiving* files, this may or may not
be acceptable.

I would eye archiving files with compressed format with a very
jaundiced eye.

In regards to using (as one suggested) an external disc drive...

Whatever storage medium you use should be kept off-site. If you
need an on-site copy, it should be considered just that... a copy.
If you have a disaster at your site, like a fire e.g, you would
likely lose everything there. If your data are really important,
store the archives off-site. Disc drives are not particularly
robust to being moved off-site and moved back.

OTOH, if you have network capabilities to other computers located
at a distance, then archival over the network, using e.g. rsync,
is a very viable solution. It does not, however solve the problem
of backup of the remote system.

Mike
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