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Comments (73)

  • robotmay
    I debated doing this recently but ultimately spent a lot of money on an LTO-6 tape drive instead, just due to the cost efficiency over time for larger amounts of data. I justified it to myself as I needed to either expand my NAS or clear stuff off it, and the drive was the same price as buying two new HDDs to expand the NAS thanks to the obscene price inflation at the moment. As I’d likely need to further expand my NAS next year (I’m shooting a lot of photo and video) I think this works out a much more cost effective way of storing this data long term when I likely don’t need to access it much.
  • qurren
    > In case of a catastrophic fire for example, both the computer and backup drive could be destroyed.I just keep my offsite backup drives in my office drawer. There is a note on them that says they are personal backup and not to be plugged into company equipment. If you have an office this is probably the easiest solution.If a disaster wipes out my home and my office then there are bigger things to worry about than my data.
  • big85
    Are Verbatim's M-Disc Blu-Rays still really M-Disc? There was something about how they changed the recipe a few years ago, and the counter-argument was that Blu-Ray discs are non-organic anyway, which was the main feature of M-Disc DVD.
  • oasisbob
    Sealed pelican case has decent precedent. A small regional bank I was aware of used basically this exact strategy. There were couriers going between branches daily, so it was easy to cross-ship a sealed DR/backup box to a remote branch every day. It stayed in the remote vault until its return journey
  • antimora
    Does anyone use it for family photo backup for generation to pass on? I am struggling to come up with a good back up solution that last ages.
  • zitterbewegung
    Having long-term backups like this I wonder if bundling a known-working Blu-ray reader or even a combination writer is a good idea. Hypothetically a reader would be hard to come by. With a reader I would either need a adapter to make it work.
  • anon
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  • oconnore
    I'm surprised this is not more common. I have been doing this since 2016 (started with DVDs and quickly moved to Bluray since writable DVDs are more prone to failure).
  • ocdtrekkie
    100% everything here. That level of tamper evidence should be good enough for the reasonable individual, IMHO.On the enterprise scale, the question I think everyone should be asking is: Do they have LTO tapes on a shelf? Fundamentally the same issue (but larger), in terms of needing to ensure it's physically separate, and secure, and tamper evident. =)Anything in the cloud or connected to your network can be hacked. The backup of last resort must be on a shelf.
  • jew-and-proud
    [flagged]
  • binauralbeats
    [flagged]
  • sosuke
    Now that I'm at ~$350 a year on Backblaze I need to look at this again. Or the LTO-6 tapes.
  • hn_submit
    This seems a little over the top to me.Just use a magnetic hard disk and your data will be fine for many decades if not centuries. You don't need M-Blu Rays (which have very limited capacity anyway). A hard disk is cheap and stores several Terabytes.You obviously need to store the data in a physically remote place like your shed, car or safe deposit box in case your house burns down.Never, ever use a SSD if you want your data to be safe for any amount of time. What's worse, SSDs can fail unexpectedly with almost zero chance of data recovery.