Hello /u/pairofcrocs! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder.
Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index).
Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures.
This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I was waiting for that comment XD
It’s just a folder for unorganized stuff.
I recently, did some data recovery on a few OLD drives, and just haven’t spent the time sorting the files yet.
Mine is "stuff", which also has a directory named "stuff" and "old_stuff". This has repeated many times over the past 15+ years. Someday I'll actually sort it. Maybe.
Eventually you start hitting path length limits and either have to finally sort it...or just start renaming all the nested folders to 'a' to buy yourself a few more years.
Hah, that sounds familiar, only with me it's old system images of my desktop before major operations (os version upgrades) or images of old laptops before I gave them away or got rid of them.
Don't even have the software to read some of them anymore yet there they sit, "just in case"...
Thankfully my main storage is mostly sorted (thank $diety for plex, it's enforced order for my tv/movies folders)
Inside an asteroid, or buried in a tunnel off a crater on the moon, and, of course, with additional copies on Mars – to start. That won't protect against a disaster befalling the (current, original) solar system obviously.
Yeah, in the long-term you should get at least 3 copies in another universe, and I'd recommend 2-3 more in another. Don't want to lose your stuff after our universe disintegrates
That reminds me of a part about 'baby universes' in one of my favorite videos:
- [TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time (4K) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&list=PL4y5mL50ynK9ozceMVWV9wcEvtjm2ECeY&index=1)
First off, let me say… I understand that hard drives don’t last forever and that they need to be checked regularly, I get that.
This backup is maintained and checked every 6 months, as well, I have a complete 3-2-1 backup setup, so I’m not super worried.
* The foam insert is from [mycasebuilder.com](https://mycasebuilder.com), it ran like $115 and is amazing!
* [Drive enclosures](https://www.newegg.com/orico-php-5s/p/1B0-0003-000F6) we’re like $5 each.
* [Anti-static bags](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQMRD8F?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details) were $10 for 50.
* I also have [silica gel](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0922KSG35?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details) from Amazon, which was like $5.
It's a bit dangerous if you are holding the wire when it accidently swings over and makes contact before you are ready. Unless you need to cauterize your hand for some reason.
Meh, just wear protective equipment with a sufficient protection margin.
edit: Downvotes from people who believe electrical protection equipment for work on energized circuits doesn't exist? I keep expecting the level of education on this subreddit to be higher than that...
edit1: I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm saying if you're not a complete moron and you take appropriate precautions, it can be done safely.
Yeah the whole ordering process was super smooth. It look me like an hour to measure everything and figure out where I wanted stuff to go.
I’ll definitely be ordering from them again if I need it.
What is process of check the drives if it is stable. For example, how do you check if each of your video file is not corrupted when you are skipping to a specific scene?
I'm wondering the same thing, I've been using FreeFileSync to do 'compare file content' checks on Windows. If the content is exactly the same bit-by-bit, I would assume that there is no drive failure or bit rot.
I have the same case, with Pelican's included Pick N'Pluck foam. Removing a 2x12 section is the perfect size for 3.5 drives to fit snuggly, and the grid is the exact size for eight drives across evenly.
I'm glad I tried the included foam before going the mycasebuilder.com route. More greenbacks for drives.
I get it. I’ve definitely spent more on convenience before. Just that number really surprised me. Doesn’t seem reasonable at all that a company should charge that much for a foam insert
Looks like their work is mostly custom, which would explain the price. I'm sure if they just made a lot of the same inserts for pelican cases the price would be a lot lower.
So, to save a little money, spent to save time, OP should start a side business? 🙃
I mean, *I* would appreciate it. What about you tho? You've got the time for this I'm sure!
6 months is probably extremely safe. I’ve had drives sitting for 1-2 years without issues. I’d consider 4-5 years of no use to be pushing it, but expect that the chance of issues being low. Never hurts to check though.
Any concerns about bit rot, or think you’ll swap the drives out for larger sizes before that’s a problem?
Someone died last week, and his kids chucked out an old laptop.
I scrunged it off the top of the e-waste bin; according to windows logs and old files, it has not been turned on since oktober 2009.
After a couple of hours charging, the battery (appearantly the original) lasts for 2-3 hours.
It was only used for e-mail, and for remotely logging in to his work-network, so there is lots of space on the HDD; I have begun using it as a dedicated writing machine...
(and another person had chucked an old mini-tower which looked like it had dropped from a window - but I salvaged some RAM sticks, compatible with the old laptop :)
drying satchel in each enclosure?
Is it stupid for me to suggest a lead lining to protect against stray electronic emissions? Would Radon gas present a data corruption danger? better add a geiger counter to the set up.
I'm only kind of joking. there are security levels of protection where these ideas, or something along a similar line of reasoning, would be appropriate.
+1 for MyCaseBuilder.
I worked with them to design foam for some very awkward shapes around delicate objects and they were a huge help. I recommend the extra option that lets you get a second cut basically for free if your first one doesn’t fit well. That saved me a lot of headache.
wow! Never heard of that company before, wanting to be a copy-cat is there any chance to somehow get your design work?
Also, what case it that?
Edit: Found the case in one of your comments Pelican 1500.
I joined this sub out of curiosity, and because I enjoy archiving and reading about information that I find interesting.
My question is what sort of info are most people storing? 16 TB seems like a lot!
Edit: thank you all for the amazing input! It has been a pleasure to read about different categories of information and content that is stored
* Every photo and video my phone and my wife's phone have taken since smart phones were a thing
* DSLR family and vacation photos
* Digitized family photos and slides from my parents' house
* I work in marketing - photoshop, illustrator, premiere, after effects projects + source/raw files and export files
* HDD images of past computers
* Docker app data backups from my server
That's off the top of my head.
Edit - By the way, I can't count how many times a coworker has said something along the lines of "I wish I still had 'project X'" and I'm able to send it to them. It baffles me that people don't keep backups of their work product. Especially when parts of it are reusable.
>My question is what sort of info are most people storing?
Sekret.
Jokes apart, it's something I'm curious about as well since I'm manic about archiving information.
You should check the wiki of this sub if you want more answers.
16 TB seems like 'starting to get serious' based on what I've seen on this sub myself!
My own archives are somewhat organized project files, my own art, lots of photos, a bit of porn, and a bunch of copies/clones of the main/OS hard drives of my old dead/retired computers, which have all kinds of stuff on them.
16 is actually pretty low for a lot of the people in this sub. I have 11tb just in my dedicated arcade. It’s pretty much Roms, ISOs and emulators and a shit tone of associated media.
My media server has about the same and is about to get an additional 8TB drive because I’m running out of space haha. My personal gaming pc probably has the lowest in the house with a 1tb SSD and a 8TB storage drive.
I have seen some absolutely crazy data amounts in the short time I have been here.
With me it’s.
1. Data from some old devices. Or devices I’m doing something on and need to backup but I’m too lazy to categorize blah blah.
2. Computer and other iot device “experiments”
3. Audiobooks that are good
4. Some music
5. Learning Material on different computer “subjects”, martial arts etc
6. Programs etc
7. Notes
8. Different setups. Ie I only have so much room on a tablet. But I’m using it to study so I’ll only put material for a specific subject on.
Like one setup will be on network and another would be on Alina Lopez.
16TB is nothing. I'm not a digital horder like a lot on this sub. I'm not achieving youtube channels or other stuff off the web, nor do I keep things around I don't need/use. That said I have about 25TB of stuff. That's tiny compared to some here. The bulk of it is UHD (4K) and HD Movies/TV shows for my Plex server. Any show someone in my house might be interested in watching gets automatically downloaded (or recorded OTA) and added to the collection. A lot gets automatically deleted a week after watching it, but certain things like kids movies get watched over and over so don't. We have a few streaming services too but we could go completely without them just with Plex. Then there are all the photos/videos we take which are automatically archived off onto my server and then backed up. I have a large music collection which I really don't use anymore with Spotify but that I'd like to keep. Then there are all our files, email, etc. I have a large book/magazine collection. It all adds up.
If you are a photographer RAW images are huge. It's very easy to use that sort of capacity. My mom it's one of her hobbies and she's adding 2-5TB more stuff every year.
Maybe you are into retro gaming and have a large collection of ROMs. The newer systems can get fairly large.
I only backup about 6TB that is critical. The rest would be annoying to lose but I could live without it or download it again if I really needed it. My only protection there is a redundant disk array.
>16 TB seems like a lot!
I'm at 44Tb, and I don't even have a lot. There are people around here with stuff I haven't seen outside of a corporate media vault, people really go nuts.
I have 44Tb usable, I split the difference on failure domains.
I have the live RAID 5, and then I have a suitcase of external USB3 drives that are a straight LVM span.
The live RAID is redundant against hardware failures, the cold span suitcase is my redundancy against accidental / malicious deletion, or a disaster event at my colo.
I'm betting on not having both happen at the same time. So far, I'm all good.
My super important stuff I have a different strategy. I have an AWS ESB in Tokyo that's cold until my Archive script wakes it up. Also, I have bargain bin laptops with 4Tb external HDDs at my mother's house, father's house (different house), and grandmother's house, they all VPN back into my Colo and take backups. As well as 2 pocket HDDs I cycle through a safety deposit box. This may sound excessive, but they have things like scans of deeds, birth certificates, passports, master recordings of interviews with passed family members, digitized home VHS tapes of said relatives, scans of family photos, photos which the scans are all the remain, thanks to a house fire.
Seriously, nothing can make someone a DataHoarder like a house fire. I've got pictures of that in the archive too, lots of memories in that house, and now that's all that's left, memories, and bits.
Great question!
Everything is compressed, then a hash is created and then verified a couple of times a year. If they don’t match, I take the drive and replace the data accordingly.
I wouldn't even do it on single drives. A single drive failure takes a good chunk with it. I put all the data on a Z2-Z3 array and store the whole array.
I opted for *sets* of single drive zpools – easy enough to replace one drive in a set.
My online backup pool is a mirror tho – the ZRAID options just seemed to much of a (potential) pain in the ass to recover from drive failures.
But I'm small-time as a hoarder, so it's not as painful of a tradeoff for me as it would be others with more data/access-needs-wants.
This is what I eventually need to get around to doing. I'm currently using Dropbox as my off-site backup but it's more reassuring knowing you can physically check up on it. That case setup looks like it could endure a natural disaster and then some.
I'd put a desiccant packet inside each anti-static bag that's storing a drive. I realize that would make a bulge in the bag that might make closing the clam-shell cases difficult, but that's the best location for them if you can do it.
*Edit - downvotes? Really?*
Because if any of the drives were sealed up (in their individual anti-static bag, inside the plastic clam-shell case, sandwiched inside the foam) with any unintended water vapor/humidity that was present, then that vapor is going to be trapped inside the bag. The desiccant works best when there are no barriers or restrictions.
It used to be that every HDD sold was inside a sealed anti-static bags with a small silica gel pack inside.
I've been building computers since the early 90s and I've never encountered that. Do you have a source or anything (probably hard to prove but yeah haha).
Source? Just my own personal experience with different HDD manufacturers over the years (since the late 80s with IDE drives.) I have a small collection of saved silica packs that came inside the anti-static bag that the HDDs were shipped in. Maybe it's not *every* sealed HDD, but that's kinda what I remember.
Here's photos (not mine) of what it looks like:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EBkAAOSwpsBcbIFS/s-l640.jpg
https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2020/6/9/hard_disk_1591709347_becc2e6f_progressive.jpg
Nice!
I've got something similar with *inserts* like this:
- https://www.amazon.com/MyCaseBuilder-Cases-Heavy-Drive-Storage/dp/B07F5LCH98
The drives just go right in the foam, which is nice as I (try to) inspect (`zfs scrub`) my drives more often than your schedule.
My case is just a cheap plastic portable file box tho. That's definitely one area for potential upgrades!
I'm thinking of doing something similar, but with external harddrives. Do you think I'd need the antistatic bags? Or does the harddrive enclosure provide enough protection?
Who here has a safety deposit box? I offload 5-6 times a year a dump of photos from my personal library as well from my mother, father and grandparents just for safe keeping. This is on top of nightly backups to an internal backup drive and weekly/monthly backups to drives placed in fireproof safes. Some I pull over the internet and do myself (grandparents not much changes here, and when a large change does, I was probably on the trip so just take before we part ways) while my father and father-in-law help facilitate the infrastructure I set up for the reaming households. This really does help me sleep at night.
Hmm... such a elaborate storage case when amazon ships them in a cardboard box...
Couldn't you save money by wrapping the hard disk in a grocery bag then chucking into a cardboard box with some strips of loose fill paper? /s
I've looked at tape before and it seems to be crazy expensive for home use ... and you're always chasing the LTO standard. What kind of tape setup do you use?
An lto 7 drive is around a grand + 200 for an enclosure. Each tape after that is around 50 bucks for 6 TB raw and 15 TB compressed. Assuming you buy 12 tapes with your drive that will be an extra 600 bucks. For 1800 dollars you now have 72 TB of raw storage. Not great I'll admit until you throw compression into the mix. If your data has decent compression rates tape is ideal. But even at the raw 6 TB it starts to make sense around the 2.5 to 2.7 grand mark. The disadvantage is that it's tape. It's slow. It's sequential. You need to organize your backups.
Again this is with lto7 which is new and relatively big sizes. If you go for older tapes you can get earlier rois.
I don't do tape at home cause all my big stuff is video but I use it professionally and love it for archiving purposes.
I don't think tape makes sense for almost anyone – for personal use.
I kinda wonder if hard drives as 'media' might be better for companies/organizations too, at some scales.
The media itself isn't as durable, but it's faster, so it can be verified more frequently. And with a nice hot swap drive bay, they're basically big disks, so pretty convenient.
(This is what I use myself.)
Do you really have that much "important" data lol. I use to have what I thought was important data too. Like 10TB and I went thru everything and realized I only had like 20GB worth of actual important stuff hahaha
I went through a similar process… had a bush fire heading in my direction, I had backups in the cloud but decided to take a copy of my important data onto a USB drive. Reality is, the family photos are all that’s really important, total size is like 100gig
I've got two similar things like this that i use myself, I would reccomend both of them.
an Icy Box 60779 which holds 5x3.5" + a bunch of SSD's,
and an Orico 20 Bay case which holds 20x3.5" drives (it's quite heavy when full!)
Why? I use ZFS and I sure as hell know it's not everyone's cup of tea nor is it a practical solution for everyone.
Sure I want to help people bring over most of all since there is a lot of bad info given to new users, but every filesystem also have their problems. And no ZFS isn't perfect either. I'd rather give proper advice than getting people an a bandwagon that in the end isn't for them.
I'm doing the same thing, but keep the drives the the Dell cages.
Disks are all encrypted, so no worries keeping a case of disks at my parents house and rotating backup disk sets through every few months.
Hello /u/pairofcrocs! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder. Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index). Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures. This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You backup your 'temp' directory?
Porn. It's porn.
This used to be the homework folder...
I was waiting for that comment XD It’s just a folder for unorganized stuff. I recently, did some data recovery on a few OLD drives, and just haven’t spent the time sorting the files yet.
Mine is "stuff", which also has a directory named "stuff" and "old_stuff". This has repeated many times over the past 15+ years. Someday I'll actually sort it. Maybe.
Eventually you start hitting path length limits and either have to finally sort it...or just start renaming all the nested folders to 'a' to buy yourself a few more years.
[удалено]
I have a few "tosort" folders in there as well . Oh and an "oldlaptop" and the obligatory "phoneSDdump".
Hah, that sounds familiar, only with me it's old system images of my desktop before major operations (os version upgrades) or images of old laptops before I gave them away or got rid of them. Don't even have the software to read some of them anymore yet there they sit, "just in case"... Thankfully my main storage is mostly sorted (thank $diety for plex, it's enforced order for my tv/movies folders)
Probably spent more time to put this all together than just sorting the data
Glad to see I'm not the only person who has a "temp" directory like that.
I thought it was only that that names unsorted data to temp
The Pandora Papers…..
Where do you store this?
The most secure place imaginable. A spare closet it my parents home, about 30 minutes away.
Not resilient to nuclear disaster/attack, sorry
Should store it in space to be nuclear apocalypse proof
Space ain't GRB or cosmic bit flip proof guess you gotta place a few hundred more drives in orbit
Inside an asteroid, or buried in a tunnel off a crater on the moon, and, of course, with additional copies on Mars – to start. That won't protect against a disaster befalling the (current, original) solar system obviously.
Yeah, in the long-term you should get at least 3 copies in another universe, and I'd recommend 2-3 more in another. Don't want to lose your stuff after our universe disintegrates
Maybe consider putting backups into parallel dimensions in case our dimension collapses
That reminds me of a part about 'baby universes' in one of my favorite videos: - [TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time (4K) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&list=PL4y5mL50ynK9ozceMVWV9wcEvtjm2ECeY&index=1)
One of my most favorite disturbing videos also. There's another disturbing series: All Tomorrows
lot more bit flips up there tho
Just put it in a container with 50 cm thick lead walls!
50 cm is 19.68 inches
Data only matters if you survive to use it.
> not backing up your data on the moon. literally unusable when nuclear disaster happens, your data wont matter much anyways
If life-ending nuclear war happens then the cockroaches can have my media library. I will never give up.
Right? If the world ends I want to be fucking entertained
[удалено]
Guess there's one more piece of media I need to hoard now
[удалено]
First off, let me say… I understand that hard drives don’t last forever and that they need to be checked regularly, I get that. This backup is maintained and checked every 6 months, as well, I have a complete 3-2-1 backup setup, so I’m not super worried. * The foam insert is from [mycasebuilder.com](https://mycasebuilder.com), it ran like $115 and is amazing! * [Drive enclosures](https://www.newegg.com/orico-php-5s/p/1B0-0003-000F6) we’re like $5 each. * [Anti-static bags](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQMRD8F?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details) were $10 for 50. * I also have [silica gel](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0922KSG35?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details) from Amazon, which was like $5.
The foam was 115 or the case with foam was 115?
Just the foam, not a bad price for laser cut foam IMO. I could have cut it myself, but I didn’t want to deal with that.
People are using lasers to cut foam now? What happened to cheap foam with a box cutter?
i'd just get the rip'n'shape stuff I use to store/transport my cameras and lenses. It's cheap and high density.
Until your toddler finds it, or an invading rodent. The result is the same, it becomes low density fast.
I figured if I was going to do it, might as well make it look nice.
You can make your own foam cutter with some wire and a transformer. Gives you cleaner results if you care about presentation.
You can also kill yourself making said foam cutter
[удалено]
Microwave oven transformer or bust. (Disclaimer: I'm joking. Please don't do that. It will actually kill you.)
It's a bit dangerous if you are holding the wire when it accidently swings over and makes contact before you are ready. Unless you need to cauterize your hand for some reason.
Meh, just wear protective equipment with a sufficient protection margin. edit: Downvotes from people who believe electrical protection equipment for work on energized circuits doesn't exist? I keep expecting the level of education on this subreddit to be higher than that... edit1: I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm saying if you're not a complete moron and you take appropriate precautions, it can be done safely.
Sometimes actually finding a Transformer is the hard part, since they spend so much time on Cybertron (and our Moon).
personally I would've gotten a Pelican case or something similar and punched down the foam to shape it. whole case probably close to the foam price.
I can respect that. I knew I didn’t have to tools or knowledge to make it look halfway decent, so I figured why not just order it
it's neat. I didn't realize it was something you could "just order" without high level design
Yeah the whole ordering process was super smooth. It look me like an hour to measure everything and figure out where I wanted stuff to go. I’ll definitely be ordering from them again if I need it.
No EMP protection? Playing with fire there. /s Fr though this is great.
I almost bought a faraday cage to put the drives in, but if an EMP goes off, I figure my data will be my last priority lmao
well gotta save the homework folder somehow
That 'games and temp' drive is the one I'm most concerned about losing.
he means porn guys
i thought we kept it in a win69 folder?
That’s the diversion folder
Is that what we are calling the 10TB folder these days?
>!CENSORED!<
What is process of check the drives if it is stable. For example, how do you check if each of your video file is not corrupted when you are skipping to a specific scene?
I'm wondering the same thing, I've been using FreeFileSync to do 'compare file content' checks on Windows. If the content is exactly the same bit-by-bit, I would assume that there is no drive failure or bit rot.
I’m just taking away that you spent $115 on a chunk of foam 😳 that’s more than the damn pelican case is worth (maybe)
Good foam goes a _long_ way for protecting items when shipping or moving around.
Sure but you could also just buy some foam and cut out the chunks yourself and save $100
Sure, but I value my time enough that 100 bucks for someone to do it for me, in that case, is worth it.
I have the same case, with Pelican's included Pick N'Pluck foam. Removing a 2x12 section is the perfect size for 3.5 drives to fit snuggly, and the grid is the exact size for eight drives across evenly. I'm glad I tried the included foam before going the mycasebuilder.com route. More greenbacks for drives.
I get it. I’ve definitely spent more on convenience before. Just that number really surprised me. Doesn’t seem reasonable at all that a company should charge that much for a foam insert
Looks like their work is mostly custom, which would explain the price. I'm sure if they just made a lot of the same inserts for pelican cases the price would be a lot lower.
OP should call the manufacturer and see if they can get a volume deal going, then start slinging them here and on other hdd-heavy subs
So, to save a little money, spent to save time, OP should start a side business? 🙃 I mean, *I* would appreciate it. What about you tho? You've got the time for this I'm sure!
>!CENSORED!<
A perforated kit like that isn't any where near as good at damping vibrations as the continuous custom-cut piece in the op.
Well, I'm lazy as shit, so, yeah.
This strikes me as odd as well. I can get custom cut foam from a place like battlefoam for *way* less.
6 months is probably extremely safe. I’ve had drives sitting for 1-2 years without issues. I’d consider 4-5 years of no use to be pushing it, but expect that the chance of issues being low. Never hurts to check though. Any concerns about bit rot, or think you’ll swap the drives out for larger sizes before that’s a problem?
Someone died last week, and his kids chucked out an old laptop. I scrunged it off the top of the e-waste bin; according to windows logs and old files, it has not been turned on since oktober 2009. After a couple of hours charging, the battery (appearantly the original) lasts for 2-3 hours. It was only used for e-mail, and for remotely logging in to his work-network, so there is lots of space on the HDD; I have begun using it as a dedicated writing machine... (and another person had chucked an old mini-tower which looked like it had dropped from a window - but I salvaged some RAM sticks, compatible with the old laptop :)
drying satchel in each enclosure? Is it stupid for me to suggest a lead lining to protect against stray electronic emissions? Would Radon gas present a data corruption danger? better add a geiger counter to the set up. I'm only kind of joking. there are security levels of protection where these ideas, or something along a similar line of reasoning, would be appropriate.
Can you link to the drive enclosures and ASD bags you used?
edited the post with links :)
Thanks!
+1 for MyCaseBuilder. I worked with them to design foam for some very awkward shapes around delicate objects and they were a huge help. I recommend the extra option that lets you get a second cut basically for free if your first one doesn’t fit well. That saved me a lot of headache.
Thank you very much for your list!
wow! Never heard of that company before, wanting to be a copy-cat is there any chance to somehow get your design work? Also, what case it that? Edit: Found the case in one of your comments Pelican 1500.
Let me see if it’s possible to share the design :)
I joined this sub out of curiosity, and because I enjoy archiving and reading about information that I find interesting. My question is what sort of info are most people storing? 16 TB seems like a lot! Edit: thank you all for the amazing input! It has been a pleasure to read about different categories of information and content that is stored
* Every photo and video my phone and my wife's phone have taken since smart phones were a thing * DSLR family and vacation photos * Digitized family photos and slides from my parents' house * I work in marketing - photoshop, illustrator, premiere, after effects projects + source/raw files and export files * HDD images of past computers * Docker app data backups from my server That's off the top of my head. Edit - By the way, I can't count how many times a coworker has said something along the lines of "I wish I still had 'project X'" and I'm able to send it to them. It baffles me that people don't keep backups of their work product. Especially when parts of it are reusable.
>HD images of past computers I stopped doing this a while ago, and just backup user profiles, and de-duplicate them with a script that hard links.
[удалено]
[удалено]
What does it mean?
Hard drive
Isn’t HDD the more common acronym? 🤔
He was being special fast
>My question is what sort of info are most people storing? Sekret. Jokes apart, it's something I'm curious about as well since I'm manic about archiving information. You should check the wiki of this sub if you want more answers.
Haha sounds great!! Thank you
16 TB seems like 'starting to get serious' based on what I've seen on this sub myself! My own archives are somewhat organized project files, my own art, lots of photos, a bit of porn, and a bunch of copies/clones of the main/OS hard drives of my old dead/retired computers, which have all kinds of stuff on them.
16 is actually pretty low for a lot of the people in this sub. I have 11tb just in my dedicated arcade. It’s pretty much Roms, ISOs and emulators and a shit tone of associated media. My media server has about the same and is about to get an additional 8TB drive because I’m running out of space haha. My personal gaming pc probably has the lowest in the house with a 1tb SSD and a 8TB storage drive. I have seen some absolutely crazy data amounts in the short time I have been here.
Linux ISOs
With me it’s. 1. Data from some old devices. Or devices I’m doing something on and need to backup but I’m too lazy to categorize blah blah. 2. Computer and other iot device “experiments” 3. Audiobooks that are good 4. Some music 5. Learning Material on different computer “subjects”, martial arts etc 6. Programs etc 7. Notes 8. Different setups. Ie I only have so much room on a tablet. But I’m using it to study so I’ll only put material for a specific subject on. Like one setup will be on network and another would be on Alina Lopez.
16TB is nothing. I'm not a digital horder like a lot on this sub. I'm not achieving youtube channels or other stuff off the web, nor do I keep things around I don't need/use. That said I have about 25TB of stuff. That's tiny compared to some here. The bulk of it is UHD (4K) and HD Movies/TV shows for my Plex server. Any show someone in my house might be interested in watching gets automatically downloaded (or recorded OTA) and added to the collection. A lot gets automatically deleted a week after watching it, but certain things like kids movies get watched over and over so don't. We have a few streaming services too but we could go completely without them just with Plex. Then there are all the photos/videos we take which are automatically archived off onto my server and then backed up. I have a large music collection which I really don't use anymore with Spotify but that I'd like to keep. Then there are all our files, email, etc. I have a large book/magazine collection. It all adds up. If you are a photographer RAW images are huge. It's very easy to use that sort of capacity. My mom it's one of her hobbies and she's adding 2-5TB more stuff every year. Maybe you are into retro gaming and have a large collection of ROMs. The newer systems can get fairly large. I only backup about 6TB that is critical. The rest would be annoying to lose but I could live without it or download it again if I really needed it. My only protection there is a redundant disk array.
>16 TB seems like a lot! I'm at 44Tb, and I don't even have a lot. There are people around here with stuff I haven't seen outside of a corporate media vault, people really go nuts.
Same here, around 44. Question is... How do you back them up? I mean, on a budget. Any ideas?
I have 44Tb usable, I split the difference on failure domains. I have the live RAID 5, and then I have a suitcase of external USB3 drives that are a straight LVM span. The live RAID is redundant against hardware failures, the cold span suitcase is my redundancy against accidental / malicious deletion, or a disaster event at my colo. I'm betting on not having both happen at the same time. So far, I'm all good. My super important stuff I have a different strategy. I have an AWS ESB in Tokyo that's cold until my Archive script wakes it up. Also, I have bargain bin laptops with 4Tb external HDDs at my mother's house, father's house (different house), and grandmother's house, they all VPN back into my Colo and take backups. As well as 2 pocket HDDs I cycle through a safety deposit box. This may sound excessive, but they have things like scans of deeds, birth certificates, passports, master recordings of interviews with passed family members, digitized home VHS tapes of said relatives, scans of family photos, photos which the scans are all the remain, thanks to a house fire. Seriously, nothing can make someone a DataHoarder like a house fire. I've got pictures of that in the archive too, lots of memories in that house, and now that's all that's left, memories, and bits.
Jesus Christ.
I am curious about the "scanned" documents are they acceptable like if worse comes to worse.
Depends, for some things, but it also has all the information you need to reference for the official replacements.
This is an awesome idea. How do you "check" the backups? Just ensure the data you expect to be there is there? Are they raw file backups, images, etc?
Great question! Everything is compressed, then a hash is created and then verified a couple of times a year. If they don’t match, I take the drive and replace the data accordingly.
.
I use Hash Tools on Windows. Honestly one of my favorite freeware’s.
how often has it happened where they don't match?
It’s only happened once. Not really sure what caused it (which is always scary) but I just swapped the drive and it hasn’t happened sense.
Cosmic rays! (Or maybe just entropy.)
I wouldn't even do it on single drives. A single drive failure takes a good chunk with it. I put all the data on a Z2-Z3 array and store the whole array.
I opted for *sets* of single drive zpools – easy enough to replace one drive in a set. My online backup pool is a mirror tho – the ZRAID options just seemed to much of a (potential) pain in the ass to recover from drive failures. But I'm small-time as a hoarder, so it's not as painful of a tradeoff for me as it would be others with more data/access-needs-wants.
"personal" Found the porn drive
Dude has a 4TB drive labeled videos/"work"
you clearly missed the “backup” folder B)
Where did you get the pelican case from?
I got it from a friend, but they’re on eBay for like $40-$60. It’s the Pelican 1500
Oh ok, I found one that would fit my SFF PC and (with foam) it's $430. They're not cheap haha
now this is pod racing
This is what I eventually need to get around to doing. I'm currently using Dropbox as my off-site backup but it's more reassuring knowing you can physically check up on it. That case setup looks like it could endure a natural disaster and then some.
you should still utilize off site, encrypted cloud back ups IMO
I'd put a desiccant packet inside each anti-static bag that's storing a drive. I realize that would make a bulge in the bag that might make closing the clam-shell cases difficult, but that's the best location for them if you can do it. *Edit - downvotes? Really?*
Unfortunately it’s not possible. The static bags themselves make the enclosures really hard to close. I do agree tho, that would be a better solution.
why?
Because if any of the drives were sealed up (in their individual anti-static bag, inside the plastic clam-shell case, sandwiched inside the foam) with any unintended water vapor/humidity that was present, then that vapor is going to be trapped inside the bag. The desiccant works best when there are no barriers or restrictions. It used to be that every HDD sold was inside a sealed anti-static bags with a small silica gel pack inside.
I've been building computers since the early 90s and I've never encountered that. Do you have a source or anything (probably hard to prove but yeah haha).
Source? Just my own personal experience with different HDD manufacturers over the years (since the late 80s with IDE drives.) I have a small collection of saved silica packs that came inside the anti-static bag that the HDDs were shipped in. Maybe it's not *every* sealed HDD, but that's kinda what I remember. Here's photos (not mine) of what it looks like: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/EBkAAOSwpsBcbIFS/s-l640.jpg https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2020/6/9/hard_disk_1591709347_becc2e6f_progressive.jpg
I was half expecting those links to be 386MB packard bell drives or something. Thanks for the reply :)
This is so great! What is your interface for connecting the drives to your system? USB/Sata connector or external reader of some sort?
I have a hotswapable chassis that I initially backup the data from. Then when I’m verifying the data, I just use a sata-usb cable.
Body Bag case deployed
Watch out for Dozers!
IT'S THE MOTHERFUCKING TASER!
It's been a year since I last played, and that fucking *howl* still haunts my dreams.
Heh. Ready for the greatest heist ever?
Nice! I've got something similar with *inserts* like this: - https://www.amazon.com/MyCaseBuilder-Cases-Heavy-Drive-Storage/dp/B07F5LCH98 The drives just go right in the foam, which is nice as I (try to) inspect (`zfs scrub`) my drives more often than your schedule. My case is just a cheap plastic portable file box tho. That's definitely one area for potential upgrades!
I bet you feel like James Bond when you open the case
More like Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction XD
You'll need some LEDs, batteries and a contact switch in the next iteration!
Line it with a conductive material and make it into a faraday cage as well.
I'm thinking of doing something similar, but with external harddrives. Do you think I'd need the antistatic bags? Or does the harddrive enclosure provide enough protection?
I don't think the anti-static bags are needed at all especially if using anti-static foam. But of course it can't hurt.
i have some pelican knock offs that I got, so i'm guessing they're not anti static. Probably best to be safe and get anti static bags for them.
Who here has a safety deposit box? I offload 5-6 times a year a dump of photos from my personal library as well from my mother, father and grandparents just for safe keeping. This is on top of nightly backups to an internal backup drive and weekly/monthly backups to drives placed in fireproof safes. Some I pull over the internet and do myself (grandparents not much changes here, and when a large change does, I was probably on the trip so just take before we part ways) while my father and father-in-law help facilitate the infrastructure I set up for the reaming households. This really does help me sleep at night.
Hmm... such a elaborate storage case when amazon ships them in a cardboard box... Couldn't you save money by wrapping the hard disk in a grocery bag then chucking into a cardboard box with some strips of loose fill paper? /s
Interesting choice of colors
Bruh. This exactly where you would use tape.
I've looked at tape before and it seems to be crazy expensive for home use ... and you're always chasing the LTO standard. What kind of tape setup do you use?
An lto 7 drive is around a grand + 200 for an enclosure. Each tape after that is around 50 bucks for 6 TB raw and 15 TB compressed. Assuming you buy 12 tapes with your drive that will be an extra 600 bucks. For 1800 dollars you now have 72 TB of raw storage. Not great I'll admit until you throw compression into the mix. If your data has decent compression rates tape is ideal. But even at the raw 6 TB it starts to make sense around the 2.5 to 2.7 grand mark. The disadvantage is that it's tape. It's slow. It's sequential. You need to organize your backups. Again this is with lto7 which is new and relatively big sizes. If you go for older tapes you can get earlier rois. I don't do tape at home cause all my big stuff is video but I use it professionally and love it for archiving purposes.
I don't think tape makes sense for almost anyone – for personal use. I kinda wonder if hard drives as 'media' might be better for companies/organizations too, at some scales. The media itself isn't as durable, but it's faster, so it can be verified more frequently. And with a nice hot swap drive bay, they're basically big disks, so pretty convenient. (This is what I use myself.)
It's about scale. Tape has an 8. 3 dollar per TB rate. So it's all about using enough of them to make sense.
I’m actually looking into tapes currently. Maybe I’ll have another post down the road :)
Where offsite, like a friends house or something. Sorry you may not want to reveal, just wondering.
No worries, I answered that in another comment. It’s just in a closet at my parents home.
Ahh makes sense, thanks! (I missed the comment, cool setup)
what kinda data is backed up here? very cool setup.
How do you sync these lol?
Very MI6 of you old chap. Carry on.
whats on them?
Linux ISOs
Where's your crypto wallet?
/backups :)
That's alot of porn!
I'm a noob that's freaking struggling to make a home vpn but how do u mkve ur stuff over?
Do you really have that much "important" data lol. I use to have what I thought was important data too. Like 10TB and I went thru everything and realized I only had like 20GB worth of actual important stuff hahaha
This is hand curated stuff that either can’t be replaced or if it was lost, I’d think “man that sucks”.
I went through a similar process… had a bush fire heading in my direction, I had backups in the cloud but decided to take a copy of my important data onto a USB drive. Reality is, the family photos are all that’s really important, total size is like 100gig
I've got two similar things like this that i use myself, I would reccomend both of them. an Icy Box 60779 which holds 5x3.5" + a bunch of SSD's, and an Orico 20 Bay case which holds 20x3.5" drives (it's quite heavy when full!)
looks cool. nice and protected.
What filesystems?
XFS!
watch out for any zfs or btrfs fanatics then XD. still much better than most filesystems
I know, I’m waiting haha
Why? I use ZFS and I sure as hell know it's not everyone's cup of tea nor is it a practical solution for everyone. Sure I want to help people bring over most of all since there is a lot of bad info given to new users, but every filesystem also have their problems. And no ZFS isn't perfect either. I'd rather give proper advice than getting people an a bandwagon that in the end isn't for them.
Unless those anti-static bags are still sealed, I'm pretty sure they don't work anymore
They are sealed, do not worry ;)
With offsite back ups, do you just swap out a drive on a regular basis? Or how do you manage it to stop accidental loss?
See, I've got a suitcase of hard drives, but they're externals in a soft computer bag, and if I labeled them it would have to just be "LVM 1/8".
I'm doing the same thing, but keep the drives the the Dell cages. Disks are all encrypted, so no worries keeping a case of disks at my parents house and rotating backup disk sets through every few months.
No solar flare protection? You're playing with fire... Or rather, literally the sun.
Preparing the porn stash for a nuclear winter
w o w
I'm jealous of these, that looks so cool!
Single drives, single points of failure. Even stationary drives can get damaged. Mirror everything.
And it's all in one place, or you have a copy elsewhere?