Post ARJVsoKtTOIl8yzeBU by 0x56@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by 0x56@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ARJVsmbptQfJmwu9JY by 0x56@mastodon.social
2023-01-03T06:35:41Z
4 likes, 7 repeats
PSA: take some time in 2023 to back up your/your family's CD-Rs (and other recordable media) full of memories you threw into storage 10+ years ago; there's a decent chance they've started to rot!the tenuously thin layer of dyes/adhesives holding the data *will* break down over time, rapidly so if their environment is uncontrolled, the surface was previously nicked/contaminated, or they were cheap ones to begin with
(DIR) Post #ARJVsoKtTOIl8yzeBU by 0x56@mastodon.social
2023-01-03T06:35:41Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
thanks to error correction, and with the help of free, modern file forensics tools (e.g. PhotoRec/TestDisk) even damaged disks may have recoverable contents. use your OS or a disk imaging tool to save a raw ISO/"master" image ASAP, which you can later mount (or carve) for the files withincloud storage and USB drives are cheap today (especially in comparison to the size of CDs and JPEGs from the 2000s), and what price would you wish you could pay to get the data back once it's truly lost?
(DIR) Post #ARJVspxZR4pkBE636m by 0x56@mastodon.social
2023-01-03T06:35:41Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
if you don't have a disc drive readily available, they're easy to find with both USB-A and USB-C connectivity. i've had good luck with an Asus ZenDrive U9M (~USD $35) and a Pioneer BDR-XS07UHD (~USD $200). for 99% of discs the $35 one is perfectly adequateso, don't give up hope if you notice deterioration setting in, but definitely don't put this off either!
(DIR) Post #ARKXufjynO6K8ChbKi by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-01-05T10:43:41.340338Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@0x56 personally I'd recommend against flash based USB drives for long term storage - data stored on unpowered flash media begins to decay after a few years.If you can get a mechanical USB hard drive that'd be the better option over the long term.
(DIR) Post #ARNTNQJBKnt0N1wCrQ by naxxfish@peoplemaking.games
2023-01-06T16:50:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome @0x56 seconded - I've fallen victim to this before (fortunately, server firmware - not precious memories). When thinknig about how to back up my own data, I was thinking of some sort of low power device that you could plug a bunch of flash disks into which periodically reads the contents (e.g. once a week) - but a mechanical HDD seems a lot more convenient :D
(DIR) Post #ARNTNQltc2r3o5N8cK by 0x56@mastodon.social
2023-01-06T19:56:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@naxxfish @Polychrome i also wondered about this, and took a note to come back and try to crunch the numbers around correctible error rates, spare blocks, and write cycles induced by the error correction process to get an upper bound on how long a drive would take to eat itself while keeping the data alive. keeping it powered implies other potential risks also though (power supply failure causing a surge or fire, accelerated electromigration, etc.)
(DIR) Post #ARNTNR9ID3ZOyeJp5M by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-01-06T20:36:59.346294Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@0x56 @naxxfish I want to say that an M-Disc would be the best offline media for storing something long term but other than the now limited capacity (4GB) you also have to deal with the fact that while the disc data will stick around, the drive that reads the data most likely won't :blobcatshrug:
(DIR) Post #ARhzlfO8WyCgl5IvFQ by 0x56@mastodon.social
2023-01-06T21:00:31Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome @naxxfish yeah exactly... fwiw they have up to 100GB M-Disc when you include BD, but if anything this requires you to maintain an even more precise and complex machine. i'm sure working drives will exist for several decades at minimum, but fewer and fewer non-archivists will have them which basically eliminates this as a viable layperson's process
(DIR) Post #ARhzlg3G4564ocXlLM by naxxfish@peoplemaking.games
2023-01-06T21:05:59Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@0x56 @Polychrome I've been going for 25 GB mdisc Bd-r since it's single layer, should be more robust, and easier to find a drive that would read it. If it lasts me 15 years, that should be enough time to migrate to whatever comes next (assuming we don't entrust our entire society to the cloud by then!)
(DIR) Post #ARhzlgSQYVEK4gJrZg by anka@mstdn.social
2023-01-16T18:10:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@naxxfishVery happy to see someone who is actually in the know do this!I’m a super low-budget non-expert myself and I’ve been considering saving up for a Bluray writer + Mdiscs to carry me over to whatever else is more reasonable next time I have to do this. Hopefully that’s better than the HDDs I had to wrestle with so far and any type of cloud service I both don’t trust and can’t afford.@0x56 @Polychrome
(DIR) Post #ARhzlguQsNdDTXQEE4 by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-01-16T18:14:08.735181Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@anka @naxxfish @0x56 MDiscs will be fine, and will continue to be fine during your lifetime (and your children's and your children's children's etc).At least for the near future I'm pretty sure data recovery services will be able to get the data out of the things even if the actual optical drives are long gone / unusable by typical users - given they're made and used for long term archival, data recovery services will be geared to deal with it.I also recommend hard drives for the same reason - the mechanism may die / become unusable over time due to changing connectors and such, but the data will remain intact on the disk and a data recovery service will be able to dig things out for you.
(DIR) Post #ARtkLSPB0pqnXyM1BY by EllenInEdmonton@mstdn.ca
2023-01-22T04:38:09Z
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@Polychrome @0x56 @naxxfish On my ToDo list is the purchase of a ZipDisk reader since that's what I used to store my early #genealogy files, not knowing that the technology would disappear almost immediately afterwards.
(DIR) Post #ARtkLT2Afr2hUub9xw by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-01-22T10:17:51.878501Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@EllenInEdmonton @0x56 @naxxfish Zip drives were notorious for breaking down badly so chances of getting a disk successfully read might be low. At the very least see that the drive you're getting was marked as "tested" by the seller.Alternatively, there's data recovery services.
(DIR) Post #ARwhQVCYKHbHHO2k52 by Greenseer@mstdn.social
2023-01-23T19:58:08Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Polychrome @0x56 I use SSD USB drives (Samsung) for my limited purposes, so I have a question. Do you know if my assumption is right that at end of life, failure will likely be encroaching rather than suddenly catastrophic, probably involving losing ability to write to disk before ability to read? I like SSDs for a number of other reasons and rarely write over data once stored, but at very least I think I need to get more for duplicate storage
(DIR) Post #ARwhQVoq1wE1C7xJku by Polychrome@poly.cybre.city
2023-01-23T20:29:18.726630Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Greenseer are we talking about unpowered decay in cold storage or in use?If in use, these kind of failures are supposed to go the way you described - but in practice there's a variety of things that can go wrong that result in catastrophic failure, and they usually do.Say that the disk controller just ups and dies, which seems to be a way that they commonly go - your data in this type of situation is pretty much gone without some recovery experts. SSDs have wear leveling maps and without those your data ends up scrambled across the cells.With mechanical drives you can just transplant the platters to another identical disk and you're good to go.If we're talking cold storage the drive will corrupt at an uneven pace, as Flash is intended to be persistently powered from time to time. The rate of decay also depends on temperature. The hotter the environment, the faster it decays.In a warehouse with high temperatures unpowered SSDs can lose their data in just a few months. I think the most recent study on modern flash showed about 1-2 months when the cold-storage temp is higher than 37.7C (100F).So TL;DR - SSDs are awesome, but always use an array to keep them backed up. Also assume drives bought at the same time and used at the same rate may hit EOL together - tho one of them will probably hit a catastrophic failure first. When that happens don't wait with the surviving drive - get the data out of it as soon as you can, before it goes out too.Anything unpowered or long term - use a mechanical hard drive.