archiving my hard drives - where to go in Wellington?

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noob

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#143217 7-Apr-2014 11:10

Hi, hope this is the right forum - I have some LaCie hard drives I'd like to archive - 4 hard drives, they're 2TB I think, they hold the edit for a documentary project (about 100 hours of footage). I'd like to archive them in a form they won't be corrupted - just in case I want to go back and tweak the edit at some later stage. It's a FCP edit. Where's good to go to? I'm in Wellington. I used Geeks on Wheels to copy some very old floppies a few years ago and they screwed it up and lost a number of word processing files, so wary about going there again. Would rather go to some kind of archiving service, to someone who knows what they're doing, rather than risk doing it myself. Any suggestions for the Wellington area? Thanks!

Sideface

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#1019893 7-Apr-2014 12:57

Why not do it yourself?
HDDs are a reliable storage medium (if they are disconnected and are stored properly).
Recording studios keep their masters on HDDs.
Buy a SATA Hard Drive USB3 Docking Station (every home should have one) and some 2TB hard drives for your backup, and store them safely, preferably at another site.

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Batman

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#1020001 7-Apr-2014 14:24

Te Papa? sorry can't help it :D

get some DVD-R and burn baby burn! your computer might even come with Nero burning Rome(e)!

Zeon

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#1020004 7-Apr-2014 14:27

Just use themselves to hold the copies. If you are paranoid you could put them in a lockbox?

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mattwnz

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#1020007 7-Apr-2014 14:29

Store some in a PO box, encrypted of course? Although I suppose theft and fire are still a risk. Otherwise a secured vault.

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#1020056 7-Apr-2014 16:15

joker97: ... get some DVD-R and burn baby burn! your computer might even come with Nero burning Rome(e)!

DVDs are a very unreliable way of archiving, and have a limited shelf life, even in a cool, dark place. "Perfect data forever" is a myth.
But better than no backup

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Batman

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#1020060 7-Apr-2014 16:33

so storing it all in a hard drive is safer than DVDs? darn! i bought a box!

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#1020177 7-Apr-2014 19:28

joker97: so storing it all in a hard drive is safer than DVDs? darn! i bought a box!

If you don't leave it running, an HDD is very reliable for long-term archive storage.
But (burned) CDs and DVDs deteriorate after a few years, even if you don't play them. Sometimes they fail after a few months.
I learned this lesson the very hard (read: "expensive") way.

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noob

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#1020219 7-Apr-2014 20:10

Yes, but some hard drives are more reliable than others - any tips as to the most reliable for longterm storage?

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#1020243 7-Apr-2014 20:40

noob: Yes, but some hard drives are more reliable than others - any tips as to the most reliable for long-term storage?

Any HDD can fail.
I am currently using 20+ Western Digital drives* in NAS devices and none of them have failed (yet

)
I did have one bad batch of Seagate HDDs which failed within a week, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Seagate is no good.

* WD Red, WD Green (cheaper)

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noob

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#1020345 8-Apr-2014 07:58

Thanks guys!