Seagate hard drives....

[milt]

Cloud storage can be the answer if you have symmetrical broadband.
The storage is dirt cheap via several vendors but even with my Comcast 60Mbps download it's only 6-7 Mbps upload.
Note that the b is small, bit.
8-10 TB upload at that speed is not feasible.
There is no technical reason why Comcast can't provide symmetrical service.
At least one residential provider is offering it but they aren't in my area:howl

 

[winopener]

As far as I'm aware Cloud storage (which is still slow and relatively expensive) or personal RAID 1 / RAID 5 either locally or on a NAS are the closest you can get today.

Even so, the best advice is to backup, backup and then backup.

Cloud storage isn't a viable option if you have to backup some Tb of stuff. Giving the actual connections to backup on a cloud a 2tb hard disk would require +- a full year.
Raid 5 and backup is the only way to go, and it will be for a long time...

 

[winopener]

For backup storage, use conventional hard disks. SSD is not meant for that.

You got it exactly. I've scrapped the idea of ssd as backup drives at all.

 

[winopener]

Wow! So SSDs need to be plugged in and used constantly (or at least once every couple of months) or they go kaput?

They doesn't go kaput... you can always write and read again other stuff... it is just that you're not sure if what you've placed there six months ago *is stilll there*.

 

[scifi]

I heard old tape drives are highly reliable.

 

[kap'n krunch]

We're gonna wind up writing the info on RECORDS!!!

 

[holland123]

Outstanding news, thank you gentlemen, I just purchased a nice new 4tb drive for some archiving and its a F!$@+#$ Seagate.

 

[scifi]

I found an interesting article about tape drives and other back up systems.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/07/18/data-tape-dying-a-slow-death-or-already-dead/
I came across some Ultrium 3 tape cartridges and was looking on Ebay at the Ultrium drives and pci to scsi lvd cards. The prices are low. I'm wondering if I could get that working in a computer using Windows XP home.

?
http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Tape-Libraries-and-Drives/bd-p/itrc-198#.VaaT6LXgFkg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOFfoXG61ZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmYq71gKDd8

http://www.z-datdump.com/software.html

https://social.technet.microsoft.co...95e1fbf658/restore-winxp-tape-backups-in-win7

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/330/348

 

[winopener]

Nowadays tape it's just a waste of time. BIG waste. I had old tape stuff back in the previous millennium, some of them mentioned also in the article, and nowadays it's just a lot cheaper and faster to get two or three NAS with some big drive and do a periodical dump of everything. Only the "actively used" stays always on, the backup ones are turned on only for their purpose (the backup) and then shut off for some time (in my setup, a week, while the weekly new files are stored both in the original machine and the actively used NAS; when the actively used NAS is backupped to its mirror these can be removed from the original machine).
BTW, even a 4-bay nas is a lot smaller than a tape library collection, so it's also pratical to move it around.

 

[scifi]

I've been using a second hard drive in one desktop for backup which is disconnected when not in use so the computer runs faster (connect or disconnect with computer off), and USB hard drive enclosures, both with laptop hard drives and desktop hard drives.