Author: Craig Lloyd / Source: howtogeek.com
You may very well be the king of backing up your data regularly, but archiving your data is a completely different ball game. Here’s how you can archive your digital files and keep them around for generations to come.
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You probably have loads of photos and videos taken of precious memories stored on your computer or in the cloud somewhere. And it’s safe to assume that you care enough about those files that you back them up somehow. That’s great and all, but do you have a plan for how you’re going to store those files for 50+ years and beyond? Archiving is all about long-term storage.
Backups vs. Archives
On the surface, backups and archives are fairly similar, but they serve different purposes. A backup is a copy of your regularly-accessed data (apps, documents, etc.) that’s available for when you experience any kind of data loss—you can bring in your backup to recover any of that lost data.
An archive, on the other hand, consists of data that you likely don’t access regularly (photo memories, finished documents, anything you don’t want to delete necessarily, etc.). This data is moved to a separate storage device for long-term retention. It can still be accessed when need be, although maybe not quite as easily as a backup.
And the side benefit of archiving data that doesn’t change much is that it no longer has to be part of your regular backup system.
What to Use to Archive Your Data
Since long-term retention is the name of the game, you want to store your archived data on a storage medium that will last for as long as possible.
Since different storage mediums have different life expectancies, not just any medium will do the trick.Depending on how much data you want archived, you also may want a cheap solution, since the cost of storage can add up quickly when you need to archive terabytes of data.
Now, there’s no one single solution that everyone should use; there are pros and cons for each. Let’s go over some different options and whether or not they’d be right for you.
Hard Drives
Hard drives are the most common type of storage medium, and it’s probably the first thing you think of when coming up with solutions for storing a lot of data.
They’re cost effective as well, ranging anywhere between $16-$20 per terabyte for most external hard drives, and you can fit a lot of data onto a single drive.
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The only downsides are that the drives themselves can take up a lot of space (especially for full-size 3.5″ drives), and they can be fairly delicate with the all the moving parts inside. You do have to treat them with some care.
You might also be concerned about a hard drive’s lifespan, but since it will be in cold storage and unused, it should technically last for quite a while—15 years isn’t unreasonable….
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