[ale] Recommendation for off-line storage?

[Greg Freemyer]

Are you planning to power-down the drives between uses?

If so, there is NO data or gaurentee on disk drives maintaining data
with power off.

We do it a lot around here, but we also make a tape backup before we
put the drives on the shelf.  Personally I think data loss starts to
happen in the 1 to 2 year range.  I do know some people pull drives
off the shelf every once and a while just to power them up and give
the grease, etc. a good workout.

I've even heard a guy one time say there were disk drive preheaters
that could be used to warm a disk drive (and associated grease etc.)
up.  Treat that as urban legend.

Greg

On 5/10/06, Allan Metts <ametts2 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I have several hundred Gigabytes of data that's in my way.  I need to keep it, but I don't need regular access to it.  More data is coming in now that will eventually need the same treatment.
>
> So I'm looking for a good solution for off-line data storage.  Here's what I'm looking for:
>
> --*-- Rack-mountable
>
> --*-- Non-proprietary hardware, no special "backup" software
>
> --*-- Supports Linux distributions.  I choose which one.
>
> --*-- Uses readily-available and inexpensive IDE drives.
>
> --*-- Easy to set up and administer.  We have no time to fiddle with this -- I'm thinking 1) mount the drive, 2) copy the files, 3) unmount the drive, 4) remove and replace the drive.  The machine still needs to work when I pop in an unformatted or unrecognized drive.
>
> --*-- Hot-pluggable drives would be nice if it doesn't make things complicated.  I'm willing to power down the machine to swap the drives if need be.
>
>
> I think what I'm looking for is a bare-bones rackable server, with an internal IDE drive to boot Linux, a CD-ROM drive to install Linux, and two removable drive bays that I can dump the data to.
>
> Suggestions?  Recommendations?
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Allan Metts, VP -- Technology & Operations
> AirSage, Inc.
> ametts at airsage.com
> (404) 861-3404
>
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>


--
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century