Digital archive techniques?

[fos]

What are your thoughts on digital archive techniques for files, images, and video?

Gold based cd-r and dvd-r, hard drive?

File integrity verification?

fos

[danieldk]

I have little experience with that, but I'd make sure to have at least multiple copies, in multiple locations. Maybe something like geo-redundant rsync.net, and local DVD backups. And be careful to redo DVD copies every few years to be sure.

Maybe it's interesting to look at the lifetime of solid state drives as well.

Maybe you could also use parity data to be able to repair files when they are damaged. E.g. with:

http://parchive.sourceforge.net/

This is included as the 'par2' package in Debian. Here's the description for your convenience ;):


Parity Archive Volume Set, for checking and repair of files
A command line implementation of the PAR v2.0 specification. This
specification is used for parity checking and repair of a file set.
If the files in the recovery set ever get damaged (e.g. when they are
transmitted or stored on a faulty disk) the client can read the damaged
input files, read the (possibly damaged) PAR files, and regenerate the
original input files. Of course, not all damages can be repaired, but
many can.