Write once, read forever, backup media advice

[ebastler]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Are they? Not in my experience, as long as you buy brand name sticks.

[nctnico]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Are they? Not in my experience, as long as you buy brand name sticks.

Agreed. Never had trouble with name brand USB sticks. Typically I buy the ones from Kingston from reputable sources.

[PlainName]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Are they? Not in my experience, as long as you buy brand name sticks.

They don't seem to have a very good reputation. Possibly not helped by being rather slow too.

[tooki]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Are they? Not in my experience, as long as you buy brand name sticks.

They don't seem to have a very good reputation. Possibly not helped by being rather slow too.

That's because there are tons of garbage thumb drives out there, and many people bought those (or got them as promotional gifts, etc).

Thumb drives from top-quality vendors (the same ones one should be choosing for SD cards, too) just work. I've always bought SanDisk thumb drives, and SanDisk and Lexar memory cards (CF, MS, and SD, in my case) and have never had one fail.

More expensive ones are faster. But it does seem that thumb drive Flash controllers were not historically optimized for speed like SD card controllers. That changed with USB 3, and of course a USB SSD is just a high-performance thumb drive.

[PlainName]

A lot of USB3 sticks are not really any faster on writes. Read, perhaps, but writes still boringly slow.

[David Hess]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Prompted by mysterious incidents of data loss on USB Flash sticks, a couple years ago I ran tests are a bunch of random and almost new USB Flash sticks which I had collected, some generic and some name brand.  All of them lost data within not much longer than a year.  Some of the no-name ones lost data within a month.  Whether the USB stick was powered or not did not seem to make any difference.  These tests convinced me to use SSDs in USB enclosures for routine external storage instead of USB sticks, although this is not always possible.

Thinking about it, I concluded that because USB Flash sticks cannot rely on idle-time-scrubbing or scrub-on-read, because they cannot have power loss protection, they do not retain data well even when powered.  SSDs however may have power loss protection, so can support idle-time-scrubbing.

I have had better results with SD cards, at least when they are in continuous use.

There are some companies which make what should be reliable USB sticks and cards, like Swissbit, but they are also really expensive.

[SiliconWizard]

People often joke about paper or engraved stone as long term means of storage, but for multiple gigabyes this is a non-starter.

In all seriousness, it's not a terrible idea for small amounts of data, but yes, Gigabytes are probably out of the question. This is an interesting project: https://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/

Depending on how compressible your data is, you can store up to 3 MB on a standard A4 sheet of paper.

Except "modern" paper is utter crap and won't survive past a few decades, contrary to some very old paper that is still almost intact centuries later.
And of course, the minimum for the printing itself would be to use a laser printer, but even toner is not going to last longer than a few decades (depending on storage conditions). Maybe that's enough, but that can't be compared with some ancient paper sheets and inks that were made with completely different (and more durable) materials.

Some argue that very long term archival doesn't make sense anyway because people are likely not to have the equipment to read the data, a few centuries from now (or even just a few decades). But as long as the medium/format is documented somewhere, they'll always be able to rebuild equipment to read it if needed (unless humanity has gone through so bad de-evolution that they'll be unable to figure it out, in which case, it doesn't look good anyway).

[PlainName]

Why are USB sticks so dodgy compared to, say, SDcards or SSDs?

Prompted by mysterious incidents of data loss on USB Flash sticks, a couple years ago I ran tests are a bunch of random and almost new USB Flash sticks which I had collected ...

Thanks.

Now I think about it I do have some USB sticks doing serious duty - they are the boot drives for some servers which run up Xpenology and ESXi. Typically they are read only (copy Linux into RAM to run) and always on. But there have been power cuts and other power-down situations, and so far I've not had one fail to boot. Might just be lucky

[nctnico]

People often joke about paper or engraved stone as long term means of storage, but for multiple gigabyes this is a non-starter.

In all seriousness, it's not a terrible idea for small amounts of data, but yes, Gigabytes are probably out of the question. This is an interesting project: https://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/

Depending on how compressible your data is, you can store up to 3 MB on a standard A4 sheet of paper.

Except "modern" paper is utter crap and won't survive past a few decades, contrary to some very old paper that is still almost intact centuries later.

That is why acid-free paper specifically for archiving and preservation purposes exists: https://www.preservationequipment.com/Catalogue/Conservation-Materials/Paper-Board/What-is-acid-free-paper  (random Google find).

Some argue that very long term archival doesn't make sense anyway because people are likely not to have the equipment to read the data, a few centuries from now (or even just a few decades). But as long as the medium/format is documented somewhere, they'll always be able to rebuild equipment to read it if needed

If needed... but needing to build a contraption becomes expensive quickly which makes it not worthwhile to recover the information. And for documenting the storage method, you'll be back to using paper.

[3roomlab]

interesting article about media lifespan
https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html

[jonovid]

perpetual generational backups every 10yrs is possible to keep it forever.
this works for linear media as in order to play back video  sound  images or text.
however porting raw unedited code or software between different hardware & media generations can be problematic.
in preserving the essence of the original digital media applications.
so for example porting a video game that is 20 yro software so it will run on new or next generation of hardware.
generational business practices can be a threat. so for example planned obsolescence in all types of digital media.