What is the best way to store files?

[w00fd06]

I was wondering what you guys out there at Legit thought the best way to store files was, and I mean like, USB Drives, Firewire, SD Cards(and other memory cards), stuff like that. If someone could tell me what they think then that would be appreciated. Thanks.(':ANAL:')

[kenc51]

It all depends on how you value your data, how much data there is, what your budget is and how often it's accessed!

A Linux file server is a nice way to go,
I just setup a box to run a a file server, FTP server and torrent server with DynDNS so I can access it from anywhere!

NAS is another way to go........ohh and RAID 1 is easy too.

[Drizzt81]

I am not entirely sure what you mean by ``store files''. If you are concerned about losing data due to user error or software issues, a good backup strategy can do wonders.

For the home user, a cheap option would be one or preferably more external drives, which are only connected to the PC and Power grid when the backup is in progress. A more sophisticated, but much more expensive setup would be a tape drive. It is certainly more reliable since tapes are less susceptible to damage from dropping or handling in general.

I run a Linux server with a bunch of HDDs. It is read-only for the network and uses rsync to grab copies off the most recent file versions from my file server.

If you are concerned about the storage medium mostly, I would rank them in the following order of decreasing reliability:

1. flash
2. optical media (DVD/ CD), which are refreshed on a good schedule
3. tape
4. optical media (DVD/ CD)
5. hdd
6. floppies and the like

[Sapientun]

I think DVD/CD backups are the best, but DVD more (non-rewritable). They're cheap and easy to find. That way you can recreate new backups easily on a new DVD each one in a while and you can be sure that the data won't dissapear someday (unlike if you reuse the same flash device over and over).

I would recommend some good DVDs though, something like Verbatim should be great.