File Not Found: The Record Industry's Digital Storage Crisis

"Last year, the Beggars Banquet label unearthed the multitrack master recordings of the Cult's classic 1985 album, Love, for a planned deluxe edition. The LP was an early digital recording, and to the label's shock, one master was unplayable; the other contained only 80 percent of the album. "That's the problem with digital," says Steve Webbon, head archivist of the Beggars Group. "When it goes, it's just blank. It's gone.""


http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/file-not-found-the-record-industrys-digital-storage-crisis-20101207

Long-Term Personal Data Storage

"There is absolutely nothing that you can put away for decades and expect to be useful. Your requirements are not simple - they'll actually very, very hard to meet, even if you want to throw a lot of money at the problem.

You don't know that a jpeg, for example, will be readable in 30 years. The format may be so deprecated that there might not even be a viewer available. Like my old Microsoft Works 4.0 documents - although I have the data, I have nothing that can read them unless I want to spin up an old Windows image, assuming that I can generate a virtualized environment that can support an old Windows (Windows XP probably won't even boot on any PC being produced 30 years from now). And some of that data is only a few years old, not decades old.

You should store not only the data, but also the applications that created the data. And the computer you need to run those applications. And backups of those. And then every few years, pull it all back and validate it and update as required."

[...]

"Forget media integrity. The problem is technology drift. Everyone thinks "ubiquitous" (as in every computer has a USB port) is the same as "eternal," and it isn't. Twenty years from now, your USB thumb drives and CD-R's may have their data physically intact, but only museums will have equipment that can read them.

It is a fantasy to suppose that you can successfully perform Sisyphus-like task of systematically recopying your data to new media and formats. The proof of this is the innumerable stories of big, well-funded organizations that have neglected to do this. If the NASAs of the world keep finding reels of tape with important data on it that can't be read due to technology skew, what makes you think that you can do much better?

(What makes me bitter is failure of vendors to give adequate warning when software updates remove the capabilities of reading file formats that were formerly supported. I once verified that my new Mac could read my old MFS diskettes, and did not notice when a software update to the OS removed that capability. Microsoft was less than forthcoming when they removed the built-in ability of Excel to read Multiplan files)."

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F13%2F1434216

10 ways to reduce removable media headaches in Linux

"For many new Linux users, removable media can be a deal-breaker. Anyone coming over from Windows knows you simply insert the CD, use it, and eject it. With Linux, it isn’t always that simple. In fact, with Linux, removable media has always held a completely different philosophy.

In the old days of UNIX, removable media was seen in the same light as the PC itself — multi-user. So when you inserted some form of media (usually a floppy disk, back then), it had to be mounted to a mount point (such as /mnt/floppy) and was then made available to all users on the system. Because of this, the removable media synchronization wasn’t “on demand.” It typically worked by caching the data until the media was unmounted. Upon unmounting the media, the data was written and the media could be removed.

Linux has caught up to the needs of today’s user and, in many cases, the media mounting/unmounting is automatic. But not every situation is the same. Here are some tips that should make your Linux life with removable media better."

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=457

Amazon S3 Storage and Firefox S3 Organizer Addon

"As part of Amazon's AWS service they provide online storage at very low rates via the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). S3 combined with the S3 Amazon Firefox Add-on provide an extremely easy to use means to upload files via the Firefox web browser. Just open the add-on that resides in the lower right portion of Firefox, select (double-click) a destination folder or "bucket" as Amazon calls them and then use windows explorer to browse to the file or files you want to transfer, select them, and then drag and drop into the add-on user interface."

http://hothardware.com/News/Amazon-S3-Storage-and-Firefox-S3-Organizer-Addon/

A List of Amazon S3 Backup Tools

"In an effort to replace my home backup server with Amazon's S3, I've been collecting a list of Amazon S3 compatible backup tools to look at. Here's what I've discovered"

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html

Use DropBox to seamlessly sync files

"DropBox is a new synchronization service that works seamlessly between Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X clients. With it, you have a specific directory that is synchronized between various systems linked to your account. By dragging a file into this special DropBox directory, it will be automatically pushed to every other system’s DropBox; remove a file and it will be removed from every system. This can be used to share documents, configuration files, photos, music, or anything else you want. Beyond synchronizing files between linked systems, you can also access files via the DropBox Web site."

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/?p=288

Cucku - Social backup

"Cucku backs up your data locally and then sends a secure copy to a trusted friend or family member of your choice. It’s easy, trustworthy, and free!"



http://www.cucku.com/

Very Long-Term Backup

"One side of the disk contains a graphic teaser. The design shows headlines in the eight major languages of the world today spiraling inward in ever-decreasing size till it becomes so small you have trouble reading it, yet the text goes on getting smaller. The sentences announce: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” "

http://kk.org/kk/2008/08/very-longterm-backup.php

How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux

"Dropbox is a cloud storage service with really smooth native platform integration on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. The Dropbox client software will automatically keep files synchronized between multiple computers and the user's Dropbox web storage space. It detects when files are modified on the local filesystem and will immediately upload the changes. The web service then propagates those changes to all other computers on which the user is running the Dropbox software."


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080914-how-dropbox-ended-my-search-for-seamless-sync-on-linux.html

The Owner-Free Filesystem (OFF)

"The Owner-Free Filesystem (or OFF) is a distributed filesystem in which everything is stored in reference to randomized data blocks, as opposed to a 1:1 copy of the original data being inserted. The creators of the Owner-Free Filesystem have coined a new term to define the network: A brightnet. Nobody shares any copyrighted files, and therefore nobody needs to hide away. "

http://wiki.offdev.org/Main_Page

Firefox Universal Uploader (fireuploader)

"As the name says, this firefox extension allows you to upload/download files from any website using a friendly interface. Upload files/photos/videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net(1GB of free space), Facebook, Webshots, OmniDrive, SME Storage and Google Docs in this version."

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4724

Wuala - your free online hard-disk

"Instead of centralized servers, Wuala uses the idle resources (storage and bandwidth) of computers of its users who can opt to trade their local storage for online storage. Note that not everybody has to offer local storage and in fact, not everyone can. Local storage is only useful to the system if the computer is online more than 17% of the time on average (about 4 hours a day). Only when you meet this requirement, you are allowed to trade your local storage for more online storage. But even if you do not contribute, we give you 1 GB of free online storage which is already enough for most purposes."

http://wua.la/en/home.html

Nirvanix - The Premier Cloud Storage Platform Optimized for Large Files

"The Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network contains truly innovative technology that is designed to address the most critical storage challenges facing modern businesses. With nodes spread across the globe, the SDN can intelligently store and deliver content to ensure the best end-user experience, and with policy-based replication, Nirvanix users are not vulnerable to a single point of failure. From the web 2.0 start-up to the Enterprise Corporation, the Nirvanix platform can offer a reliable, cost-effective solution that fits a business' unique requirements."

http://www.nirvanix.com/

Online Information Storage: Completing the Web as Platform

"Of course, the premise of all this is that more and more of our information will continue to flow online along with the software that we use. Our personal data, work documents, images, audio, video, and everything else is more useful to us and others if we move it online, making it accessible anywhere, taking advantage of professional data center backup, and getting off of the hard drive upgrade treadmill. Particularly as our personal archives of digital content become large and highly valuable as we aggregate them over the years, they become irreplaceable assets that require better care than we might be able to give them without professional help."

http://web2.wsj2.com/online_information_storage_completing_the_web_as_platform.htm

Filemail

http://filemail.com/

iLocker

" iLocker allows you to create a locker containing whatever text you want.
The text you enter is encrypted using your password and a highly secure encryption method. "

https://www.ilocker.org/home/

example

http://www.ilocker.org/3641

(the password is password)

"Jungle Disk makes it easy to store files securely online"

http://www.jungledisk.com/howitworks.shtml

Dock Your Old Drives with the Hard Drive USB Dock

"Dock any internal SATA hard drive in this USB dock to turn any internal drive into an external drive on-the-quick. If you've got a few old hard drives hanging around that you'd like to put to good use but they aren't really worth installing in your computer's innards and you don't feel like taking the time to convert that old drive into an external hard drive, this simple dock, which appears to have taken swappable inspiration from your SNES, seems like a brilliant idea. "

http://lifehacker.com/361427/dock-your-old-drives-with-the-hard-drive-usb-dock

Share a disk - My Disk Server

"MyDiskServer is a small Java application that you run on the computer you wish to host files from. It requires no installation and can be launched by a single click."

http://mydisk.co.uk/

Gspace

"Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface."

http://www.getgspace.com/