

Longaccess Wants To Cold-Store Your Digital Life For 30 Years - comzeradd
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/longaccess-wants-to-cold-store-your-digital-life-for-30-years/

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drdaeman
100GB for 30 years? Well, I'm not sure about average cases, but personally I
have collected a stack of about a dozen of hard drives (volume ranging from
60GB to 2TB) over last 15 years. All fully loaded with the digital junk -
because why delete things when you can just leave them?

Most of the data in that digital fossils is movies from that bay with pirates,
but I guess there's still much more than 100GB of self-produced information -
message (email, IM, phone) archives, digitized drawings, RAW photos, source
code, savegames and so on.

Obviously, one could sort out the trash and compact the rest (like extracting
a 10KB patch from several-gigabyte OpenWRT source tree, or radically
compacting photo collection by deleting bad shots) and fit into 3GB/yr quota,
but that's a hard and - unless one really wishes to fit some storage quota
instead of just buying another hard drive - mostly pointless work.

~~~
mcb3k
This service isn't really meant for storing things like your music and video
collection, or even your day-to-day chats. I think the analogy of a safe-
deposit box at the bank really describes it well. You wouldn't keep your DVD
or CD collection at the bank, because storing it would be expensive and your
collections are most likely easily replaced. But you might want to keep your
wedding pictures, the video of your kid's first step, birth and death
certificates, love letters, and important legal documents in a safe deposit
box at the bank. You might even store something like your great-grandmother's
wedding ring and other historic documents. Essentially all the stuff that
would be difficult to replace, and would be worth keeping for the sake of
posterity.

Given this, I think 100 GB is probably an acceptable amount of storage for
this day and age. That may change in 5 or 10 years time as technologies change
and the size of images and videos expand. But in 5 to 10 years time, services
like this will probably have changed to keep up with the times.

~~~
vrypan
I couldn't have put it better, thank you!

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Cthulhu_
The main concern I have with services like these is: will they, their hosting,
and thus my data, still be available in 30 years? I can just imagine that
within 5 years, the service will go "Okay we're bankrupt, sorry, you've got
one week to get your data before we pull the plug".

I'd rather see a service where you can upload your data, and it'll send you
back a physical data container where your data is written on a medium that is
guaranteed to last the ages - i.e. no magnetic or optical (think dvd / blu-
ray) storage, but more of a stable solid-state or holographic storage. In a
box that can be put in a safe for posterity to discover after 30 years.

~~~
ghshephard
Archival Blu-Ray storage can last a great deal longer than 30 years -
[http://www.mdisc.com/](http://www.mdisc.com/) \- and it's (relatively) cheap.

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ghshephard
I think it's great to have online long term storage, but, I'm a strong
believer in also having an _offline_ storage, particularly one that you
physically control.

You can get a 3 Pack of 25 GB archival Blue-Ray discs for $15. So, for $30 you
have 150 GB of truly "cold/offline" data that should last significantly longer
than 30 years. Toss that in a box somewhere to go hand-in-hand with the
LongAccess/AmazonGlacier storage...

~~~
drdaeman
Would they really last for 30 years? My experience with CD-Rs wasn't that good
- after 15 years about 1/3 of the discs is partially unreadable.

Guess, my experience would be better if I had bought pricier better-quality
discs and stored them in climate-controlled environment instead of just
stuffing a bundle on a shelf.

In my experience, cold storage is best with hard drives. Preferably, in RAID-1
setup, so if one in a pair accidentally dies, the other's likely to remain
intact.

~~~
ghshephard
I'm not talking about your average CD-Rs, but ECMA-379 [1] certified media.
Something like the M-Disc [2]

The US Department of Defense put a lot of effort testing their DVD Media [3],
and it stood up well. We'll see if their Blu-Rays likewise get the same kind
of certification/accelerated life-time testing, but, at the very least, I'm
guessing they will last 30 years. Just don't leave them out in the Sun.

[1] [http://www.ecma-
international.org/publications/standards/Ecm...](http://www.ecma-
international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-379.htm)

[2] [http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/](http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/)

[3]
[http://www.mdisc.com/docs/chinalakemillenniatatestreport_mod...](http://www.mdisc.com/docs/chinalakemillenniatatestreport_mod_04feb2010_a.pdf)

~~~
vrypan
We believe that the average consumer needs more than a technical solution.

My latest laptop has no DVD drive, and I would bet that a DVD would not be
more useful than a cassette tape to my daughter in 20 years, even if the data
on it is in good shape. We may not even have the WWW by then, much like we
don't have Gopher any more. What we offer is a service: we will do what it
takes to keep the data in good shape and make them accessible to anyone
holding an Archive Certificate.

The DoD, or large companies don't need this kind of service: they have the
resources to manage, migrate, validate, replicate, etc, their data for as long
as they are valuable to them. If DVDs start to fail, I'm sure they'll notice
it, and they'll spend a gazillion dollars to move data to a new medium.

I don't think any consumer has a special week of the year when they take out
all their DVDs and HDDs and verify them, make new copies, and replace the bad
ones.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Longaccess.

~~~
ghshephard
So - first, I made it very clear that an online solution such as yours is
definitely part of an archival solution, for all of the benefits that you have
listed, and I'm excited that longaccess exists, and looking forward to seeing
you do great things in this space.

But, people should not rely _solely_ on a third party solution for their
archival needs. They should _always_ have a copy of their data that is
offline, and physically in their possession, in a ECMA-379/ISO-10995 certified
format that will last a long time. Certified Archival Media, is precisely that
- it's designed to last on the order of a 100 years or more with zero
requirements to validate. If you are super paranoid then you could make two
copies. Then, you have both of your bases covered; You have something you can
touch, and is 100% under your control, and, simultaneously, Longaccess will
take care of all of the hard work of checking integrity, reproducing data,
transferring it from data system to data system (in whatever form that takes
over the next 30 years), and otherwise ensuring that there is continuity of
data which can be accessed by the user (or their descendants) from something
as simple as a certificate.

And yes, I do agree that the achilles heal of DVD Archival Media is the very
real possibility of there being no DVD players in 20-30 years from now. Here's
hoping eBay is still around. :-)

~~~
dm2
There are almost 500 different cassette players on Amazon, a device and media
that is completely irrelevant.

If there is any demand for something someone will produce it, whether or not
it's the latest and greatest technology.

There will also be a great deal of notice before a device as important as DVD
/ Blu-Ray stops being produced. I'd say it's a non-issue, especially since a
great deal of data is being backed up on these disks.

Of course, multiple backup types and locations is always safer.

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zaroth
100GB for 30 years - €399 (~$550) on Longaccess vs $360 (plus retrieval cost)
on Glacier.

Who would you trust?

~~~
vrypan
Longaccess uses AWS Glacier too (a combination of S3 and Glacier, actually).
The added value comes from a couple of features, like:

\- making the use of Glacier friendlier to the average user

\- providing a well defined way of accessing the data (retrieval, decryption,
etc.). This is very useful if, for example, you want the files to be retrieved
by your children in a couple of decades

\- making a commitment to take care of the data for decades: if Amazon decides
in 10 years that they are no longer interested in being in this business, we
will move the data to an alternative provider, but nothing will change for our
users.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Longaccess.

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goldenkey
So you pass your liabilities onto Amazon? Utterly ridiculous that I should
have to have faith in Glacier when your storage is your main product.

~~~
vrypan
Our main product is not storage, in the same way that a bank's main product is
neither steel nor vaults.

We just use a reliable technology. AFAIK Amazon is not in the business of
preserving data for decades, but they are great at storing data. On the other
hand, Longaccess' business is to preserve private data for decades, and using
the best underlying technologies and services at each given point in time to
do so.

~~~
goldenkey
Forgive me. Techcrunch wrongly refers to your product as cold storage and
sensationalized falsities. Your website has no such claims and seems like a
worthwhile product. I wish you luck and success.

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ljosa
This would be more comforting if the data bailment were accompanies by some
kind of insurament policy. Then, the stored data would be a valuable asset
that could be sold to a new caretaker when Longaccess goes belly up.

~~~
vrypan
We are working on something that's somehow close to your suggestion.

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fragkakis
Great idea.

