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Backup Your Data to Paper

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30 pointskaptain16 comments

Back of the envelope on storage capacity: - Looks like about 200x200 px grid - 200x200 = 40,000 total possible bits - Assume only 75% of these are available for data due to QR structure and redundancy features - Leaves about 30,000 bits or 3-4 kb capacity in that one image - Comes out to about 5 reams of paper per mb of data storage

This would be a better "ping pong balls on a plane" interview question for comp sci candidates.

So one page of paper can store one page of data?

While I'm neither an expert in data backup or an archivist I'm willing to guess that it would highly recommended that anyone using a method such as this to use high quality acid-free archival grade paper to avoid the inevitable ink fade that occurs with lower quality paper types.

I don't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure I saw something like this about twenty years ago, any HNers know what I'm talking about?

There have been a few paper-based storage projects... I would guess that you're thinking of "PaperBack"[0] or maybe "rainbow storage"?[1]

0: http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_storage

I had this exact idea a few years ago.

It was a neat idea, to offline your data to analog format. But, it would require a lot of paper printouts to back up your data.

The paper printout might actually last longer than CDROMs.

A more interesting idea, would be to encrypt your data, and back it up to the cloud. Then, the printout is just the password-protected key to re-download the data, and decrypt it.

> back it up to the cloud

The cloud is a volatile and ever changing place. There are no garuantees Google, Amazon, or Microsoft will still be around in 50 or 100 years.

Wherever you store paper is also a volatile and ever changing place. S3 is certainly more durable over the past 14 years than my homes/offices.

"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"

https://www.webcitation.org/6P8EBZqQX

I tried tape backup.

Never was able to read the tapes later.

Take tris with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard an urban legend about a Fortune 500 company:

Company uses magnetic tape backups that are stored in a bank vault

Something occurs down the line requesting the backups to be restored

Unable to restore backups from any of the tapes

Investigation performed, result:

IT person was taking the backups to the bank via subway, magnetized doors of the subway were constantly wiping the tapes

Conclusion: always test your backups regularly

>IT person was taking the backups to the bank via subway, magnetized doors of the subway were constantly wiping the tapes

That's probably bullshit you need a extreme strong magnet todo that.

LTO Tapes are the best.

Used them at a Insurance company, they are extremely reliable.

I haven't used LTO. Looking at the description on Wikipedia, LTO looks excellently designed.

I used DAT/DDS (didn't have a choice - was given all my university projects on a DDS tape, couldn't read the data when I got access to a drive sadly), and I won't be using that again!

No really, LTO are the only tapes you should use, the drives are backward compatible and quite cheap if they are from an older generation. Cerns CASTOR system mainly relies on LTO-Drives/Tapes

What happened to Freenet? Why is ist not used more widely?

No we just need to Microfilm it - --- also fork it into an MJPEG exporter.

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