[SOLVED] What's Good EMP/Solar Flare Proof Data Storage?

oathmark1

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May 15, 2016
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Can someone talk about "disaster type scenarios" related to data storage? EMP/Solar Flare comes to mind, but there can be more.

I would think that any flash would be gone. The hard drive disk would remain I believe, but it would need to be placed on another HDD platform to spin it. CD's and DVD's I hear would be immune since they are storage using light means.

Tell me about it please. Thx
 
Solution

If the EMP is strong enough to cause sparking on the CD/DVD's aluminum reflective layer, I would think the bigger issue would be you being unable to survive close proximity to such a powerful EM source. Making this exercise a moot point.

I would research what NASA does to radiation harden their interplanetary spacecraft (satellites are largely protected from charged particles by the...


CD/DVD burned at home do not necessarily have a long lifespan.
Yes, there are archival quality DVD's. If you wish to spend that level of money.

Faraday cage? "disaster type scenarios" includes fire/flood/theft, which Faraday does nothing for.
 
I have to wonder that post EMP, post solar flare, would you really care? the next 5 years are going to be spent figuring out how to move food around quickly enough that you can eat. Music - nothing to play it on, Pictures - nothing to see it on, Movies - nothing to watch it on, and you'll be too busy. Post fire/flood is much easier to recover from, you can pop down the road and buy something to do those things.
 

Depending on the source of the EMP, the radiation would probably be too high frequency and/or high power to be blocked by a Faraday cage.

Not sure a CD/DVD would fare too well vs an EMP either. Think CD in a microwave. I think it's a result of the reflective, metallic layer on the bottom of the disc that would have large induced currents/voltages in the presence of strong EM radiation.
 
If there's an EMP or flare strong enough to trash the data on your drive, it is also strong enough to trash the PC and monitor.
And your refrigerator.
And your electric company.
And the factory to make new ones.
And the delivery system to your grocery store.
And your bank.

The trivial bit of stuff on your hard drive will be the least of your worries.

One Second After
 
From what I understand so far the means of storage is what matters. For information that's storage in the arrangements of electrons and stuff like that, it can't retain itself. The type of data storage that is stored by burning holes with light can retain itself. It's not electrons or circuity. It's just holes, so it sticks.

That's why I heard that DVD's and CD's are good for this.

How many years before they start to wear out? I mean these wouldn't even be used except for storage and stored away. They would be used if anything happened.

I'm a researcher. That's why.
 
Well without being specific enough its going to be hard.
Yes it might be important/serious data, but if its something that important that is expected to be useful after an event like this, it would best be on physical media. Multiple copies. That dont require power to use.
 


Serious data = a cure for cancer? The specific reentry profile for return from the ISS? The One True Copy of the design doc for the new gen Intel i10/i11?
Then that means multiple copies and hardware, geographically separated.

Spitballing ideas here in a random forum is of little use unless the level of "serious data" is known.

But when it comes down to "I have no food", everything else takes a back seat.
Everything.
 


I don't think anyone knows. I was being told back in the early 90's that CD's would start to delaminate in 10 years, not seen one yet (not looked too hard though, but ripped everything again about 15 years ago, so some of them should have gone). There are those that claim 50 or 100 years, would they survive that kind of EM abuse? Give it to the library of congress as a problem if it is important research material?

The disks that you write are not 'burnt' with tiny holes, they phase change domains on the platter to make them more or less reflective. Could this be changed by strong EM, you'd have to ask the manufacturer.
 


I have a stack of ripped movies on DVD. Burned between 15 and 10 years ago. Recently found after multiple house moves.
Out of the ~50 I've tried so far, about 1/2 not fully readable, in a couple of different DVD drives.
And I've seen a couple delaminate.

I have a couple of retail CD's from the mid 90's that work perfectly. "PC Magazine Top 100 Websites of 1996".
And its funny looking through that list for who no longer exists, and those who are major today, that did not exist at that time.
 
If you’re not using OPTICAL storage, all your data may be wiped out in a nuclear war, solar flare or EMP attack – NaturalNews.com https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-04-26-if-youre-not-using-optical-storage-all-your-data-may-be-wiped-out-in-a-nuclear-war-solar-flare-or-emp-attack.html

The threat of an EMP attack from North Korea is “real and terrifying,” reports PJ Media. John Moore writes:

An EMP disaster from a high-altitude blast seems like science fiction: There is a silent flash high in the sky, and everything using electricity just … stops. Cars stop, power goes out, the Internet dies, satellites quit working, landline and mobile phone systems go out, and computers are destroyed. In a moment, we are back to 1850, as was dramatized in William Forstchen’s 2009 novel One Second After.

While more people are becoming aware of the risk of an EMP attack, what almost nobody seems to realize is that magnetic storage media is also subject to data loss from electromagnetic phenomena. This includes hard drives, RAID storage arrays, thumb drives and even SD cards.

Even worse, most of what modern society has come to rely on — everything from retail transactions, bank records and business accounting records — is stored on magnetic media which may be quite literally wiped out in an instant.

“During Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy, many government agencies and businesses alike lost magnetically stored data in the widespread flooding,” explains this Hitachi presentation on long-term data storage. “…Nearly all optically stored data survived.”

As I explain in the video below, few people understand the physics of magnetic media storage. Perhaps 99% of people today falsely believe that hard drive storage is permanent. In reality, magnetic media loses bits every minute. Data files “degrade” over time on hard drives because of the frailty of magnetic storage. The degradation process is sometimes called “bit rot,” and it gets worse with higher temperatures. This is why RAID storage arrays must be regularly “scrubbed” to restore lost data bits.

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In an EMP attack, most government and banking will FAIL
Because most government entities and banking entities use magnetic media for the bulk of their storage needs, all their transactional and storage records may be wiped out in an EMP attack or nuclear war. It doesn’t take much data degradation to destroy a database, by the way. A loss of just 1% of the bits in a large database file can corrupt the structure of the internal tables, making the rest of the data nearly unreadable without advanced data recovery specialists getting involved.

Ask yourself this simple question: How does your state government archive its financial records? Criminal history records? Medicaid records? Except in certain rare cases, most government entities are relying heavily on magnetic storage media that’s subject to instant failure and near-total data loss.

If you own a small business, how are you storing your tax records and accounting records? If it’s all being stored on magnetic media, you are begging for a wipe out.

Yes, there is a storage technology that can survive EMP weapons, solar flares and even nuclear war: OPTICAL storage
Optical storage does not rely on magnetic media. Instead, it relies on the burning of tiny pits into plastic media, sporting a 50+ year shelf life with virtually no data degradation. Better yet, it doesn’t lose data from a solar flare, EMP burst or a nuclear weapon detonation (although obviously plastic can melt of it’s too close to ground zero).

Optical storage media can include CD-ROMs, Blu-Ray storage drives or optical disk archive cartridges such as the Sony system. Last year, Sony unveiled a new, second generation cartridge archival system with a 100 year shelf life and a 3.3 TB storage capacity per cartridge. (Each cartridge is essentially a stack of high-density Blu-Ray discs.)

For something far less expensive, you can purchase M-Disc optical media for about $20 each, which permanently store 100GB (write-once). Combine that with a Blu-Ray write drive (roughly $99 street price), and you can save your data for 1,000 years by spanning many M-Discs. This is the best solution for consumers and small businesses.

Personally, I use Sony Optical Disc Archive hardware. It’s crazy expensive, way beyond the affordability of most consumers. Then again, it’s even more expensive to lose all your data. The way I figure, if it’s worth protecting, it’s worth protecting from solar flares, EMP attacks and nuclear war, too.

(No, Sony didn’t offer me anything to write this. I’m just trying to help our fans and readers get better prepared than the rest of society, which is largely made up of clueless sheeple who are going to lose everything in the next cataclysmic event.)

To listen to more podcasts on the science of prepping, visit the Health Ranger Science website, where new podcasts are being posted in the coming days."
 
If you’re not using OPTICAL storage, all your data may be wiped out in a nuclear war, solar flare or EMP attack – NaturalNews.com

How much data do you have that needs this level of backup?


"To listen to more podcasts on the science of prepping, visit the Health Ranger Science website, where new podcasts are being posted in the coming days."

I've been accused of being a prepper. :pt1cable:
But you have to define what you're prepping for, and how you're going to recover.

Having a stack of 100 DVD's does no good if you have nothing to read them with, or if #67 of 100 of the backup set is corrupt.



Without getting too GRAPESY, the threat of an EMP attack from North Korea is neither real nor terrifying.
It does, however, boost podcast ratings.
 
@oathmark1 as far as I can tell that guy is basically just some blogger, and doesn't cite sources for anything he says (other than press releases from companies that make optical media products). Optical media isn't some bullet proof long term storage method like the guy makes out, especially not regular DVD-R/CD-R discs. But I agree that specially designed archival optical media does look like a much better option for long term storage compared to hard drives and such.

Also, why copy-paste the whole article? Just linking to it would have sufficed.

Edit: After looking up the author a tiny bit he looks like a quack, focused on peddling pseudo-science, conspiracy theories, and snake-oil.
 

If the EMP is strong enough to cause sparking on the CD/DVD's aluminum reflective layer, I would think the bigger issue would be you being unable to survive close proximity to such a powerful EM source. Making this exercise a moot point.

I would research what NASA does to radiation harden their interplanetary spacecraft (satellites are largely protected from charged particles by the Earth's magnetic field, which deflects the particles towards the poles where they become the aurora). And what the military does to harden their electronics against the EMP from nuclear blasts.
 
Solution
^True.

Edit: Well, after a bit of googling, maybe not. Apparently a microwave oven (which is very capable of destroying CDs) produces about 2kV/m electric field strength. From what I could find, it looks like an EMP could generate a lot higher field strength than that, and that the human body can safely handle a lot higher electric field than that. Would probably depend on what sort of frequency profile the emp has though. I'm really not sure though. I would still guess that CDs would generally fare much better than HDD/SSDs.
 

I was thinking more in terms of the heat and blast that would accompany the production of that much EMP.