Preserve, Protect, Refresh: Best Practices for Digital Archive Backups
Ensuring long-term access to your Community History Archive requires reliable digital archive backups.
Understanding the Limits of USB-Based Drives
Storage devices have defined life spans:
- HDDs: 3–5 years of reliable use; susceptible to wear due to mechanical parts
- SSDs: 5–10 years depending on conditions; better durability, but still vulnerable to unpowered data degradation
Even unused drives can suffer from bit rot, corruption, or silent failure. That’s why we recommend replacing any drive over five years old—even if it appears to be functioning—to prevent data loss in your digital archive backups.
Best Practice: Review your external drive every 1–2 years and replace every 5 years.
Environmental Conditions Matter
Long-term media storage demands controlled conditions. To extend drive life, store them at:
- Temperature: 60–75°F
- Humidity: 35–55% relative humidity
Our Recommended Multi-Layered Strategy
At Advantage Archives, we recommend a three-part preservation model for digital archive backups:
- Online CHA access – your cloud-based, always-on repository
- An on-site backup drive – refreshed every 5 years
- Archival-grade M-DISCs stored in our FIRELOCK® media vault
M-DISCs are write-once, archival-quality discs that resist environmental damage and don’t suffer the same degradation as HDDs or SSDs. Our secure vault, engineered with ceramic insulation and magnetic shielding, offers unmatched protection against fire, heat, moisture, and more, enhancing your digital archive backups.
Migration Services You Can Trust
If your external drive is approaching its expiration window, we provide full migration support, including:
- Verifying file structure and naming conventions
- Validating metadata (publication, date, location, etc.)
- Ensuring equity between generated and delivered files
- Preparing and exporting files as multipage PDFs
Whether you want to replace your drive, incorporate M-DISCs, or store backups in our secure vault, we’ll ensure your digitized history is protected—today and for the future.
Your history deserves a future-proof backup strategy. Let us help make that happen.
Contact us to refresh your drive, explore our vault services, or ask how we can support your long-term access plan with digital archive backups.
Read More About It!
A building can’t serve the public if people can’t reach it. Physical access is no longer enough, especially when hours are cut, collections are removed, or the public is pushed away altogether. Digitization changes the equation.
History is a powerful thing. Seeing it through the eyes of a person who was “there when it happened” connects you to it in a very meaningful way. Read about how a grandmother took it upon herself to document her stories for generations to come.
