How would YOU do this?

[Luke122]

Here's the situation:

A friend of mine needs to move 644gb of data across the country to another office.

Options: File transfer, shipping a hard drive, ???

Network traffic limitations prevent us from doing the transfer that way, so I'd love to hear some other solutions for moving huge amounts of data between two locations.

Ideas?

[blueonblack]

If it were me I would copy it onto two different hard drives and ship them both to the second location separately.

I actually mailed a hard drive last week and when I asked the worker at the post office to mark it fragile she told me they don't even have fragile stamps or stickers any more. "They just expect you to pack it well enough to survive the trip."

So yeah, two separate copies. :)

[crenn]

Also put it into a anti-static bag then wrap it in very static bubble wrap.

[x88x]

My recommendation:
Use Truecrypt (or another program of your choice) to do full-drive encryption on the drive you want to use, put the data on there, put it in an anti-static bag, wrap with at least 2" of bubble-wrap or closed-cell foam on each side, and ship it with your choice of shipper. If you ship with USPS, make sure you use at least Priority Mail with delivery confirmation, insurance, and marked as fragile. Repeat with different shippers for redundancy, if desired.

Strange as it seems sometimes, 'sneakernet' is still the fastest way of transmitting large amounts of data over any sizable distance.


I actually mailed a hard drive last week and when I asked the worker at the post office to mark it fragile she told me they don't even have fragile stamps or stickers any more. "They just expect you to pack it well enough to survive the trip."

Either that's a local thing, she didn't know where it was, or she just lied to you because she couldn't be bothered. Every time I ship anything with USPS Priority Mail I have them mark it as fragile. They have a rubber stamp that they punch all over the box.

[Oneslowz28]

If it were me I would copy it onto two different hard drives and ship them both to the second location separately.

I actually mailed a hard drive last week and when I asked the worker at the post office to mark it fragile she told me they don't even have fragile stamps or stickers any more. "They just expect you to pack it well enough to survive the trip."

So yeah, two separate copies. :)

I am happy to report that it survived!

[Diamon]

These network traffic limitations I keep hearing about on this forum must be something american. I don't know anyone in Sweden with any limitations except for the network speed. SO..yeah. I would probably just use dropbox or something similiar ^^

[x88x]

These network traffic limitations I keep hearing about on this forum must be something american. I don't know anyone in Sweden with any limitations except for the network speed. SO..yeah. I would probably just use dropbox or something similiar ^^

Yeah, several ISPs here have data transfer caps ..though generally not on business lines, so idk if that's what he's talking about in this case. It might also just be a speed issue. Moving that much data, you're gonna have to have really fat pipes on both ends to be faster than shipping a HDD.

[Luke122]

It was strictly a bandwidth issue for us. We COULD transfer it electronically, but it would cripple our network speed at both ends, so we have decided to ship.

Good call on encrypting the drive, that never even occured to me! I'll be sure to make a full backup first, then encrypt, and package it "excessively" before sending by courier. :)