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Company Offers Disaster-Proof Storage For Records 210

Posted by simoniker from the whoops-dropped-it dept.
Makarand writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that a Utah company, Perpetual Storage, is offering disaster-proof commercial storage space deep inside a granite mountain for companies looking to store their most important records. The company claims that their vaults are protected and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast. The vaults have gained popularity recently after hospitals, government agencies and universities have started using them to keep their computer records safe."
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Company Offers Disaster-Proof Storage For Records More

Company Offers Disaster-Proof Storage For Records

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  • I can store my MP3s and backups of Deus Ex and all of my other favorite-but-discontinued games

  • Do we want to keep data that badly? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:33AM (#7807625) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps a nuclear winter would be a good time to re-evaluate our social standings on something other than the size of our bank accounts.

    • Nuclear Winter? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lord Prox ( 521892 )
      This place [bizjournals.com] is using old missle silo's for data storage. I just think it was an interesting use. A swords to plowshares kinda thing.
    • Perhaps we should pause for just one second in our technological discussions of permanent storage of data and ask the more important question of WHY it is necessary to store data permanently.

      Permanent data storage means inability to correct the mistakes that are part of the storage record. With the epidemic of identity theft currently out of control, and the lack of standards concerning who collects data, what type of data, and its ultimate use, it is foolish and dangerous to permanently store what i
      • ultimately all data is collected for political or commercial reasons
        My, kneejerk much? Or perhaps just jerk.

        Well, first of all, I don't consider something being "political" as thereby self-evidently evil, and secondly, please, kiddie boy, would you say that the only reasons to want to save, say, a music collection, are "political or commercial"?
        Now, from the top, let's see you give me some examples of things that are important to you that *can't* be defined as containing an aspect that is "commercial

  • what if? (Score:4, Funny)

    by enclaved ( 570296 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:34AM (#7807627) Homepage
    what if the mountain collapses?

    • Re:what if? (Score:5, Funny)

      by spektr ( 466069 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:53AM (#7807675)
      what if the mountain collapses?

      The wise man doesn't rely on a single point of failure.
      He uses a Redundant Array of Independent Mountains.
      • When testing, you should always mount a scratch mountain!

    • Re:what if? (Score:2, Informative)

      by garglblaster ( 459708 )
      what if the mountain collapses?

      Well, not as far-fetched as you might possibly think..

      It happened before already..

      For example check out this site: [italiaplease.com]

  • this is not really new... (Score:2, Informative)

    by medea ( 38161 ) *
    take a look at mount10 (http://www.mount10.ch/index-e.html). they offer their "data fortress" for some years now here in switzerland (where every mountain has holes like swiss chees ;).
  • Every now and then, when sitting in front of my comp for hours and hours, I secretly wish my house would burn up in flames, I could get rid of this hour-eater and I would not be so concerned about upgrading every year and so on.

    For me, that kind of mountain would only guarantee I would never get "real free time" :)

  • Any force known to man? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:40AM (#7807645)
    Like when the sun goes all red giant on us? How about a supernova or getting nailed by a decent sized black hole? What about gravitional collapse of the universe into a primeval atom?

    Man knows some pretty awesome and irresistable forces, chief among them, in terms of data persistence, is Rose Mary Woods.

    KFG

    • Re:Any force known to man? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Like when the sun goes all red giant on us? How about a supernova or getting nailed by a decent sized black hole? What about gravitional collapse of the universe into a primeval atom?

      That's all covered. Sue us, if we can't deliver... *smug grin*

      • I can garentee against all that, except for shit that ends the universe. For a small fee, err large fee...okay, hork'n huge fee I'll encode your data in a special encrypted codec and beam it to the universe. Your data will travel accross the universe in the form of radio waves safe from any from of disaster that can end all life on Earth.

        Note, prices does not garentee data recovery..

    • Right. I suspect that they aren't terribly worried about getting sued in any of those events :)
    • As some have pointed out, if those things happen, your data and their guarantee are the least of your problem. However, it might be that "known to man" means "having been experienced by man", not "having knowledge of by man". So, while we have knowledge of those forces, we have not experienced them.
    • If you're worrying about your personal data when the sun blows up, you've got some serious problems..

    • How about biological infection?

      There's a well-known case where most of the tapes stored in one of these granite mountains were found to have been infected by a fungus that simply adored the tape medium- and rendered most of it unreadable.

      This isn't anything new. These granite mountain dealies have been around since the 60's-70's..even earlier, actually- Hitler's V2 factory was entirely inside one of these mountains.

    • If we have a closed universe, what about The Big Krunch where the universe eventually collapses back to a singularity?

      Alternatively, in an open universe, what about the eventual heat death of the universe?

      I hope their contract has provisions for these events.

    • Yes (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      it will survive those phenomenom.

      Honest, if not you can get all your money back. Just give us a call.

  • Who has the keys? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mattjb0010 ( 724744 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:40AM (#7807648) Homepage
    The company claims that their vaults are protected and safe from "any force known to man", including a nuclear blast.

    But not including company employees.
    • But not including company employees.

      Or broken software. Quite a lot of distributed systems (including DNS servers) already failed because something or someone decided to replicate an empty database to all nodes.

      (Seriously though, I hope they offer some kind of time warp feature for their file storage, so you should be able to get a previous version of your file.)

  • Yay (Score:5, Funny)

    by ElleyKitten ( 715519 ) <kittensunrise@@@gmail...com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:44AM (#7807654) Journal
    I'm sure after a nuclear blast my first thoughts will go to whether or not my files are safe. Since it'll get boring down in that fallout shelter, so I should read paperwork on now-dead customers and play old video games on my computer. Well, at least until the generator dies.
    • You're obviously missing the point -- what use is civilization if my Galaxians high score isn't around for all to ponder?

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JanneM ( 7445 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:44AM (#7807655) Homepage
    "Perpetual Storage -> "Long term storage"

    "Disaster-proof" -> "Disaster-resistant"

    "any force known to man" -> "most forces known to man, in reasonable amounts and not too close, and assuming no help from a disgruntled member of staff"

    Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

  • Would this block an EMP? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Would an electromagnetic pulse-- the kind that nuclear explosions cause-- erase hard drives and thrash digital equipment in the vault?

    Just wondering.
    • You cannot block the EMP of a nuclear explosion.
      For blocking EMP you need a Faradays cage to trap incoming electromagnetic waves. However, the holes of the cage must be small enough to block the waves from getting in. That means that the holes can have at most one half of the wavelength in size. But the wavelength of electromagnetic waves depends on the energy. So with a nuclear (or even nuclear fission) blast you would have extremely low wavelengths in the gamma range. That means that your cage can have o
      • Though if you keep accelerating in space for a while (in a context of "perpetual storage"), quite soon you should be more worried about background radiation being blue-shifted to the gamma ray frequencies... Also, in the event of disaster, some difficulties in retrieving that data might arise... ;-)

        But seriously, how much rock do you need before any radiation from a nuclear blast goes below our ability to even measure it (in any frequency)? I imagine that's not a lot, a few hundred meters perhaps, but ca
      • Um, that's sort of true. You're confusing the gamma ray burst (prompt radiation) and EMP which are two different things. You're correct about not being able to totally gamma rays because of their incredibly low wavelength/high frequency. They can be shielded against with lots of matter in between, like lead or a whole lot of earth because the gamma rays ionize the shielding material and lose energy in doing so.

        The EMP however is completely different, almost the opposite end of the scale. It isn't a wa

      • So with a nuclear (or even nuclear fission) blast you would have extremely low wavelengths in the gamma range. That means that your cage can have only very small holes. But for the gamma range this means that even the distance between atoms is too big - you can't just block them. That's why all these military stations are so deep in the earth: they don't aim to block gamma rays, they just want to get away from them to decrease the incoming energy (=less harmful). This works because you have cubic decay of

        • Gamma radiation is emitted by the fission reaction and resulting product nuclei, not by the EMP mechanism. IIRC, EMP is actually caused by asymmetric gamma flux in a nuclear device accelerating electrons in an asymmetric pattern.

          You're right - most ground-based or low altitude nuclear explosions have a symmetrical EMP flux, causing them to effectively cancel out. (Unless you happen to be within the blast radius, then you've got bigger problems)

          A few high-altitude explosions over the pacific in the 60's
    • They're storing mostly paper...

  • Finally, a solution! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Migrant Programmer ( 19727 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:50AM (#7807666) Journal
    My records are always getting melted by the sunshine.

  • Just hope that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:50AM (#7807669)
    It's a mountain not a dormant volcano :)
  • A similar project is constantly being discussed in Nevada - that is, the burying of nuclear waste in the Yucca mountains. It might be possible to build a structure to withstand earthquakes, as it's done all the time in California. But the surrounding rock really isn't protection from an earthquake. Another thing I can't help but notice is the description of the mountain. It's made of Granite, which is an igneous rock. That means at one point there was volcanic activity there to build the mountain up. It's e

    • Re:I'm not buying it that it's earthquake-proof (Score:5, Informative)

      by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @10:15AM (#7807825)
      Arrgh, armchair geologists getting modded Insightful.

      Granite forms at depth in the crust, not in volcanos. It is typically indicative of igneous activity a long time ago -- sometimes billions of years. Its presence is not any kind of indicator of potential for volcanic activity.

      When it is exposed at the surface, it usually indicates there has been tectonic activity that moved it upwards. Again, may have happened a long time ago.

      In the Salt Lake, there is extremely low potential for volccanic or other igneous activity. What Utah DOES have is a potential for strong seismic (earthquake) acitvity. How safe things are getting bounced around by a magnitude 7 is a matter of question. Would depend on how well engineered the structure is to isolate it from ground movement. Building structures on solid rock is more easily engineered that unconsolidated materials because there is no potential for liquifaction and the high-amplitude, low frequency surface waves (Lova, Rayleigh) are not much of a design factor.

      Building inside a granite mountain is a pretty good choice for isolating a structure from seismic waves. Just requires a good isolation system.

  • Civilisation gone but emails are safe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mr_lithic ( 563105 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:52AM (#7807673) Homepage Journal
    Somehow I don't think the lasting impression I want to leave for future visitors to this planet is Susan from Accounts "Friday Funny".

  • Old news? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Niadh ( 468443 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:53AM (#7807676) Homepage
    Out of the area clients can use any available delivery service such as UPS, Fed Ex, or the US Mail.

    For when your uber sensitive business data must get to the super secure storage facility safely... trust USPS and remember, pack well.

  • Why don't they have a couple of moderately safe distributed around the world? Each site could be orders of magnitude cheaper, and by the time the desaster is so big all sites around the world are destroyed, no-one is interested in the data anymore anyway.
    • They say this is safe, and secure. The armed guards, video cameras, etc, aren't there in case of a flood, or to keep a group of feral cats from taking up residence- they are there to keep people out.

      American companies feel much safer when their data is being stored in the United States. A lot of this information is sensitive- not just the 'I want to pass it on to my children' stuff.

      These companies don't want to store it in a country where something like a coup is possible. Then the local population may

  • Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pjrc ( 134994 ) <paul@pjrc.com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:57AM (#7807683) Homepage Journal
    ...can it survive The Most Powerful Force on Earth [free-times.com] ??

  • Safe from what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phr1 ( 211689 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @08:58AM (#7807685)
    That mountain might protect the vault from a nuclear airburst, but what about someone driving a nuke (or ordinary fertilizer truck bomb) into the vault? They could probably powder everything inside pretty good, and collapse the tunnel enough so that stuff wouldn't get dug out again for a looong time.

    Also, while the mountain may protect your stuff from any kind of physical catastrophe like meteors or mad bombers, it will do nothing to protect it from frothing lawyers and government agents (SCO, RIAA, BATF or whatever) or plain old industrial spies with briefcases full of cash, seeking access to the stuff from the people who run the facility. The perils of putting your goodies in someone else's care in a publicly known location are the same as those of storing your backups on someone else's computer over the net (and the obviousness of that peril is one reason why the net-backup business didn't do so well).

    If you want to keep something really safe, protect it well and don't tell anyone where it is. Also, if all you're trying to protect is data, rather than physical artifacts, you're better off replicating it all over the place than trying to bomb-proof it at a single site.

    • Re:Safe from what? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zm ( 257549 )
      If you want to keep something really safe, protect it well and don't tell anyone where it is.

      Security by obscurity ain't gonna work. What happened to some good old fashioned "encrypt the data on the tapes, and keep copies in several relatively safe locations"?
      • Obscurity is the whole point of modern security. What do you think a passphrase is, if not controlled and assured obscurity (assured provided the algorithm is good, you don't write the passphrase down and your opponent doesn't have enough CPU time that is). While it's true that you shouldn't rely on arbitrary, non-assured, probably ill-defined obscurity I'd rather have it than not, so long as I have proper obscurity (encryption) as well. As for whether, in terms of physical location, you're better off with
      • What happened to some good old fashioned "encrypt the data on the tapes, and keep copies in several relatively safe locations"?

        That only works if it's just data that you're trying to protect. If it's the company's shrunken head collection, you can't manage it that way.

    • A company by that name used to do this, in a former iron ore mine.

      This would offer the benefit of some magnetic shielding, from an EMP pulse.

      For most companies, a single tape cartridge, or other removable media (cdrom, dvd-rom) will hold the most critical data, and fits just fine in a safety deposit box, at the bank. Or if your not that paranoid, in a box under the CEO's bed.
    • yes, but then they'd also have to blow up the secondary backup facility. Any company using this ridiculous amount of storage would be sure to at the very least keep a working backup on hand.

  • I dunno.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by InnovativeCX ( 538638 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:00AM (#7807689)
    I dunno about this place....many qualms. I don't know how could I possibly support an organization that refuses to hang the dead, mummified remains of my Summum spiritual companions (or brothers or whatever) on the walls of a data storage center.

    In all seriousness, though they seem to have an open mind regarding material allowed to be stored, they substantially limit their potential market. For instance, "To eliminate fire risk, the company won't store paper or anything that might burn." I suppose this makes sense. But then they start turning down precious metals (and by that logic, stones such as diamonds and valuable jewelry), refusing to store cryogenically frozen human cells.

    Additionally, I have to wonder about the security of the place. It only has about ten employees, which would put suspects on a short list, but at the same time gives the mountain comparatively little protection from outside attackers. Furthermore, the excavation was done only thirty or so years ago, so it hasn't yet stood the test of time. Not long ago, they completed some more major construction adding second and third floor mezanines...I have to wonder as to whether or not any of this has affected the structural integrity and to what extent. Of course, the southwest isn't exactly the most stable region either...earthquakes are many.

    But let's put all of that aside for a moment. We have a company that has its eyes on the future!
    We figure computers are not going to go away," Nowa said.

    Merry Christmas,
    Scott
    ><>

  • Talk to $cientology about vaults (Score:3, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:01AM (#7807695) Homepage
    They have several vault sites [lisamcpherson.org] where they keep the works of Elron Hubbard preserved. Quite elaborate [pair.com] and expensive. [zeta.org.au] Seems redundant, you can find all the used copies of Dianetics and Battlefield Earth you could ever want at 2nd hand books stores.
  • Iron Mountain (who are the big boys in record management and offsite storage) has this to say in the fist paragraph of their corporate history:

    Iron Mountain has come a long way since the 50's, when a depleted iron ore mine in upstate New York was converted to the United States' first secure underground records storage center designed to protect corporate vital records in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
  • FYI, the site's running Windows XP, unpatched.
  • All organizations managing critial data has a need for a robust and reliable IT practice - nothing is more important than medical records. But storing data in granite valuts doesn't mean much if you don't know what the quality of your data, and it doesn't help you if you need to recover data in near real time.

    Many CIOs in the IT industry simply don't understand the need or purpose of IT. That's why some organizations have CIOs find it acceptable to "rarely lose records", or to have "occational network out

  • Right.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by rylin ( 688457 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:12AM (#7807722)
    It's safe from any force known to man, yet here we go, slashdotting their server, making quick on-line retrieval of even the tiniest record impossible.

  • Sturdy site (Score:2, Informative)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
    It's survived a slashdotting (so far). And they do support old things:

    Requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.X or later for Windows 95 or Netscape Navigator 2.X or later, Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.X or later for Macintosh.

    Checking the record:

    Perpetual Storage, Inc. (PERPETUALSTORAGE-DOM)

    6279 E. Little Cottonwood Canyon Road
    Sandy, UT 84092
    US

    Domain Name: PERPETUALSTORAGE.COM

    Record expires on 21-Jun-2006.
    Record created on 22-Jun-1997.

    Seems good for at least 2.5 years.

  • Any force known to man? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jjgm ( 663044 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:20AM (#7807734)

    They need to update their physics textbook. Modern forces at work include Bureaucracy, Incompetence and Government.

    I'll bet any one of those three could breach this fortress ...

  • Mutant 59 will do ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foobsr ( 693224 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:24AM (#7807739) Homepage Journal
    ... mostly company business records on computer tapes and microfilm.

    See Pedler, K. & Davis, G.
    The Viking Press, New York, 1972;
    Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters [amazon.com]

    Or some nanobots wreaking havoc for the more hardware type of things.

    CC.

  • Um? (Score:2, Funny)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
    Am I the only one who thinks if we fall victim to nuclear blasts are car insurance records are the least of our worries?

    Good ol' Americans. Always thinking with their greed, er lust for power, er... American dream...

    one of us. one of us. one of us.

    Tom
  • ...I have a feeling I'll be reading about this in "The Doghouse" section of Crypto-Gram [schneier.com] sometime soon.

    I think Schneier makes a special point in Beyond Fear that extreme terms like "absolute security" and "any force known to man" don't even make sense in a security situation. They are only used by people who don't understand security in the first place!
  • I wonder of solid granite is strong enough to protect against social engineering...

  • Hidden right here in Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chatmag ( 646500 ) <editor@chatmag.com> on Thursday December 25, 2003 @09:48AM (#7807778) Homepage Journal
    I keep all my vital info woven into posts, and hidden right here, its the only place I know that won't get ./'ed.

  • Very, Very long term. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by utahjazz ( 177190 ) on Thursday December 25, 2003 @10:04AM (#7807803)
    Most people here are missing the point. These things were orinially built to house the geneology data for the LDS church to survive serious biblical type disasters. This is for like, the end of the world comes and were diggin out, and your data is still there.

    I can't believe some of the idiots responding to this saying "this is useless because it doesn't allow restore in near-real-time".

    At the other end of the sepctrum is the idiot who is worried about volcanoes in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Please people, get a clue before posting.

  • If the data was that important, I don't think I could trust anyone to hold on to it for me. For important things, I'd keep them in underwear, where no one would dare take it from. Emails, contact information, etc. No wait. The most important thing already IS in my underwear. =D
  • When I first read that, I was thinking someone wanted to help me keep my vinyl safe. I have a 45 of Chicago's Questions 67 & 68 in mint condition that I would gladly store there...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This is great news for people with my religious beliefs. We believe that in order to survive in the afterlife, our physical bodies must be carefully preserved and remain intact, and we must be buried with all of the goods and servants we will need in the next world. If any of this is ever disturbed, our time in the afterlife will come to an end. It is of the utmost importance that our tombs never be violated or destroyed.

    Naturally, this has been a great problem for my anscestors, with looters and archaeog

  • I know of these:

    1. asteroid collision
    2. material degradation with age
    3. staff corruption
  • After the dollar has lost 50% of its value over three years against the euro, it seems that fear is now the most reliable currency in the US.
  • The Bunker [thebunker.co.uk], in Britain, offers bombproof web hosting, in their underground data center inside an underground military base. Starting from 125 pounds per month for a dedicated 1U server. Linux hosting available.
  • As a system administrator I pay an arm and a leg to put my data inside a granite canyon so it can withstand any force known to man.

    Then a big disaster happens and me and everyone in my company dies.

    At that point our disaster recovery options are as follows:

    1) an alien life form to arrive on earth, rescue the data from the inside of a granite canyon, and decide to stay and run our business

    2) a primitive life form on earth that was strong enough to withstand the big natural disaster, evolves over millions
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Thats a pretty powerful 'known force'...

    Perhaps i can safely store my MP3's in there...
  • This would be an excellent place for me to store my bottle cap collection.

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