Wow! 10 times the price of regular DVD-R's ...
At 2006/07/21 05:18, you wrote:
Hi Peter,
Check out this web site.
http://www.delkin.com/products/archivalgold/scratcharmor.html
I read about this product in an article from a photography magazine. It
sounds like these disks are great. My concern is that technology changes so
rapidly that in 100 years no machine will be able to read any current disk.
You are therefore quite correct that hard copy is the only reliable
long-term solution. Museums and libraries keep specimens of obsolete
technological hardware to enable the retrieval of media from the past.
(8-track tapes, Beta format video tapes, early computer/word processor
disks, etc.), but I don't want to rely on that being the case in 100 or 200
years.
However, I don't want to create a mass of paper documents until I am certain
that my research is absolutely correct. At that point, it seems a book would
be in order. Printing out a revised hard copy every few months would be
wasteful. That's where storage decisions come in. There has been a good
variety of excellent advice, information, and ideas in this discussion.
That's what I enjoy about this list! My personal choice is to go the
external hard drive route for now. I like some of the ideas for automation
and plan to check them out.
BTW... When CDs were brand new, a clerk in a Radio Shack store showed me how
fabulous the new medium was. "These things will last forever. You can use
them as a drink coaster or even a Frisbee, and they will still play
perfectly. You can't hurt them" Ah, if only!!!
Judie
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Haughton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 12:35 AM
To: LegacyUserGroup@legacyfamilytree.com
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Making a backup of my family file
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CD-Rs do NOT have such reliability. The longest average life
you could expect out of a standard CD-R nowadays would be
two years, PROVIDED you kept it under truly ideal conditions,
which most of us have no hope achieving.
Good luck finding archival CD-Rs. I haven't seen any at all for
over two years, and the dyes in all current CD-Rs are poor.
The ONLY reliable long term storage is still printed paper,
again assuming quality materials and storage.
If you use CD-R backups, apart from doing them regularly,
you need to check them immediately after burning, and in
a DIFFERENT CD drive. This means you MUST have at least
TWO CD drives in your computer (easy--CD burners are
low cost). Nowadays make that one DVD burner (also burns
CDs) and one DVD reader (also reads and maybe burns CDs).
As soon as you cannot easily read CDs you have burnt,
REPLACE the burner with a new one. Burners are cheap--
treat them as disposable the instant they play up.
Peter
---------------------------------------------------------
Peter Haughton [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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