On 07/02/11 13:09, James H. E. Maugham wrote:
Jonathan Berry wrote:
DVD or BD disks might fit into
your plans, though. Mileage varies.
While I have several TBs of HD storage, I find myself reaching for one of my
16GB or larger flash drives for archival purposes far more often than a CD
or DVD.
Can't remember the last time I burned a disc.
James
Archiving to a static sensitive medium is not a great idea. Time and time
again I have gotten sad tales from friends of their sticks not working, with
lots of important stuff on them.
I think the larger capacity disks are better in this regard, but I have
a sick
8G stick waiting for me to look at it, next time a friend gets my way.
DVDs/CDs aren't prone to that, and unless left in the sun where the UV
will kill them, are stable for several years. The Taiyo Yuden media will
last a long time (decades), if stored in a dark place, in holders that only
grasp the inside ring and not touch the rest of the DVD/CD.
A friend and family went on vacation some years ago, and a water pipe
partly burst and left the basement in several feet of water. Coming home
to their new disaster, a horror dawned on the son, that the backup
box, full of DVDs was submerged. Washing each DVD they put them
into a system and cloned them. All but one survived the dunking, which
I got and managed to get almost half the data off of.
Properly stored DVDs, and maybe 8mm tapes are the best long term
archival media I know of. I know that lots of the 9 track tapes I have
are not in good condition, nor are the 1.2M floppies from the 80's.
Backup disks are good, but I worry about how long you can have them
idle and still spin up ok. Given the new technologies in disks today,
I don't think the smaller disks of the past give us much of a clue.
I tell folks at work to get multiple smaller disks and have several
backups, rather than buying a 3T disk, and archiving 50M to it at a
time.
--STeve Andre'
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