Emily L. Ferguson wrote:
I'm just among those who have less than sterling confidence in hard
drives - no matter where they are.
My backups are on CDs and DVDs that I can and do update as the
technology advances. In addition I keep a set off site.
Three important points
1) have more than one copy *always*.
2) never store all copies in the same location.
3) copy (or at least check) your copies regularly.
Number 3 is important for archival material. There's no point in having
3 copies if none of them are readable.
Remember that there are multiple ways that media can become unreadable.
I could hand you an ST-225 formatted RLL which has information that has
no degradation, but you'd have a terribly hard time finding a machine
old enough to use it in!
The same will eventually happen for other media (zip disks, LS120
floppies, 5 1/4 floppies, jazz disks...) and eventually for CDs, DVDs
and those piddlingly small 500 Gb hard drives.
Steve
