Quote:
Originally Posted by mrbdxmpl
CDs and DVDs are not particularly stable in the long run.
|
+1
I read an article a few months back (can't find it right now) on the long-term vulnerability of all our wonderful data. Disk go bad. Even if they survive, they can become unreadable in a short time. There was a
news story this week about an update to Microsoft Office that instantly disallowed opening older document formats (old Word, Works, Lotus, Corel, etc...) for security reasons. Without even knowing it was coming, some people lost access to archives of old data in an instant.
I make redundant backups of important files on a variety of media (multiple hard disks, USB thumbdrives, CD-ROMs, etc...), but none of these is a great long-term solution. About ten years ago, I read an awesome Scientific American article about the physical survivability of magnetic and optical media (hard drives and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM). They compared it to historic media, like the Guternberg Bible (iron gall ink on vellum, still around after 550 years) or the Magna Carta (I saw one of the original versions in Lincoln Castle in 2001. Still readable).
Somebody gave me a 3.5" floppy a month ago. I had to go to somebody else's computer to use it. I haven't had a floppy-equipped PC in five years!
Anyhoo, the best answer is Redundancy, Redundancy and Redundancy.