[wplug] Online Backup

[Bill Moran]

Zach <netrek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/12/07, Teodorski, Chris <teodorski at ppg.com> wrote:
> >CD's sure, but what is the shelf life of a burned CD (maybe 5 years
> at best) and I
> >hear the same is true for DVDs.  I wonder how many parents are unaware that a
> >burned CD isn't like a "pressed" CD and 7 years from now when they go
> to look at
> >the photos of their little bundles of joy are going to be shocked to
> discover some
> >or all are unreadable.
> 
> Wow I didn't realize this! So all my data CD's will be gone in 5
> years?! UGH NOOOOO!
> How can I backup my data so it will be around for a long time? I don't
> mean online backup, I need something I can do myself at home.

There is continual speculation about the shelf life of burned CDs.
Pretty much everyone agrees that it's less than 10 years, but I've heard
estimates as low as 2 and has high as 10.

There's definitely some things that can be done in storage to prolong
the life.  Keep them in a cool, _dark_ place.  Yes, normal sunlight can
actually alter the chemicals in the CD and over time ruin them.
Excessive heat can also deteriorate them.

With the price of hard drives these days, I would suggest that the best
place to keep you data is on a hard drive.  Preferably 2 hard drives
in a mirrored configuration.  Back it up to CD frequently so that a
human error can be recovered from.  You then get this:

1) You hard drives are you long-term archival storage
2) The mirror protects you from hardware failure
3) Frequent CD/DVD burns protect you from short-term data loss (such as
   accidentally deleting things)
4) When you run out of space, buy new, bigger hard drives.  They'll be
   cheaper and bigger in 3 years than they are now -- the technology
   is likely to grow with you.

It's been highly recommended _not_ to use hard drives for long-term
shelf storage, as they're not designed for that and aren't generally
guaranteed to actually work after being on a shelf for 4 or 5 years.

-- 
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com