[wplug] Online Backup

[Neal Sofge]

I've got a couple of CDs burned on a very expensive early model CD-R  
from 1996.  So far, so good (I'm keeping them around as test  
articles, having long since moved their data to newer media).  These  
were, of course, burned at 1x speed, that being the only choice back  
then.

Sunlight screws up burned CDs surprisingly quickly.  But temperature  
cycling will also reduce their lifespans, so not only should your  
storage be dark and cool, it should be consistently cool.  A storage  
box in my air-conditioned office only maintained some CDs for 5 years  
before read errors started up, and I'm convinced it's because the  
shelf they were on was next to the building's outer wall.

I agree with Bill that your best bet is a pair of hard drives.  I  
burned a lot of CDs back when average desktops only came with 1.2 GB  
of disk, but they all fit on a single modern FireWire pocket drive.


--
Neal Sofge, Web Technology Analyst
RAND Corporation <http://www.rand.org/>



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