Comments on: Long Term Storage

By: Alvin’s Educational Technology Blog » Choosing CD/DVD Media

Alvin’s Educational Technology Blog » Choosing CD/DVD Media — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 04:06:37 +0000

[...] I wrote about backups and storage a few weeks ago. I had some questions about media and long-term storage. [...]

By: Debbie Schinker

Debbie Schinker — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:34:16 +0000

This problem of data transfer is a large one, to my mind. We have trouble retrieving data from just 10 or 20 years ago (think HS or college papers), so I am not optimistic that data retrieval will be easy in another 10 or 20 years into the future.

CD’s and DVD’s are only good if they don’t get scratched. The longer you store them, the more you use them, and the more kids you have, the more danger that media is in!

And if there is a fire where you store the CD’s, DVD’s, external drives, or USB’s, the data could well be lost anyway.

Do you have anything in a fireproof off-site location like a bank box? To my mind, that is a safe alternative, but not very convenient. I like the idea of uploadable off-site storage, but I am concerned about privacy issues – especially when the government seems to so easily be able to coerce companies into giving out private information!

By: alvin

alvin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:16:10 +0000

The best you can do is keep your disks cool and dry. I have read different studies stating data longevity of anywhere from 20 to 100 years. I have many CDs that are ten years old and all the ones I have tried still work.

I don’t keep all my eggs in one basket. I have external hard drives that I use to backup my important data too. The total disk space needed to backup every important piece of information I have created/received in the last ten years is less than 100 GB. An external hard drive to hold that much data is less than $100. I periodically buy an extra external drive and do a complete backup. Before Christmas I picked up a 160 GB USB drive for $89. I copied everything important to that disk. Then I disconnected it and put it back in the box. It’s still sitting on the bookshelf in my office. The longevity of a hard disk drive is directly related to the number of hours that drive is spinning. Who knows… in the box, that disk may last 50 years.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:06:07 +0000

Alvin, I do the same with my dvd videos. I have 3 young children who already have about 60 hours of burned dvds. My question to you is, has there been any studies to show the reliability on dvds regarding how long they will last. I keep mine in a dvd leather binder in my fire proof (or so they say) safe. In 20, 30 or even 50 years, will the structure of the dvd still be in decent enough shape to take data off of it and share or store it onto another device. The only thing that I see replacing dvds in the near future are memory sticks that will hold 100′s of gigabytes one day and that you just have a usb slot on your television or viewing device that you plug into to view content. What are your thoughts please?

Todd Wasil