Archival storage

[Patrick Finnegan]

Vintage Computer Festival declared on Sunday 09 October 2005 03:12 pm:
> On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, James Fogg wrote:
> > Does anyone know if there are optical formats that can reliably
> > deliver 10 year shelf-life? How does one achieve it (different types
> > of cd-r chemistry, using cd-rom, etc)?
>
> Just use hard drives.  Cheap, high capacity, and reliable.

And make sure you keep them spinning, so that you can tell when they 
fail, along with a redundant copy on another machine which you mirror to 
periodically (even automatically once every N days is fine).  Migrate to 
newer media when the old stuff is pretty much obsolete.

If you manage to do that, your data will long outlast any CDRs that you 
store in a filing cabinet next to the computer(s).

Pat
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