15 Mar
2006
15 Mar
'06
10:22 a.m.
Richard wrote:
I second this. I started burning CDRs in 1996 on the cheapest media I
could find back then. Just now I took one out of its CD folder (a black
200-disc folder that does not let light through), which I store in my
basement, and every single data file read just fine. 10 years and counting.
Sometimes I get paranoid, and I archive my data using two redundant methods:
1. I take the data and split it into parts, then generate parity
information for the parts. This way I can lose up to N parts as long as
I have N chunks of parity info. (I use WinRAR with "recovery volumes"
if you're curious.)
2. I then take the data+parity and burn it onto one disc, then do it
again on another. Just in case.
CPU speed and blank DVDrs are cheap enough nowadays that this adds 1% of
effort to a process that gives me 3-4x more reliability.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
My concern is
that things I record now on cd-r might not last even 5-10
years.
I'm skeptical when someone says that CD-Rs won't last, because as you
mention with sunlight, how the disc is stored and treated is probably
just as important, if not more, than the media itself.