[CVCC] Fw: [cwops] FW: [PVRC] Short Life of Burned CDs

[rsmorris]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Talens" <jtalens at verizon.net>
To: <PVRC at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:55 PM
Subject: FW: [cwops] FW: [PVRC] Short Life of Burned CDs


More on the backup theme, from K2VCO (who is in the business):

de N3JT 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vic Rosenthal [mailto:vic at rakefet.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 11:54 AM
To: Jim Talens
Cc: cwops
Subject: Re: [cwops] FW: [PVRC] Short Life of Burned CDs

Jim Talens wrote:

> Optical discs may not be your best bet for storing digital media long 
> term, expert says.

...and if you want more bad news, my experience as a software
developer/vendor has been that the quality of floppy diskettes and drives
has declined so precipitously in the past few years that they must be
considered practically worthless for backup purposes.

Hard drives have quoted MTBFs (Mean Time Before Failure) of astronomical
numbers of hours, but these numbers are very misleading, since they are
based on an assumption that the drives will be replaced on a regular basis
(see
<http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/perf/qual/specMTBF.html>). 
  The so-called 'service life' of a drive is much more important than the
MTBF.

As the author of the story Jim quotes says, magnetic tape is probably the
best backup option.  However, the consumer-type tape drives available tend
to be poor quality, the software is often buggy, and standards change
regularly.

If you have important data on your PC (or Mac, or Linux box, etc.) then you
need to think about buying an industrial-strength tape backup solution,
which will have an industrial-strength price.  At this point I don't have
any recommendations, but I am seriously looking into this for my business
(which today depends on hard drives and CDs!).

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