On 13/04/2013, John Haley wrote:

> It's a problem all right. A friend of mine who has put his CD
> collection on harddrives spent some real money on a fancy harddrive
> system--within a year it failed. His solution, which I suggested, is
> forget about expensive harddrives--use large, relatively cheap
> consumer ones, replace them often, and back them up like crazy. The
> one thing you know about a harddrive is that it is certain to fail
> before too long. Whatever you do, back up! Oh, and keep your originals
> whenever possible.
>
> Manufactured CD's can fail too. We have all had a few that have gone
> bad.
>
> Corporate America runs on fancy harddrives with elaborate off-site
> back-up systems. At the big company where I used to work, which lived
> on hard drives, a big drive would fail at a rate of about one every
> six months. Of course they got plenty of use. I think state of the art
> at big archives and libraries that have digitized their holdings
> depends entirely on big computer systems with data saved on
> harddrives.
>
> The problem I have with all of this is that it introduces a human
> error factor (not present on a wax cylinder from 1901--all the people
> who invented and manufactured it are dead, but it still plays). Human
> beings have to be paid to maintain the big systems, and the day they
> cut the budget for those people, or hire Homer Simpson to do the work
> .... Also, very little in the way of error, failure, or natural or
> man-made disaster can destroy a huge amount of saved data, forever.
> Poof.
>
> If anyone truly invents a permanent digital data storage medium, we
> need to buy the stock.
>
Does anyone here have practical experience of the Millenniata archival
DVDs ?

I see their soon-to-be-available Blu-Ray disks do not require a special
writer, unlike the DVDs.

Regards
--
Don Cox
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