OT: In defense of a GUI (was: atapicam, blah, blah)

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2007-May-25 23:11:01 +0200, Roland Smith <rsmith at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>CD-R and DVD±R might not be the most reliable form of long term
>backup, though. I've seen test reports in magazines indicating significant
>corruption after as little as two years.
...
>I like USB harddisks for backups,

Media requirements for archival purposes are different to backup
requirements.  I agree that USB HDDs appear a good choice for backups
but I'm less certain about using them for archival purposes.

HDDs are not designed for long term storage and I would expect that
stiction problems would affect both the heads and bearings if the
disks were left in storage for long periods.

>1.75 that of a cheap DVD disk. But problems like splitting up large
>directories disappear, as does hunting through stacks of DVDs. 

The downside is that a faulty HDD will affect several orders of
magnitude more data than a faulty DVD.

>Other people here are more knowledgeable about things like tape backup,
>which still seems to be a popular solution for people with large
>collections of data. 

Techniques for long-term storage of tapes are well known.  The downside
is that both tape drives and media are comparatively expensive.

In general, whatever media is chosen for archives, the media needs to
be stored in a controlled environment and verified regularly.  If the
information needs to be kept for extended periods, it may be necessary
to migrate the data (both physical and file format) to retain access
to the information.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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