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Have you been backing up all your music, home movies and personal photos to CD-R or DVD-R media? For safety’s sake, you might want to consider moving that data to a hard drive.
According to this article: Checked Your CD-Rs Lately? on Tech ARP, you might want to verify your data is still intact and recoverable. Dr. Adrian Wong describes that a number of his archived CD-Rs, which are less than 10 years old, are coming up corrupt or difficult to read.
Dr. Wong’s overall conclusion is that despite what the manufacturers say about lifespan, you should use caution if you’re storing important files to CD-Rs. “If you have something important to keep, back up OFTEN and use MULTIPLE storage options!” Follow the link to his article above, it’s a good read.
Today it has become cost effective to back up to a hard disk drive. The cost per gig of storage has become incredibly affordable. Aside from choosing an external USB hard drive, consider using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive or even Windows Home Server, which offers some RAID features that can ensure higher levels of storage reliability.
Here are a few links to manufacturers that offer a variety of storage choices, from desktop to rack-mounted NAS solutions, proprietary RAID options with considerable flexibility and even drives that will float in the water and withstand a fire.
Comments
This article leaves a lot out in regards to
The quality of the disc, like a hard drive, determine the longevity. If you purchased on price and not quality then you only have yourself to blame. How well do you think your files will be on a hard drive (hope it's SATA) in 10 years time?
CDRsam, that's a fair statement. Generally speaking, I've always believed that you get what you pay for.
I also didn't mention that (like the big companies) it always good practice to verify your backups regularly.
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