GXL750 wrote:I've never trusted CDs because they get damaged so easily. I remember reading some time ago that, at least with cheaper CDs, over time they degrade. I'm not sure if that's true but whatever the case, I've never done well with optical disc.
Well , years ago i rented games from the local library . Most of the discs were pretty badly scratched (some to the point you'd think someone rubbed them with fine sandpaper) yet of all the CD's i rented only 2 or 3 were damaged to the point that they were unusable .
When that happens you can still try to "fix" the discs by polishing them .
Then there is Disc rot LINK .
When the reflective layer starts to "rot" you are pretty much screwed , the only thing you can do is pray that you are able to recover the data , i've had 2 maybe 3 CD'd that had this and IIRC they all were low quality discs that were about a decade old .
as for DVD's and Blu-ray's i have no idea .
Oh right this topic was about backups 🤣
At the moment my backup strategy is a mess .
I have :
Asus n53jn laptop with 500GB drive (C: 116GB D:329GB +hidden recovery partition)
An older Western digital my book 500GB drive (one partition)
a new (2 months old) Lacie rikiki 1TB drive (partition1 801GB partition2 130)
Before i had the Lacie i backed-up my data to the WD drive , over time 500GB became too small so i bought the Lacie drive and moved a load of data to it .
About a month ago i re-installed windows and while i was at it i sorted out at least 8 years of data from at least 3 systems (lots and lots of double files and old junk) .
At the moment i have 240GB of data spread over the laptop D partition and the Lacie drive so i can easily back that up to the WD drive (until i hit 500GB again)
and i can't switch the Lacie (data)and the WD(backup) drives because i travel between 2 locations for which the WD drive (big and needs a adapter hooked up to the grid and uses USB 2.0) is not suited versus the Lacie (small is USB powered has USB 3.0 and has full aluminium case)
Solution get a 1.5TB (or bigger) external desktop model drive , the problem is the price tag