First post, by Kerr Avon
Like many computer users, I have a lot of data, such as games, programs, photos, etc, that I wouldn't like to lose. And like many computer users, if I did lose this data, then I could just re-download a lot of it, and of what I couldn't re-download, probably half of it I wouldn't miss anyway, since I couldn't remember what it was. But anyway, I was wondering what good, inexpensive methods of back that there are.
I used to backup everything to DVD-R, but that's proven less than ideal, since they do occasionally start displaying errors and data loss, sometimes. Not often, but enough to make DVD-Rs untrustable for storing data that you want to last for years or even decades.
I now just use external USB hard drives, as they are reliable, fast, cheap, and they are re-writable. Being re-writable is good, but it does introduce of worry of a virus (or human stupidity) erasing forever valuable data. Plus the hard drive might just die, or become corrupted, and of course there are worries that an electro-magnetic pulse of some sort might destroy the data (this last one doesn't bother me, since if it happens then I presume we'll be at war so my PC will be the least of my worries, but I know that governments and businesses do worry about this sort of data loss, especially since it might well take out business/bank/criminal data records, but for me it's just my collection of games, utilities and songs).
Blu-Ray-R might be good, if in practical terms the discs are more reliable than DVD-Rs. How are they for reliability?
And why are Blu-Ray-Rs still only 25GB, I thought that this could be doubled per disc?
I imagine that when SSD drives become cheaper, they'd make great backup devices. Do SSD's lose data over a long time of disuse? And incidentally, would they be vulnerable to EMPs?
What methods of backups do you use for your data?