I think that anything magnetic has a questionable archival
life. In any event, the real solution, IMO, is to put the stuff on
quality CD-R media, double back up, and plan on renewing the material on
whatever is the best solution every 5 years or so. As long as you live,
and/or your heirs care, this process can be continued indefinitely to
save the 'precious' material.
Hersch
At 01:52 PM 08/06/2001, you wrote:
Hello Mark,
on Mon, 6 Aug 2001 19:01:11 +0100 you wrote:
> Basically, I am looking for a long term (20 years+) storage medium
to
> archive my scans on. I don't have faith in CDR and tapes are also
prone to
> long term problems so the only solution I can see is a magneto
optical
> disk.
I totally agree, I suppose the best long term back up media are
MODs.
> Another problem is that it is all well and good to have a bomb proof
> medium but it is no good if no one makes the hardware to read it
> in a few years time.
Sad, but true.
> So is there a clear cut winner out there? The two affordable options
I
> am looking at are either the Iomega Optical drive or the
> Panasonic DVD-RAM.
I don't know the Iomega drive, but I assume that it's a proprietary
drive using Iomegas own media, data format, drive, interface ...
Right? In that case I'd never get the drive.
Personals I don't think the DVD-RAM will bee supported in a few
yeas, so I'd not get a DVD-RAM drive.
> [...]
> Any advice on this matter gratfully received!
You have to chose a media used by the big companies,
universities, etc. to backup their data. Such a solution will be much
more expensive than the Iomegea thing, but chances will be better
you can get a new drive to reed your archives in 20 years.
I'd recommend a 2.6 or 5.2GB 5.25" MOD drive by Sony, HP or
Maxpotix. Get the SCSI version of a high quality drive and uses
good media, store them in a proper environment and never throw
away the hard- and software you used to cerate the archives. Use
simple data formats (TIFF) and files systems (FAT), not the latest
fractal image compression format and NTFS2.
cu
Flo
PS: I use a Sony 5.2 GB MOD (F551) to archive my data and a
DDs4 tape to do daily backups.
PPS: I have a Maxoptix 2.6 GB MOD (T5-2600) for sale.
interested? The drive is in perfect condition.
