Timeline for What are the recommended backup methods during a 2-week travel?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 7, 2013 at 13:37 | comment | added | mattdm | Non-archival optical media degrades over time, but is probably a safe choice for travel backup as long as you verify each disk when you burn them. | |
| Jan 6, 2013 at 15:00 | comment | added | Blrfl | Spinning disks can take a lot more abuse than they used to, especially when powered down. If dropping is a concern, beer can coozies make excellent shock protectors for a couple of laptop-sized removable drives. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 20:53 | comment | added | Itai | @JamesSnell - Yes, coasters are a real problem. In the days of IDE burners, I could not touch the machine while burning. Since SATA, it occurs much less often. A high quality burner makes a huge difference. Plextor, NEC and Pioneer are the most reliable. Still, it is essential to do a validation before sending the disk to wherever it is going. Unfortunately, I do find that with Blu-Ray, coasters are more frequent than DVDs and they are more costly too. Until recently, most of my backups were still on DVDs for that reason. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 19:07 | comment | added | James Snell | @FakeName My experiences echo yours, optical discs are incredibly unreliable in my experience it doesn't take much to burn a coaster where you thought you had viable data, or at least to discover you had afterwards once you got home. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 17:28 | comment | added | Itai | @FakeName - Sorry to hear about your bad experience. SSDs would be a good option for short-term backup and highly reliable but they are still too expensive for most people. I will be curious to see how an SSD detached from a computer would keep its data for long term storage but I do not have the means to run that investigation myself. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 17:27 | comment | added | Itai | @FakeName Anything can be damanged but good optical disks are very reliable and much more than a HDD with moving parts. I have seen considerably more high-end HDD fail than optical disks, plus you lose more at a time when a HDD dies. I have dropped optical disks many times and never had one get damage. I have seen corruption (0.2%) after 10 years which is why I aim to refresh the whole set every 5 years, plus I am that paranoid, so they are all burned in duplicates using two different brands of disks. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 6:34 | comment | added | Fake Name | I had a bit of grit get in one of those giant CD binders, and it destroyed something like half of the disks. The critical thing is that the only thing protecting the metalization layer on most disks is a lacquer coating. As such, if you get a scratch on the top of the disk, it generally irreparably damages it. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 6:33 | comment | added | Fake Name | Wait,CDs/DVDs/Whatever disks are reliable? What the hell kind of disks are you using? Disks are freaking horrible. One tiny piece of grit (on the top), and you'll punch through to the metalization layer, and you're stuffed. | |
| Jan 5, 2013 at 0:57 | vote | accept | user763554 | ||
| Jan 5, 2013 at 0:51 | history | answered | Itai | CC BY-SA 3.0 |