"Smart" Meters made them sick

[clare]

That's fine if your files do not excede 700mb. 4gb or 8gb depending on your media -but try backing up an 80GB database- - - - - -

[gfretwell]

Drives are so cheap that I stopped fooling with optical media for backups years ago. They are still good for software, drivers etc and you should have bootable tools on CD but my backup is to other drives in other machines on my network and drives in static bags in a safe.

[Stormin Mormon]

Sleeve of DVD costs about $25 and has 450 gb of space. Totally unable to corrupted by a virus or trojan that comes along later. What does a 450 gb external drive cost? Can it get a trojan later, and die like my two external drives?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

Drives are so cheap that I stopped fooling with optical media for backups years ago. They are still good for software, drivers etc and you should have bootable tools on CD but my backup is to other drives in other machines on my network and drives in static bags in a safe.

[Dan Espen]

Still the top posting idiot. Can't you see that everyone else is carrying on in the approved manner? I think you're hitting on the LSD too hard.

So, what kind of measure is "sleeve"?

Sounds like about 10, since your normal DVD is 4.5G. How many DVDs have you used so far? I hope you're not using re-writable, because they don't read back worth a damn.

I'd really enjoy backing up my 100G of music files on

25 DVDs, I can't think of a better way to spend a few hours.

Buy a 1 Terrabyte USB disk drive for $75 and schedule automatic backups every night without manual intervention. Buy 2 if you insist on taking one of them off-site.

But go ahead, continue to try to convince us that optical media is the way to go.

BTW, a virus didn't "destroy" your drive.

[clare]

Only if your reader or writer is defective. We used DVD-RW disks for backup until the database got too big - then went to DVD-DL (8gb) untill we outgree them - now use NAS drives

Agreed. If it did, it would pretty well be a "first"

[gfretwell]

Just bear in mind "burned" media is not archival. I have some 10 year old CDs that do not read anymore. They were stored in jewel cases in a CD box in a cabinet

[Dan Espen]

Just my experience with CD-RW.

I tried them with 3 machines other than the machine they were burnt on. Only 1 could see the data.

I tried to read one recently 4 years after it was burnt, no data.

With my experience, I'd worry that the backups weren't all readable. You don't find out until you need the data.

I actually do drive to drive backup (internal drives). I don't feel a need to take the data off site but if I did, I'd use a USB disk.

[clare]

And I have some over 15 years old that still read just fine. In fact I've never seen one that doesn't read now that read properly upon completion that is not scratched.in the last 15 or more years. In the real early years there were some "semi transparent" discs that lost their reflectivity and were unreadable within months. And some older readers could not read a burned disc, even the day it was written.

[clare]

In my (rather extensive) experience with CDs, trouble reading a disk is usually a problem with the reader. There were a couple widely distributed drives that started failing to read burned disks insde of

2 yezrs, and stopped reading anything within 5.

An LG drive will usually read anything you can throw at it even when over 10 years old. BENQ were good too,

[Stormin Mormon]

Computer wizzard #2 tells me that Phillips disks last longer than others. When I finish this sleeve (of 100) no name disks, I'll buy Phillips later.

I have some disks that go back about a decade. Some work fine, others do not read.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

Just bear in mind "burned" media is not archival. I have some 10 year old CDs that do not read anymore. They were stored in jewel cases in a CD box in a cabinet

[Stormin Mormon]

Thanks for the field report. I've heard that differernt brands of disk have different archival times.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

Just my experience with CD-RW.

I tried them with 3 machines other than the machine they were burnt on. Only 1 could see the data.

I tried to read one recently 4 years after it was burnt, no data.

With my experience, I'd worry that the backups weren't all readable. You don't find out until you need the data.

I actually do drive to drive backup (internal drives). I don't feel a need to take the data off site but if I did, I'd use a USB disk.

[harry]

:

In the last sisty years, failed on every mission. But it's only there to enable the rich arms manufacturers to gobble up tax dollars. Oh except Greneda. They won there.

[trader4]

But 2 if you insist on taking one off-site? A number greater that 1 is essential with the above outlined scenario. You're proposing to keep a USB drive in the PC and have it auto backup every night, right? OK, so, sometime prior to backup, the PC gets infected with a virus. That night the PC backs itself up to the USB, complete with virus. Or the virus wipes out some essential part of the drive, then 4 hours later the PC backs itself up. Goodbye data.

That's why the typical backup strategy keeps at least several backups going back in time, regardless of where they are stored. The exact number and timeframe depend on how critical and complete the restore must be.

[Attila Iskander]

# # In the last sisty years, failed on every mission. # But it's only there to enable the rich arms manufacturers # to gobble up tax dollars. # Oh except Greneda. They won there.

Poor harry Why do you need to keep demonstrating you're a stupid and ignorant bigot ?

[gfretwell]

As unpopular as it is, the Iraq war was a win too. There is a quasi democratic government there that is not dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and is not actively threatening Israel (the only reason we went there in the first place). I still am not sure it was worth it but as long as the neocons in the US are willing to start WWIII to save the West Bank Israeli settlements, it was better than the alternative.

[gfretwell]

At a certain point you have to ask, what is this irreplaceable data? Pictures? Music? That tends to be static data and you really only need to back up incrementally. It is also the type of thing you can store in the cloud, either in a web site dedicated to backups or just in web space on your own domain. I have areas that can't actually be navigated to from the regular web. My main long term backup is just the fact that I store pictures and music on a large number of machines, some that are not even here. (others in the family)

Financial data is never stored on my PC. I keep it on removable drives that are only plugged in when I am working with it and usually not on a web or net connected machine. That is the good thing about actual "computing". You don't need a very big machine to do it. An old W/98

100mz PC will do just fine

[krw]

Or perhaps "saving the West Bank Israeli settlements" *is* preventing WW-IV (III is long over).

[krw]

What does a corrupted DVD cost? No thanks! A 500GB drive costs about $50 and is a *lot* more reliable than ten DVDs.

[Attila Iskander]

The problem with that argument is that war has been a continuous and ongoing process in the Middle-East ever since Mohammed got started. The US, Israel, or even your boogie-man neo-cons had nothing to do with it. Learn some history instead of spouting some ignorant ideological cant

[gfretwell]

I know plenty of history. This particular problem started when we allowed displaced European Jews to occupy Palestinian territory after WWII instead of just making the Germans and French give them their property back ... and maybe a little more. Unfortunately that would not have helped us pacify Germany. I believe they did owe the Jews massive reparations but we did not make the Germans pay, we made the Palestinians pay and they have been paying more and more every year since.

The new settlements on the West Bank are a threat to world peace and it is just a matter of time before it spins out of control. It certainly does not help that we are quickly losing all the North African dictators who we have been paying off for a half century to ignore it. When the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Syria, Jordan and the Emirates it is, game over.

All it would really take is for them to forge an alliance with China, for the oil, and the west would be powerless to stop them if they wanted to kick the Israelis off the west bank ... unless we really had WW. It would be an economic war, a war we lose. China can crush us by simply redeeming their bonds instead of rolling them over. Of course China could drive up interest rates by simply trying to sell our debt, making US bonds a glut on the market. How much quantitative easing (buying up un sellable bonds with printed money) can we stand before we see rampant inflation?