Closet Space


Computer technology is very good at holding and transmitting large amounts of information. It's just not much good at holding on to it.

I have around 250 CDRs of mp3s, made over the last decade. It comes to about 100GB, which would make for maybe 65 days continuous play. At some point I started putting new mp3s on DVDR, and there's now 70 of them, which at at rough calculation comes to c.300GB.

The thing is, DVDRs last about 5 years before becoming unreadable - assuming the actual burning process doesn't fail, which it seems to 1 time out of 5. A photocopier which gave you a blank sheet one copy out of 5 would not sell well.

Good CDRs might last 10 years, which means my oldest archives will fail soon, and some have indeed started. As for blu-ray...I don't high hopes for its durability at all.

So is there anything better? Something that I can at least rely on for the next 10 years and don't have to keep out of sunlight, and won't be destroyed by stray biscuit crumb or fingerprints, for christ's sake?

Oh, and could it possibly have some way of removing duplicated or redundant files easily?

The answer is...yes, sort of. It's a hard disc. An external one, independently powered and connected by USB, and serving no other purpose than holding backups. You don't run programs on it, you don't run an operating system off it, you don't actually use it very often. You just put files on it that you want to keep for a long time without changing...and when your CDRs and DVDs fail, you use. Possibly to make new CDRs and DVDRs.

So that's my birthday indulgence to myself. GBP90 for 1.5TB. I'll say that again - one and half terabytes. The fact that such devices exist and are sold to ordinary consumers shows how many geeks people are in the same situation as me.

All of which means I've spent the last three days doing nothing but copy CDRs into a little grey box 8x5''. And removing a few GBs worth of duplicates. Next comes the stage of "removing stuff I'm absolutely, positively, never going to want, or which has been superseded by stuff on the DVDRS"...

...and then start work on the DVDRs.

Incidentally, my brother - who's made a career out of being the expert the experts go to when they need expert advice - has given up on the idea of keeping backups outside the computer at all.

He just stores everything on absurdly large internal hard discs.

4 comments:

  1. CDRs & DVDRs fail? Bollocks.

    one and half terabytes

    My first pc, bought 13 years ago this year, came with a 2.4Gb hard drive. At the time it seemed wondrously, unfillably large...

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  2. I've been thinking about getting an external hard drive, too. I've a lot of stuff I've burned on CDs that I'd like to keep in one compact space and not worry about it corrupting. 1.5 Terabytes sounds great!

    I still have VCR recordings of tv shows!

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  3. The problem with backups is that you end up with multiples of them and I can never figure out which is the one to use.

    And beware! The larger the hard drive the more data you lose if it fails.

    I'm thinking that storage on the cloud is probably the best ... but then you don't really know who has access to it, and paranoia sets it.

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  4. @Aethelreadtheunread:

    CDRs & DVDRs fail? Bollocks.

    They fail all the time. Odd how it's remarkably easy to destroy the data, and remarkably difficult to destroy the media.

    My first pc, bought 13 years ago this year, came with a 2.4Gb hard drive. At the time it seemed wondrously, unfillably large...

    2.4GB 13 years ago was wondrously large. And like all storage space, it winds up being too small, no matter how large it actually it. Some version of Parkinson's Law I imagine.



    @Eroswings:

    I've a lot of stuff I've burned on CDs that I'd like to keep in one compact space and not worry about it corrupting.

    Just remember: the external hard drive is a place for long term storage and occasional access. Keep your CDs and burn new ones from the drive when they fail.

    I still have VCR recordings of tv shows!

    Not so unusual, I suspect. We've got a lot of stuff on VHS - and a machine to transfer VHSs to DVDs.

    A row of already-copied VHS tapes is glued together and is propping up this laptop to a nice angle to type at. Another two VHS bundles function as shelves for the USB speakers. :-).



    @Camy:

    The problem with backups is that you end up with multiples of them and I can never figure out which is the one to use.

    My most important data is backed up to DVDR, which has a backup disc, which will have a backup on the external drive. And I access them in that order.

    And beware! The larger the hard drive the more data you lose if it fails.

    Indeed. Which is why
    (1) the external drive is a backup of a backup - the CDRs and DVDRs are still there, and
    (2) the drive is partitioned, so if one partition fails, the others should be okay. I find when disks fail, it's one partition, not the whole thing.

    I'm thinking that storage on the cloud is probably the best

    It's a good approach - if you don't have hundreds of gigabytes to store. Online storage is good for system files and software, not I think for anything larger.

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