CD-R Reliability Caution

Have you been backing up all your music, home movies, and personal photos to CD-R or DVD-R media? For safety's sake, you might want to consider moving that data to a hard drive.

According to this article: Checked Your CD-Rs Lately? on Tech ARP, you may want to verify your data is still intact and recoverable. Dr. Adrian Wong describes that a number of his archived CD-Rs, which are less than 10 years old, are coming up corrupt or difficult to read.

Dr. Wong's overall conclusion is that, despite what the manufacturers say about lifespan, you should use caution if you're storing important files to CD-Rs. "If you have something important to keep, back up OFTEN and use MULTIPLE storage options!" Follow the link to his article above, it's a good read.

Today it has become cost effective to back up to a hard disk drive. The cost per gig of storage has become incredibly affordable. Aside from choosing an external USB hard drive, consider storage that offers some RAID features in the form of NAS (Network Attached Storage) or perhaps a Windows Home Server.

Here are a few links to manufacturers that offer a variety of storage choices, from desktop to rack-mounted NAS solutions, proprietary RAID options with considerable flexibility and even drives that will float in the water and withstand a fire.

Buffalo Technologies
Net Gear
Data Robotics Inc.

IO Safe

Thanks to Integra House for this great article!