I agree, burned media does have a short lifetime. That's why I reburn
or put on new tech every year. (CD -> DVD -> external HD)

I also have CD-R's (Imation) from 1995 that are still readable. While
some discs only last a couple months. Never buy el-cheapo brands. I
made this mistake and bought a 50 Cd spool for $10 last year, forget
the brand but didnt even have it on the disc.  They lasted about 6
months. Luckly they were just backups and I still had the originals.

Now adays I stick with Imation and Memorex DVD+R. Though with the
price of HD's dropping I'm just going to start storing on those. You
can get a 500gig external seagate USB2.0/FW drive for $129-$150US.
That's CHEAP. Imagine what they'll be around Christmas. I'm hoping to
get 2 of them next month, 1 for storage, 1 for redundancy. 1TB for
less than $300 is pretty sweet :)

-Josh

On 6/25/07, Russell McMahon <apptech@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
> > I bought a Road-Stor unit.  I transfer ALL my digital photos to CD.
> > I can then downsize to my hearts content and transfer the ones I
> > want
> > to my laptop if I desire.
>
> > The Road-Stor unit costs about $350.00 or so when I bought mine.
> > I'm sure
> > they probably cost less than that now.
>
>
> Be aware that CDs will not last forever.
> Much FUD around on this but they will have lives from months to 100
> years.
> The trick is to get all your valued data on ones which last at the top
> end of this range. I have definitely seen  a few that are at the
> bottom end. Latest developments purport to be producing VERY long
> lifetime products. I have some CDs here written about 13 years ago
> which still work well. And others that don't work at all.
>
> Serious backup requires multiple copies, ideally on different media
> types and physically separated, plus means of verifying the backups
> rigorously, both initially and on an ongoing basis.
>
> For many purposes I find that a hard drive on each of 2 networked
> computers with MANUAL implementation of backup is a good solution for
> photo backup. Having a brain in the loop can reduce certain data loss
> risks as long as the brain is used.
>
>
>
>
>         Russell
>
>
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