I did use external hard drives, till one crashed.
Now my backup system for my personal stuff is
https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/
--jody
On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Can y’all recommend how I might preserve and archive 46 gigabytes of
> personal data for the long haul?
>
> For the past thirty years the librarian in me has been preserving and
> archiving my personal and professional data. It started out as a few text
> files, a couple of .exe files, the rare MacWrite file, and a growing number
> of HyperCard “stacks”. Then I moved away from proprietary word processing
> files and migrated to plain text documents as much as possible. These
> included scholarly documents, computer programs, and selected email
> messages in the form of mbox files. Still various flavors of images,
> movies, and PDF crept into my mix. And believe it or not, I print some of
> my text files, and I have printed major components of my images.
>
> For a while 3.5” discs were sufficient as a storage medium, but the pile
> grew and grew. I then moved to CD’s — migrating my 3.5” discs along the way
> — and the pile grew and grew again. Five years ago I migrated to DVD, and
> that was good for a bit (all puns intended). But now, as I catch up I have
> discovered that my archival output is close to 46 gigabytes of data just
> for the year 2014. Much of this data is really images, but not just
> pictures of my pet, but rather a sort of story.
>
> What medium do you think I should use for archival preservation and
> storage? At 4 GB/DVD, I can’t afford to burn more than 10 DVD’s/year.
> That’s impractical. I want something that is device and operating system
> independent. CD’s were good choices, and I only needed to migrate things
> forward. DVD’s are okay, but I believe they write data in a
> compressed/encrypted fashion. I shy away from external hard drives because
> the are less likely to work with future computers, and besides, they have
> so many moving parts and complicated electronics. Just more things to break.
>
> I’m leaning towards SD disks, but yikes, they are nothing but pure bits.
> Moreover, they are physically very small and easily lost.
>
> What do y’all suggest?
>
> † My iPhone is to blame. At more than 5 megapixels per image, the amount
> of disc space taken up by pictures is phenomenal. I suppose I could “weed”
> my images, but then much of the story would be lost, even if I printed.
>
> —
> Eric Morgan
>
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