Time To Transfer Those Old Backup Files

I recently came across a blog by Adrian Wong of TechARP who was experiencing about a 10% error rate on old CD-R’s that had backed up data on them.

Some of these were brand name CD’s and some generic brands, but all were less than 10 years old and were stored in a cool, dry and dark area.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet didn’t experience the same data loss rate, but said it may be attributable to verifying the data at the time of backup. He also recommends Elprime Media Recovery ($19.95) for dead disks.

Whatever the case, with the decrease in cost of hard drives and even web space it only makes sense to take any backed up CD’s/DVD’s and transfer them to a new medium.

1 Terabyte hard drives are now available for less than $100 – I’ve even seen them at newegg.com for $80. If you have any old data storage tapes, CD’s or DVD’s laying around I recommend you take that data while it’s still readable and transfer them to a hard drive, either internal or external.

You may want to install a new hard drive in your computer and use your old drive to store all you archived data, then put it in a safe place.

I also recommend looking at Amazon’s S3 service which charges a minimal amount for gigabytes of storage online. It would be a great place to back up data.

I know it sounds like a pain in the butt, but you went to all the trouble to back up that data originally, don’t let that time spent go to waste…

Paul

Videos available to members:

• Backing Up Your Computer Data
• The 4 Types Of Data Backup