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Jim wrote:
> On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 09:54:56 +0100, Chris Whelan
> <cawhelan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>gargoyle47 wrote:
>>
>>> I built my own PC in June 2005 and installed a Samsung TS-H552U/BEBL
>>> DVD/CD combo drive, which has recently started playing up, even though
>>> I only use it about once a week for backing up my personal data to CD-
>>> RW discs.
>>>
>>> What is the typical life-span for a DVD writer drive on a PC?
>>
>>That's a bit like a "how long is a piece of string" question; I've
>>certainly seen them fail before three years. I have also "revived" them by
>>manually cleaning the lens, but that was when I considered them expensive!
>>
>>They are available now for under 15 quid, so I would just replace it.
>>
>>Sliding a bit OT, but how long do you want to keep your data for? I have
>>had branded optical media that couldn't be read after five years. Archival
>>CD's are available at a price. You might want to research that?
>
> I recently bought 20 Kodak Gold archival DVD-Rs. They're guaranteed
> to retain their data for 100 years. They weren't all that expensive.
>
>>I have given up on CD's for long term storage. I have an external 500GB
>>USB drive that was available recently for 50 quid, and keep everything on
>>that.
>
> Hard drives can fail too, you know!
Indeed, but you would have to be pretty unlucky to have two fail at the same
time ;-)
The thing about using optical media is that you burn it, test it, then put
it away until you need it. When your PC's HD fails, and you find that the
five-year old CD is unreadable, you are stuffed.
Yes, since you ask, I have had it happen!
By using an external HD regularly, I will be much more likely to discover a
failure that means my backed up data is unavailable *before* the HD in the
main machine dies.
I also think it much more likely that I could recover data from a HD in the
early stages of failure; it seems from experience that once optical media
dies, all data is lost.
Chris
--
Remove prejudice to reply.
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