gofar99 Messages: 1955 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, With terabyte drives so cheap now I use "spinners" to back up my material. They are a proven technology and if you put the backup someplace safe they should easily out last you. USB ones are slower...but they are easy to use. I don't much like jump drives for backup as I have had some fail after many uses. Recovery is difficult from such failures as it usually involves the file allocation tables. CDs and DVDs are better and scratches are not much of an issue for current hardware. In the early days just looking at one sideways would make it skip, now they really need to be badly damaged to cause problems. The issue that they would lose their data after a while..particularly ones you made yourself have been largely disproved. I have some that are from the 90s and they play just fine. I would never store the stuff on the "cloud". Too many issues with ownership, companies that go belly up, access and so on. A copy there is fine for folks that use portable players, but the originals ought to be somewhere safe.