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May 09, 2006

Backup strategies

Mark poses the question: How do you back up 100GB of data per year for 50 years?

Everybody’s data needs are different, but nobody would argue that the amount of data generated on average is going to continue to rise for the forseeable future. CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are extremely delicate media, hard drives and anything else with moving parts or magnetic sensitivity are questionable for long-term storage, and the tape backup industry really isn’t geared toward the average user (based on price, availability or ease of use). I thought this quote in the comments on Mark’s post was telling:

If you write it on papyrus and lock it in a pyramid, we know it will last a few thousand years. Everything else is just guesswork.

Having a data backup strategy is becoming more and more important in our ever-growing digital lives. As a broadcast designer, I’m suffling around tens to hundreds of gigabytes of data on a daily basis. I don’t even want to think about what it will be like once I finally start working in HD!

Posted by paullheureux at May 9, 2006 01:00 PM