Small Business - Storing Your Records
How do you store your business records?
These days, with so much of our business packed into that whirring computer box, it’s only natural to think to storing your data on CD or DVD. After all, these days every computer comes with a CD or DVD burner so why not use it to store your data?
We certainly do, we have business records and important business files stored on CD going back as far as 1998. We also have a lot of our family records stored on CDs. Treasured photos, important family history papers going back to WWI have all been scanned and burnt onto CDs.
We have always known that CDs are prone to fail after a few years. I’ve mentioned it here before that cheap CDs are not ideal for storing important files because they deteriorate after just a few years. But now it seems that experts are also suggesting that good quality CDs are not ideal either.
Long term storage on hard disks is also not recommended because mechanical failure is quite likely.
Kurt Gerecke, a data storage expert with IBM, suggests that the only safe way to store important data is via magnetic tapes. He suggests that even good quality discs are unlikely to last beyond five years and el-cheapos bought at the local discount store are not going to last more than two years.
You can read the full story here at Computer World
