Digital BW, The Print

Richard writes:

> Every night I synchronise the 2 S-ATA drives. In 15 years I have only had
> one hard disk failure, but I'm not taking any chances. In future I might do
> a network copy in case the PC catches fire. I live in Switzerland, so I have
> a nuclear shelter in the basement, and I may copy to a removable disk and
> put it in there - just in case.

Yes.  The major weakness with your current set-up is that you have both
disks in the same physical location--if the PC is destroyed by fire, you
lose everything, no matter how reliable the disks.

If one or both disks were removable, you could synchronize them daily
and then remove one and put it in a safe place.  This would be just as
good as any other form of backup.

The other question is: How do you archive? For archives, you need simple
media that will last a long, long time, and complete disk drives are not
in that category (also, they are much too expensive for archives).

> If I run out of space, I'll buy more, bigger hard drives. If hard drive file
> formats or hardware look in danger of becoming obsolete, I'll buy the new
> stuff and copy it. Better than copying 10000 CDs. Before I die, I'll tell my
> family to ensure future generations do the same ;)

At some point, you need to archive somehow.  Disks will not grow
infinitely in size (as it is, they are already among the
slowest-developing parts of computers).