Re: Storage of archives on regular or re-writeable CD's

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Joy,

A CD Writer (ours is the Adaptec DirectCD product) is absolutely
invaluable for archiving files. We spent under $300 for it, buy
the blank CDs at our local everything-in-one store for under
$2 apiece, and archive everything onto them.

They're cheap enough that you can burn one without thinking
twice about it, fast enough that you can burn a CD while
you're at lunch, and easy enough that we haven't ruined
a CD yet.

We actually use the CD burner for regular backups, and
burn an extra CD every couple of weeks and store it
off-site in a safe deposit box for extra insurance.

I'd used a CD burner back when they were a brand-new
and high-dollar item, requiring a fast machine, fast SCSI
drives, and you wasted a lot of blanks anyway.
The new ones are IDE, plug and play, and work
flawlessly (in our experience).
You can get CD burners that are cross-platform
compatible SCSI, although ours isn't.

Quite frankly, I don't know what we did without one.
If nothing else, the peace of mind of backing up
ALL data files onto a single disk to keep for records,
to provide insurance before upgrading a computer,
or whatever is worth way more than $300 + a $2
disk.

Eric and Deborah



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray    RayComm, Inc.
http://www.raycomm.com/      ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com

*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_


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