by Robin Harris
January 4th, 2009 @ 10:50 pm

You can stick a newspaper clipping in a folder and read it in 50 years. Not so with digital content: both the media AND the format can become unreadable. With so much of the world’s data - and yours - in digital form, more people wonder: how do I keep my pictures, music, videos, documents and more around for decades?

Here’s how. The proper mindset - Your data is valuable. Storage is cheap. Scrimping on capacity to save a few bucks is silly. If money is a real problem, plan to copy your most important data first. In a few months, when storage is cheaper, buy some more. Remember, you will soon forget about the cost of the storage, but you may never forgive yourself for losing irreplaceable family or legal files.

One word, my friend: copies - Neatness is one of the most common causes of data loss. You get the new external drive - or worse, RAID array - copy everything to it and then delete the originals. The drive or array goes south - and your data goes with it. A RAID array is NOT a substitute for a data archive. RAID arrays break and all too often a single mistake - oops, pulled the wrong disk! - and your data is gone forever.

Cheap optical disks can slowly scramble your data. Hard drives crash. Even if your data is readable, if your application can’t read it you are still out of luck. Unnecessary neatness - Instead of “everything in its place and a place for everything” you want “every thing in every place.” The best policy is several copies across different media, preferably in different locations. Storage is cheap. Use lots.