Thursday, June 12, 2008

Oh, That's Just Great!


Ok, so, like, home made CD’s and DVD’s last only two years. What kind of crap is that! What you’re telling me is that all of those hundreds and possibly thousands of downloads I’ve invested in, burned to CD’s and DVD’s, carefully labeled and gently placed in jewel cases are going to disintegrate in two f*@kin’ years.

Wonderful.

Peachy.

And don’t give me that crap about saving them on an external hard drive, either. Do you know how many out of date hard drives I have in my garage that are currently housing generations of mice? That, plus I like the physical, single pieces of data; it’s comforting somehow. I even make covers out of high quality photo paper.
I hear there are things called “Gold” CD’s and DVD’s that apparently last 50+ years, but they’re also apparently expensive as hell. I’ll have to pick some up, of course. Maybe the DVD’s so I can make archival copies of an entire bands discography.
That’s fine, that’s not what I’m so pissed about though. It’s the fact that NOWHERE on the cheap-ass CD packages do they ever once mention the lifespan or potential longevity of these things. The last I heard CD’s were supposed to last eons if you cared for them correctly.
I feel duped, deprived of hours and hours of my life I’ll never get back. Just another way I’ve been bent over the table and screwed in the pocketbook by “The Man”.
Actually, I’m not really that angry, just ignorant. What do you guys do to back up your MP3’s? If it’s a hard drive, give me a reason or two as to why that’s the answer. If it’s the gold DVD’s, or something else, tell me about it. What I’m looking for is a reason to relax, to protect my investment here.

Please?

7 comments:

Thom Gabrukiewicz said...

I use encrypted Space Monkeys. You still owe me a beer, too.

Anonymous said...

OK, Unc, this is just me, but I like the external hard drive idea. They're coming down in price (I recently found a 500 GB "notebook" for about $50.00) and they seem like a nice safe place to store MP3's. You can get a boatload of 'em on a 500 GB drive.
I use my external drive for large graphic files and haven't come close to filling one up.
If I ever need to make a quick exit I can just grab the drive and run.
I've heard of people putting their family pictures and important documents on them and then storing it away.
Anyway, that's what I would do.

Unknown said...

I, too, must trhow in with an external harddrive as a backup.
About five years ago I had a computer go kablooey on me, and it was devastating.
Right now, I keep my .mp3s stored on my D: drive (the operating systen is on the C: drive.), and also have them backed up to the external drive... I'm also thinking of backing everything up to CD, since I don't have a DVD burner... will be an huge project, likely lasting a couple weeks, but is better than a couple years to re-re-track down all that stuff again!
BTW, I've got some CDs I've been using for close to 10 years now (CDRs), with no noticable wear. I think it has to do a lot with how they are stored. Those sleeve-booklet holders are supposed to be pretty damaging, but if you are keeping them in cases, I'd think you should be relatively safe.
My best advise is to have your backups, and then back them up.
Best of luck!

Nik said...

I dunno, I've got CD-Rs I made 7, 8 years ago that SEEM to be doing ok... Ah hell the robots will come and kill us all in a few years anyway.

Uncle E said...

Hey thanks everyone. I think I'm steering towards the external hard drive thing. I do store them in jewel cases, Matt, so let's hope mine last as long as yours.

Brave Sir Robin said...

I too have the same concern, and like Matt, I keep all my documents, pics, music on the D: drive, and run all the programs off the C: drive. I back up everything of importance on 2 DVD's, aswell as the external hard drive. It's probably a good idea to back up to a new DVD every couple years or so, sometimes DVD's and CD's get corrupted for no apparent reason.

bwrice said...

I seventh the external approach. We have two Macs, a laptop and a desktop. Each machine is backed up by an external hard drive (not just the iTunes library, but everything). Every couple of weeks I completely mirror my iTunes library on my laptop to the desktop. So at any given moment, the entire library is on two hard drives and two externals. I figure I'm safe against crashes. If our house burns down... that's another story.

But -- what about all of those home movies! They are way too big for multiple redundant back ups. I have all of them burned to DVD's right now. I really need to come up with a strategy for them.