[geeks] Best media for personal long-term backup?

[Phil Stracchino]

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> If money is no object, you may want to consider DVD-RAM.  Allegedly it was
> designed for archival-quality from the beginning, but drives and media are
> costly.

The majority of optical drives above the scrape-the-barrel bottom tier
these days appear to support ALL red-laser CD and DVD formats, including
DVD-RAM.

> Consider also how you want to store your media.  You can extend the life
> of even crappy media by storing it in an airtight fire-safe where most of
> the oxygen has been purged and replaced with nitrogen.

The nitrogen purges every time you open the safe will get expensive and
annoying, though.

However, you can improvise a mostly oxygen-free environment by tucking
your disc into an almost-fully-sealed ziplock bag at room temperature
along with a little chunk of dry ice.  As the dry ice sublimes to
gaseous CO2, it'll displace the remaining air from the bag.  When the
chip has almost all sublimed, finish sealing the zip.


-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.