vinceJan 3, 2023

PSA: take some time in 2023 to back up your/your family's CD-Rs (and other recordable media) full of memories you threw into storage 10+ years ago; there's a decent chance they've started to rot!

the tenuously thin layer of dyes/adhesives holding the data *will* break down over time, rapidly so if their environment is uncontrolled, the surface was previously nicked/contaminated, or they were cheap ones to begin with

Show threadophelea
@0x56 did that 5 years ago from a stack of ~30 cdrs. i have 2 separate duplicate back up drives (one is my weekly backup, one is my monthly) and then 2 other duplicated drives, one photos, one music. of which i update every january at minimum (usually 2 or 3 times throughout the year) that i keep in a fire safe
Jan 5, 2023 at 3:02amWeb
Show threadvinceJan 5, 2023
@ophelea nice setup. inspecting things on a schedule is definitely something i need to practice ("make sure your backups work" is a familiar concept, and i do this for my primary set to guard against failure of soldered, encrypted internal storage and work downtime. but i had allowed the rest of the archival stuff to degrade much farther than i realized...)
Show threadopheleaJan 5, 2023
@0x56 this is where calendar reminders are your friend. i just set never-ending reminders and I know the jan 1st one means make sure everythings the same and back up to the safe drives. i have been lucky so far and only had one drive that needed to be replaced (it was 10ish). i will probably replace them all over time as storage gets so much better.