Seagate External Hard Drive Best Buy
What is the best way to store computer data?
I want to ensure I safely store things from my computer Hard Drive somewhere else as well. I did have an external hard drive (seagate freeagent) which crashed and deleted data so that unit makes me not want to buy another. CDs or DVDs can wear out. Best, cheap solution would be great!
Burnable CDs have a theoretical life of between 50 and 100 years. DVDs have a theoretical life of between 10 and 25 years. I don’t think anyone’s done a life estimate on flash drives or memory cards.
But redundancy is the key. ALL hard drives will eventually fail. If you have the data on 2 external drives, the odds of being hit by lightning on a clear day in the desert are probably greater than the odds of both drives failing at the same time. When the first one fails you replace it and back up the data from the second one to the replacement. (That’s the idea behind RAID 1 or RAID 5 – if a drive fails, you replace it with no loss of data.) If you use redundant drives, AND optical backup (that you check every 6-12 months), you’re probably safe forever.
I just use a flash card and 2 hard drives – and a good backup program.