Re: best long-term data storage???

Neal Benson (neal-benson@ufl.edu)
Thu, 13 Mar 1997 10:01:20 -0500

Chalk up my vote for CD-recordables. We hesitated after hearing many
warnings about reliability of recording (misfires, etc); but we recently
purchased a computer from Gateway 2000 with a 3GB hard drive and an
SCSI-interfaced CD-R already installed, complete with Corel CD-Creator
software. After writing about 5 disks thus far (and several with
multi-session format) it hasn't missed once. [However one of my colleages
took his CD to another site and found that the CD-ROM in their system didn't
have multisession capability and thus the "added" data (following the first
write) was unreadable.]

While CD-R technology has certainly improved since the early days (all of
about a year or two ago), it's still not as simple as just copying to a Jazz
or Zip. However, it's well worth it if compatibility and media cost are
your concerns.

And while DVD is on the horizon, I understand that the first drives will be
read-only, as was the case with CD's. PC Magazine estimates a minimum of a
year or two before the writable drives are available. If you have an
inclination to do this, don't wait on DVD; CD is likely to be with us for
some time yet.

Neal

--
Neal Benson
University of Florida
E-mail: neal-benson@ufl.edu