I'm not having any problems at the moment. I'm looking for opinions. What do you guys think according to expertise or practical experience is the better way to go? I mean regarding methods of backing up files, photos, games, documents and the like. I find the CD/DVD as suspect because of numerous disk failure rates. Not a lot but enough to establish doubt regarding their reliability. What about flash disc and or external hard drives? What do you think is most reliable? My sense is not to place a lot of faith in any one medium and use multiple media creating duplicate backups. I have zero faith in things like the "Cloud" and or external companies offering storage service. There is far too many instances of sites being hacked. I suspect the "Cloud" is a place waiting for an accident to happen. I'm not inclined to offer it up myself and trust something I have no control over. I thought I'd ask if you guys have ideas about this stuff. Thanks for your suggestions.

I use Carbonite (one of those external sites) and an external hard drive. There is no perfect solution - all physical media is subject to failure and cloud storage has its own set of problems.

I'm sure you will get plenty of opinions!

Back up in more than one place.
Decide which stuff is most important, and back up the most important stuff in more than one place.

As you say, writable and re-writable CDR's and DVD+R's can go bad. They are also too small if you have a lot of data saved. Hard drives can also go bad. Right now I'm backing up files to more than one external hard drive so in case one goes bad, I'll still have a couple of others. External flash or SSD drives might be more reliable, but they are still too expensive in the sizes I need.

I have more confidence in the ability of places like Carbonite to take care of my information than I do in my ability to upload files to it without corruption, but it comes down to much the same thing --> not practical for me. Not only would it take forever to upload all my stuff, but I couldn't be sure that my files hadn't gotten corrupted during upload unless I downloaded them all and checked them. Of course if I ever needed the files, it would take far FAR longer to download them than to get them off an external hard drive.

I'll probably eventually get some external SSD drives for storage once the prices come down.

While no media storage is 100% fool proof, if you have really important things to backup I'd store them on CD/DVD RW disks. I don't have to worry about someone else getting their hands on the data if a site is hacked, and the data is off my computer in case it goes to computer heaven. Because so many sites get hacked it's the one single reason I wouldn't trust an off computer site.

Drac, I understand Carbonite is reputable but I'm not too trusting with personal data.

Jenny, I tend to agree with you. I have been backing up making duplicate cd or dvd copies. That becomes a space issue among other things. Several times I discovered "Corrupted disc" when it has done nothing but sit on a shelf in a protected case. I simply make another duplicate to maintain my twins. It is far less than assuring doing nothing for the trust issue. I also have two external hard drives can you say paranoid? In spite of the extra costs are flash disk any more reliable than cd/dvd? My thinking at this point is the external drives are likely the better way to go, however I'm not certain if in the long run they are much more reliable.

For the most part my saved files are not "Vital", however the lifetime of photos are not replaceable. Most of this stuff you can live without financial records and the like are also a different story.

Homer, I agree with you on off computer sites. Talk about hacking, there is also carelessness. I went to a doctor I saw once for a followup on some test. Luckily everything came back as I'm good to go, no worries. Well the PA who does the blood pressure etc before the doc comes in turns on the computer and asks me the effects of my four heart medications. I said I don't take any medication. She said it is right here in your records. Oh my she says when I disagree. The doctor has another patient with the same name these are his records. Yeah right, that's reassuring. I can't complain based on what ails this guy if he is still upright next year it'll be a miracle. Since our records are out there anybody can read them so much for the hipa laws. Your wife can't get info unless you sign permission but somebody across the country, no problem. Yeah I don't trust online sites for anything.

From what I've read, what makes an SSD drives wear out is constant writing and then rewriting -- like a Windows installation does during maintenance. If you only write to the drive once, as for permanent storage, you don't have that problem. Current generation SSD's use flash memory, which supposedly is higher quality in SSD's than the flash that is used in inexpensive thumb drives.


It's certainly a lot easier to store large quantities of information on an external drive than to burn 50 DVD+R's, whether you're using an SSD or a regular hard drive.

If you use regular magnetic hard drives, you might consider occasionally running SpinRite on them for maintenance, to make sure the drive stays in good shape.
https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm


Actually I print out financial records on paper if they're important. They take up space, but there really aren't that many that have to be saved. Think about how long paper lasts -- even cheap paper like newsprint will outlast digital. And unlike a photograph, it doesn't matter if the paper or colors fade a little.