OT but interesting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I'm thinking long term data storage and retrieval here - what archiving
procedures do some of you use? I mean, say you have DVD+Rs and CD-Rs, etc
over the span of 20 years with always relevant data on them. Your hard drive
is never big enough and you don't want to risk leaving it all on the HD
anyway.

What suggestions do you have / what archiving systems do you use - e.g. you
may have 20 CD-Rs of documents, and you want to find the right CD without
going through all the CDs. What do you do to find it quickly? Compile a
contents list of each CD and then do a find on those files? All 20 of them?
Did you remember to name it properly? Is it still a good name now you've
started naming them in a different convention lately? No? No I suppose 1.doc
wasn't terribly helpful, but maybe there's a better way of naming future
files from now on... Or do you perhaps use databases? Or what else?

I'm interested because I'm getting to the point now where I'm going to have
to think of something really clever to be able to effectively use the
powerful results computers help us to acheive. Any interesting thoughts /
effective "systems" out there?
 
I'm thinking long term data storage and retrieval here - what archiving
procedures do some of you use? I mean, say you have DVD+Rs and CD-Rs, etc
over the span of 20 years with always relevant data on them. Your hard drive
is never big enough and you don't want to risk leaving it all on the HD
anyway.
Click to expand...

I don't know of any reliable way to back data up for 20+ years. Hardcopy is
probably the most reliable, but the bulkiest and still not perfect. DVD will
do for a while, but be sure to use good media and store is safely.

As for finding files? I group similar stuff together in an Archive folder on
the hard drive and then burn to DVD/CD when there is enough stuff.

Only one sure thing I can suggest...

Name you files beginning with the date in Y-M-D format. It makes sorting
very easy... e.g.:

2004-09-05 - My resume.doc
2004-05-10 - wxp-w2k-catalyst-8-051-040825a-017633c - ATI Cat v4.9.exe

....always easy to find the latest version of a document or driver.
 
I'm thinking long term data storage and retrieval here - what archiving
procedures do some of you use? I mean, say you have DVD+Rs and CD-Rs, etc
over the span of 20 years with always relevant data on them. Your hard drive
is never big enough and you don't want to risk leaving it all on the HD
anyway.

What suggestions do you have / what archiving systems do you use - e.g. you
may have 20 CD-Rs of documents, and you want to find the right CD without
going through all the CDs. What do you do to find it quickly? Compile a
contents list of each CD and then do a find on those files? All 20 of them?
Did you remember to name it properly? Is it still a good name now you've
started naming them in a different convention lately? No? No I suppose 1.doc
wasn't terribly helpful, but maybe there's a better way of naming future
files from now on... Or do you perhaps use databases? Or what else?

I'm interested because I'm getting to the point now where I'm going to have
to think of something really clever to be able to effectively use the
powerful results computers help us to acheive. Any interesting thoughts /
effective "systems" out there?
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're asking for disk cataloging. Get CDVista at
http://www.gentibus.com/
 
Back
Top