Storage question.

I have a lot of data i want to backup and i have an idea how i want todo it. Have a few questions first.

If i was to say buy a 1TB sata internal harddrive connect it to both my pc's one after the other. Backup all my data onto it. Remove it and put it in a draw rarely to be touched. Will it last a very long since it will almost never be used?

Blackmesa8

Your drive would be in the drawer a very long time indeed before you'd lose data. The ultimate problem with it would be finding yourself in world where SATA was some obscure interface format that no one had used in decades.

How much data do you really need to back up?

Personally I think the file format issue would come in prior to any physical interface issues.

lol wut.

Methinks the data would be out of date long before that, unless all he wants to backup are Media Files

You assume a media file will last long as a supported format? I have no more expectation that an MP3 or AVI will be supported by mainstream technologies in 20 years than being able to find a player then for the DVDs, CDs or BD discs I have today.

The major challenge that digital archivists are encountering is finding software that supports the files they have in their myriad formats and being able to convert them to newer formats fast enough to keep up with the increasing churn rate of formats. For historians this is a worrying trend. The deluge of data we think we have today, and that might otherwise enlighten our descendants about our times, is extraordinarily transient compared to the acetate, silver bromide, paper, velum, wood and ink, clay or stone that our forebears used. What remains of that can in some cases still be read thousands of years after it was laid down. All this is made worse by how frighteningly easy digital data is to delete.

Exactly my point.

Both wrong. There'll still be plenty of conversion programs available for jpgs, mp3s, docs, pdf, (you name it) in 20 probably even 50 years. You have no evidence to the contrary. Every format that has been in widespread use since the 80s can still be readily accessed today.

Every format that has been in widespread use since the 80s can still be readily accessed today.

betamax ?, 8inch floppy?, rl02 ?,