Isn't it wonderful...

[Flat Fifth Fury]

Here's my take on this:
All drives fail. It's just a matter of time. The longer you use it the more wear on the moving parts there is. So I have 4 internal drives to keep things safe that I'm working on: one drive for the OS and programs, one for swap files, one for samples and one for data. I have two drives in removable SATA bays that I can access my archived files from. I have two bays for ease of file transfer. The archive drives are never ever turned on unless I am reading or writing to the archive drives. Thus they get almost no wear. I keep my archive drives in two Pelican waterproof hard cases. One case holds a complete set of archive drives that stays here in the office and the other are the mirror drives that stays at my friends basement down the street. That way if my house burns down I can access everything that I've ever done just by waking down the street a block and a half. I back up my stuff to archive about every two weeks.

Using this system I've never had data loss.

 

[AllanD]

I've been lucky enough to never haave had a hard drive die on me in my 15+ years of owning a computer. Seems like I'm overdue for one, I'll be purchasing a big flash drive soon. Safer, right?

 

[guitarguru777]

I'll be purchasing a big flash drive soon. Safer, right?

NO ... still susceptible to power spikes and heavy magnetic fields. Back up all your data to DVD or BluRay and store them in HARD cases. This prevents them from being scratched.

OPTICAL media is the ONLY truly safe platform for backing up data. Unless you dont take care of you DVD / Blueray disks.

 

[DaveBlack]

oh god.

Which one do you have because I've been using a WD 500gb drive for a few months now. I should prob grab a different one just in case...

 

[Jind]

I've been lucky enough to never haave had a hard drive die on me in my 15+ years of owning a computer. Seems like I'm overdue for one, I'll be purchasing a big flash drive soon. Safer, right?

Not really - just remember anything electrical or mechanical will eventually fail. While it may not have any moving parts to wear out, it is susptable to all those other nasty things like surges, power failures, and the likes.

The only safe method of data retention is having a sound backup strategy (redundancy is the key) - have a backup plan for your backup plan if you really want to be safe. While I have disk redundancy, I've been looking at also using an online backup solution for my critical files. It's gotten pretty cheap and I have a good internet connection so I really may do that to be safe.

Remember a house fire or a flood could take out everything including your backup solution and while insurance may get you your possessions back, depending on how much you value a lifetime of computer files and records, it probably will do little to get those back.

 

[AllanD]

Good call, I'll be purchasing Blank CD's then. I feel like it's 2002 again!

 

[pipaguapique]

OPTICAL media is the ONLY truly safe platform for backing up data. Unless you dont take care of you DVD / Blueray disks.

This.

i back up everything to a second hard drive. but every month i clean the back up drive by burning everything to DVD's. But i have them in those folder looking things like this one:

i have like 2 of those things packed with my data. They are all dusty and crap, but i know they're safe.