I always find it highly amusing when friends and client proudly show me their backup. After a solid decade of data loss most people finally understand the bare necessity of making backups. But still they are not ’safe’. DVDs themselves are a terrible backup media: they easily scratch, bright sunlight is bad for them and sometimes the data can’t be read in all DVD drives. Most of all they won’t last forever: manufacturer promise sometimes ten year or more. But try to complain about data loss in ten years to TDK or Sony. You must have done something wrong Sir!

And who knows if we will have DVD drives in ten years anyway? The floppy disk died a slow death, but I guess DVDs and CD-Drives will change and disappear much faster. Hopefully not your data.

The best protection: make backups on different media’s! I have my most important data on DVD discs, an external portable hard drive, an USB stick and on a secure server on the web. Overkill? Not really if your work means something to you. Most of all: backups onto web machines or online services can be done every night when you sleep.