• Backup Practices
  • Backup Bookmarks
  • Backup Software
  • Data Loss & Theft
  • External Drives
  • Online Backup
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • Website Backups

FileSlinger Backup Blog

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • E-zine
  • Questions?
  • Review Policy
  • Comment Policy
  • Disclosures

FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 12-30-05: Don't Use CD-RWs for Year-End Backups

December 30, 2005 by Sallie Goetsch Leave a Comment

Another year is drawing to a close, which means it’s time for your year-end backups. (For more detail on end-of-year backups, see my December 2004 backup reminder.)

Strictly speaking, year-end backups aren’t really backups; they’re archives. You make copies of all your important computer files from the year in question to store with your paper files. You need to keep anything relevant to your taxes (like your Quicken or QuickBooks data, bank statements, invoices from vendors, invoices to clients, and so on) for seven years.

That means that if, six and a half years from now, the IRS wants to see those files, they’d better be able to read the CD or DVD you put them on. (Or, yes, tape, if you’re really that kind of masochist. We do know that tapes, if not in use, can last 30 years and still be readable.)

Inexpensive generic CDs work fine for short-term backups or anything else which you consider disposable, but if you want the disc to be readable even one year from now, make sure you use high-quality brand-name CDs and DVDs. Otherwise they may start to rot, and when you take them out of their jewel cases, you’ll be able to see through them.

And yes, jewel cases do provide the best protection against scratches and dust, though you can get away with plastic or paper sleeves if 1) you can seal them and 2) you’re not putting the disc in, say, an overstuffed archive box where the surrounding papers will exert the pressure of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

And, finally, don’t use rewritable CDs or DVDs for archival purposes. First, you don’t want to write over this data, so there’s no point. Second, you’ll be wasting your money: rewritable discs are always more expensive than write-once discs. Third, if the disc has been written to numerous times before, it will be more vulnerable to data loss in the writing phase and won’t last as long in storage.

And finally, CD-RWs are not compatible with all CD drives, particularly those on older machines. Though it’s unlikely that you’ll be trying to read your year-end backups seven years from now on a Windows 98 machine, it’s possible that you’ll need to get into your archives one year from now on an older machine that you’re using while your new, top-of-the-line computer is in the shop for repairs. As “Dr. Gizmo” advised in Wednesday’s Syracuse Post-Standard:

The ‘RW’ method was added to the ways CDs work long after the technology of recording CDs was invented, and could not have been more troublesome if the inventors of the CD had decided to use hot peanut butter as the method of making rewriteable CDs.

The pits etched by the recorder’s laser on a CD-RW are much smaller than the CD standard calls for. Most old CD drives and many current home and car CD players can’t figure out what’s on a CD-RW.

Don’t take chances with your important business and financial records. Copy them onto good quality media, put them into jewel cases, and store them in a safe place away from your office.

Then you can ring in the New Year with confidence.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Archiving, CD & DVD Backups Tagged With: annual archive, year-end backup

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Search

Google Ads

Categories

  • Announcements
  • Archiving
  • Backup Bookmarks
  • Backup Devices
  • Backup Practices
  • Backup Software
  • CD & DVD Backups
  • Data Loss & Theft
  • Data Recovery
  • Drive Failure
  • Drive Imaging
  • E-mail Backups
  • Events
  • External Drives
  • Flash Drives
  • Guest Bloggers
  • Hardware Failure
  • Humor
  • Mac Backups
  • Mobile Backup
  • Network Storage
  • Offsite Backups
  • Online Backup
  • RAID
  • Removable Drives
  • Reviews
  • Storage
  • Tape Backup
  • Traveling Backups
  • Tutorials
  • Website Backups

Tags

Elsewhere

  • BACN
  • East Bay WordPress Meetup
  • Rhymes with Sketch
  • The Author-izer
  • WP Fangirl

Find Sallie Online

Backup Poll

When was the last time you backed up your computer?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
  • Polls Archive

Tags

.MAC Acronis Amazon S3 annual archive backup Backup Bookmarks BACN Bart-PE Buffalo carbon copy cloner Carbonite CloudBerry Cloud Computing Coding Horror CrashPlan disaster recovery Dmailer DriveImage DriveSavers Dropbox DVD Flickr Ghost Google Docs Iron Mountain Karen's Replicator LinkedIn LiveVault Maxtor Memeo Mozy RAID Rebit reminder Retrospect Seagate social backup Spare Backup SyncBack SyncBack Freeware Titan Backup WordPress XHD year-end backup Zoogmo

Copyright © 2022 · Metro Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in