Best archival medium for laptop data? HDD? DVD?

Since my notebook HD is only 60GB, I'm looking for a solid, long-lasting medium that will archive data (photos, text files, music) for a good 20 years or so until I have to re-transfer. Is that even possible, especially with photos?

I've heard a lot of different stuff. Some people say to buy high-grade, archival DVDs. Others say that flash memory is best. Then others say to buy an external, name brand (like Seagate) hard drive. In arguments of the latter, they say to NOT keep the external HD powered on day-to-day basis, instead, only fire it up when transferring data, and keep it in a fire safe.

Any thoughts?

 

In 20 years whatever you buy today won't be relevant.

 

No, I'm not talking about backing up software. I'm talking about backing up movies, documents, photos and music. In 20 years, my Nine Inch Nails collection sure as hell WILL be relevant. So will my nude photo collection of all my ex-girlfriends.

 

What Zaz is saying I believe is that no matter what you use, CD, DVD, hard drive, etc, none of it will work in 20 years. Two reasons why. One, it will likely fail by then. Two, even if it still works you won't have the ability to connect it to anything and even if you could it is doubtful you could read it. Get an external hard drive preferably firewire for speed and use it for now. When the next great thing comes along, upgrade.

 

Like getting a new notebook with a parallel, serial or PS/2 connector is very rare.

 

I get it.... cool thanks

 

Harddrives have the best lifespan. They're also cheaper (per GB) and faster than DVD's.

But yeah, forget about it lasting 20 years. It might work, but it's a gamble.

 

If you're thinking of archiving things for that long, then your best option would be DVDs, as they are cheaper than HDs per GB (good quality HDs that is, I'm not comparing DVDs to cheap rubbish HDs which break after 1 year of usage) and study has shown that they can last for tens of years to come (DVD-Rs, the publication can be found at: http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/gipwg/StabilityStudy.pdf).
Still, I would suggest you go for the cheapest (at the highest quality of course), as USB, Firewire and DVD drives are all going to be very rare in 20 years time, so there isn't much point in buying an expensive high quality Firewire external HD just because it is currently still new.

 

I'd say CD's/DVD for the music - since i don't see anything coming along to replace them anytime soon, and well you can allways print out the pictures

 

I'd definitely suggest just getting a hard drive. It makes it much easier to restore data onto something else.

 

I prefer harddrive, I've had too many CD's/DvD's that when I've come back to them after burning I've been unable to read them, or they have gained a scratch from somewhere and now some of the data is unreadable/invalid.