Was reading an article today about the data storage things we use such as CDs.

Quote:

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Digital media breaks. Hard drives crash. CDs get scratched. DVDs rot. That's the downside of digital: You can either access it or not, period. A stained and faded book may still be readable, at least partially. But a rotted DVD is gone.

If you're not careful, your digital data will disappear. And that's something to keep in mind next time you're looking at the digital photos you took on your son's first birthday.

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USA Today

Bit scary to think that long after the photos are gone of our kids our great grandparents photos are still going to be going strong.

How do you store your precious documents? (Not just talking photos here) and what is the best way?

The best way is by attaching a file to an e-mail and sending it to yourself. That way it will be in your inbox forever, unless you delete it. E-mail accounts do not become destroyed they should stay around forever, unless you manage to get yourself banned or something. Also, the files can be accessed anywhere, anytime and you have about 5GB (?) If you run out, just make another one! One more thing, is that the accounts are well protected. I have heard that if you were to try to hack into an account you would have a job as well as being banned from the system, so security is tight too.

Mine are on the computer, on a removable hard drive and on a flash drive, and DVD/CD - it has been a concern of mine that photos will get destroyed.

That's my approach too - Store the same files on a few different types of storage media. When it comes to photos, some are also stored at PhotoBucket or on the webspace provided by my ISP for their customers. Some photos get printed using a dye-sub printer. I think these aren't so prone to fading as ink-jet prints can be. At any rate, total loss of everything is (I hope) unlikely.

I would like to share my experience. I used to preach about backups to all my clients but i never backed my own data. Then one day i got a mail with an attachment saying ISO.exe (my work area), i could not resist and clicked on the attachment and bang! My computer crashed and i lost ALL my data ! It was a terrible experience. I learnt the hard way!
From then on i make sure i have three-four copies of my data - Two copies on different drives & on CD (not so reliable), pen drive (slightly reliable) and one zip file of all my data copy on my gmail inbox (definitely reliable).

I wouldn't use email as your *only* method of storage - remember, they can have data errors, too.

The really important stuff is spread across different media. I have a large external hard drive that I only turn on when I'm using it so it's unlikely to be affected by a virus, and as it's only on for a few minutes a week it should last for quite some time. I also keep copies on CD.