[GTALUG] War Story: Asus UX305ca SSD failures

[Howard Gibson]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2019 23:09:32 -0400 (EDT)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
> 
> - petroglyphs: long long time
> 
> - clay tablets: millennia
> 
> - paper (pre-wood-pulp): five hundred years
> 
> - paper made from wood pulp: 75 years
> 
> - punch cards and paper tape: 100 years
> 
> - 9-track mag tape: 10 years
> 
> - digital cassette tape 4 years (formats changed too quickly)
> 
> - floppy disks: 5 years?  Depends on the format (consider 3.0"
>   floppies)
> 
> - USB flash drives: I've had them die after a year, but that's not
>   expected.
> 
> - hard drives: death by standards evolution.  Try finding an ST506
>   controller.  Or MFM, ESDI, SCSI, FireWire.  Support for even PATA
>   is fading.
> 
> - Laser Disc, Magneto-optical disks, CD-ROM, DVD (multiple standards),
>   BluRay: each has standards that get obsolete.  The actual data may
>   deteriorate too.  I do have some DVD that claim to have a lifetime
>   of over 100 years.

Hugh,

   I copy my HDD backup to Blu-Rays periodically.  Occasionally, I have had to recover stuff from them, and it has always worked.  Typically, this was months after the fact.  I archive my digital photos to DVD.  I store these in a dark, cool place, and again, they are doing fine.  My good camera has two SD cards, one of which I have designed as a backup.  I have my DVD archive, my Blu-Ray backups, and I archive the SDs when they are full.  I think my odds are pretty good.  

   It is getting harder to find DVD and Blu-Ray discs in stores.  The next time I order DVDs, it will be online, and I will order archival quality. 

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson at eol.ca
jhowardgibson at gmail.com
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson