Two more things that I forgot to mention about backing up your computer to DVD

[thewayne]

Pick up some CD/DVD sleeves, they might be in the same aisle as the DVDs. You can get a box of 50 of them for pretty cheap. Also get a medium-point Sharpie marker to write date and basic content info onto the DVDs. Don't bother with printing labels and sticking them on, theoretically you won't be pulling these out on a regular basis to load things from them and the additional cost and labor just isn't worth it.

Comments

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

Someone told me that you shouldn't write directly on discs with Sharpies, because they eventually bleed through and ruin the disc.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I don't see how that could happen. The top layer is a pretty tough plastic, the inner layer is a dye that is heated by the laser to store info. I suppose there is a possibility, I'll have to ask around some. I'd never heard of that, thanks for bringing it up!

[donkey-hokey.livejournal.com]

Ever since an old computer of mine melted down, I've been rather anal about backing up data to CDs (and now DVDs), as well as to an external hard drive. The DVD backups happen once every few months, and the backup to the external HD happens every week or two.

I've learned the disc carousels (??) (those things you get the 50 CDs or DVDs in) are even better to keep backups discs in. They take up less space and all the backups stay in one or two places.

And I've NEVER had a problem using a Sharpie on a CD or a DVD.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I don't yet have an external HD. What I'd like is a pair of mirrored SATA drives in the cabinet and a removable drive bay, but I can't spend serious money on hardware at the moment.

Hopefully if we have to do an emergency forest fire evacuation, I'll certainly be able to grab my laptop and my fire-proof chest with my backups, and I should have enough time to grab my desktop. The tricky bit will be when I have multiple computers beyond the two that I'm currently using. At least with us having two cars, we won't have problems with space to take stuff.