I was recently given a brick of DVD-R media that one of our experts
here claims is the best for long-term storage.  These are "TDK Armor
Plated DVD-R" media, claimed to be 100x more scratch-resistant than
standard media.  In addition, they incorporate an anti-UV coating,
presumably to protect the dyes from fading.  Maybe this is the solution
for archival copies of scarce, fragile media like rolls: make at least
two copies and keep one off-site.

But the whole backup issue is getting complex.  I have nearly a terabyte
of disk spinning at home.  Granted, it's not full (yet) and it is in a
RAID configuration, so I am pretty secure against a single disk failure.

(There are only two kinds of hard drives: those that have failed, and
those that are going to!)

But, just in case, to what does one back up three 300 GB disk drives?
My only answer so far is to three more, which I then move off-site.

Here at work, we mirror all of our disk storage to another site about
3.5 miles away, across dark fiber.  We were forced to give up on an
external disaster recovery provider when, on our last DR test, we had
to restore 10,000 tape cartridges before the test could begin.

Steve McCollum

 [ Jody and I are working on "mutual back-up": I will store a copy
 [ of his Foxtail files at my computer, and vice-versa.  The back-up
 [ process is simple and automatic, but we still seek an independent
 [ procedure to periodically audit everything (including testing
 [ disaster recovery).  -- Robbie