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How Long Does an Inkjet Photo Last? Who Knows?
As the debate heats up regarding how long inkjet photos will last, big questions still remain about using CD or DVD technology to store digital information. So where should you put your stuff without having to move it around every few years?
It's a good question, and I don't have an answer. Perhaps the easiest purchase for a family is a hard-drive system with RAID and hot-swapping implemented. That way, every couple of years you buy a new hard drive and plug it up. Let's call it a $400 "archival" fee.
The problem isn't that there is places to put your stuff -- there are too many places to put your stuff. Half a dozen disc formats, the same number of memory-stick options and all kinds of tape is out there for the taking. Each one of these has its own ups and downs.
The difference is that ten years ago these types of questions were for large corporations, mulling over how best to implement "offline" or "nearline" storage. Today, most families have digital cameras, cameras in their phones, Tivo, scanners, etc -- all generating Gigabytes of information a year that needs to go somewhere. Soon the day will come for the family server -- it's already here for us technical types, and the neighbors won't be far behind. What runs on that server and how it's hardware is configured is still up in the air.
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Personally, I don't think it matters how long and inkjet photo will last as long as you have the original file. That way you can always print more. You are correct--we need a better solution to painlessly back up our photo, video and music files. I've been saying for a while that computers should have redundant systems built-in. Hard drives are super cheap now, so all systems could be configured with at least 2 hard drives, with automatic mirroring handled by default in the OS. It would also be nice have a simple way to copy everything to a new system.
I use an external hard drive to backup my important data. I bought an excellent piece of shareware called Second Copy (www.centered.com) to automate backups. After the initial setup it runs regular backups with practically no intervention on my part. You can set it and forget it! And the external drive can easily be moved to another machine, or grabbed quickly in an emergency.