Regarding DVD-R, it's my understanding that most (if not all) optical formats are susceptible to physical degradation. My current archival plan involves using external HDD's. Given that you can buy a 5TB USB 3.0 external drive for ~$140 and it will hold approximately 1000 4.7GB DVD-R's worth of data, it's economical as well as more reliable for long-term static storage. Mark On Mon, Dec 30, 2019 at 6:16 AM Jeffrey Jonas via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Happy New Year to all
1) My Microsoft Trackball Explorer Mouse 1.0 just shattered. Does anyone have a spare?
2) an interesting looking gadget: I don't want to sound like an advertisement but we all love gadgets and tools. At $16.90, this watchband-o-many-tools looks interesting but I'm unsure how practical it is vs.a multitool or Swiss Army knife:
https://nanroucy.com/products/29-in-1-multi-tool-wearable-titanium-steel-bra...
3) DVD-R are NOT archival. My spindle of "Playo" DVD-R fail verification immediately after burning. Others have bit-rot. I vaguely recall a file system format with error checking and redundancy to compensate for that, if one had the foresight to record in that format. What are the "best practices" other than making 2-3 copies on different brands?
-- Jeff Jonas