Update CD's and DVD backups!

Backing up your genealogy as we all know is extremely important. The first of the month has been what seems to be the reminder to make sure you are on top of this! It is the beginning of a new month, so as others say, time to back up!

I wanted to suggest another thought to this. I have been working on organizing photos on my laptop and need to make backups of these also, along with my other work. Upon doing this, I pulled out my DVD case and noticed that several of my copies are hitting or have hit the five year mark of having been made.

Now is the time also to think about updating any of those CD's or DVD's that may have been made several years ago. The information, documents and pictures I have backed up on these I would sure hate to loose due to a CD or DVD having gone bad. I have heard that after 5 years the quality starts to deteriorate. I am not sure if this is still holds true, but I think I will be safe and make sure mine are updated!

Thanks for stopping by!

Wishing you success in all of your genealogical treasure hunts!

Msteri




Comments

  1. You are right: we had an archivist come speak to our genealogy group about three years ago, and he said CDs have a life of about 2 years, and DVDs about 3 to 5 years, depending upon the quality. Remember that every time you copy an image, it does deteriorate the quality somewhat, even if it's not visible to the naked eye. That's why it's best to scan photographs at 300 - 600 dots per inch and save them as .tif files to your hard drive. Copy them to DVDs and then create new DVDs from the original files on your hard drive when the first set of DVDs ages.

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  2. Msteri,
    Thanks for the reminder! It has been a little while since I last backed up my family tree, and although I haven't made too many additions, it's a good idea to handle it now. Plus, tomorrow I have an extra hour to play around on my family tree...thanks to the time change!

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  3. Hi Miriam,
    Two years for CD's? That isn't very long, and 3-5 years for DVD's? Not as long as I expected. Thank you for the information. I have been scanning as you say, however I need to learn how to change a tif to a jpeg if I want to use it as an attachment. I just started with Adobe Photoshop, and looks like I have a lot to learn! Thanks for the pointers and it is great hearing from you. I know you have been very busy this past month!

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  4. Hi taylorstales-genealogy,

    It is always nice if a reminder helps someone! The extra hour today was nice, but I sure wish I knew where it went, I wasn't able to get any genealogy done. hope you had better luck!

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