> I remember being excited to have a 1 gigabyte hard
> disk not too long ago, now the 500 gig is filling up.
While it may not be the best idea to put all your eggs in one basket,
drives with 1 TB (one thousand gigabytes) are commonly available now.
The bare drive costs about $150, with enclosure perhaps $200.
The good news is that, as larger capacity drives are introduced,
existing stock goes on sale. For example, I purchased two 750 GB
drives for less than $100 each a few weeks ago.
Magnetic memory on a hard disc should last at least 10 years before it
becomes unreadable. To extend beyond 10 years, copy the data to
another disc. The first disc can then be formatted and re-used. If
you're putting the disc in storage, place it in a static-free,
air-tight bag.
An intriguing new storage medium is the WORM flash card. The "Write
Once, Read Many" card is designed to last 100 years. Sandisk just
released the first WORM card, but it's expensive and has a very small
capacity. Once production gets going, the goal is to make the WORM
card cost less than a re-writable card of the same capacity. So a 4
GB WORM card might cost $5.
At $5 for 4 GB, the WORM card is considerably more expensive than the
hard disc. But it's a storage medium you can throw in a drawer and
leave for 100 years, no special handling required. Keeping track of
files on a shoebox full of WORM cards is a separate issue!
--oryoki
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