Marvin Humphrey writes: >In the long run, all hard drives are ticking time bombs, compared to analog >tape! Just last week, we had some 1/4" tapes from 1979 in... they had to be >baked, then the splicing tape adhesive which oozed had to be cleaned with >q-tips and solvent, and finally it played back gorgeously! How the hell do >you get inside a hard drive to do that kind of restoration work as it >degrades over decades? Er, that's why I don't archive my data to Hard Drives. Oh, that and the fact that it's RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE compared to vastly more robust and reliable backup media such as CDr. I suppose Quantum and Seagate (etc.) would love us all to backup to Hard Drives! If you're worried about the long term storage of, say, CDr then simply make another clone of it every few years. This is vastly easier to do than the baking/solvent shenanigans needed for analog tape. f-erenc szabo, smarty pants Z+E+R+O+B+E+A+T "NOW POWERED BY THE MIRACLE OF THE TRANSISTOR!"