Thanks for the up to date tips.

So to get this clear:

Nobody seems to be saying we need to keep 'permanent' back ups on
'traditional' (still new to me!) media discs any more?
Everyone seems happy to put as many files as will fit on a particular
storage device, on that device?
Everyone seems happy that they will always be able to recover files from
that medium in the future?

'Flash' drives/'sticks' are not safe?
(I once saw a 'Braniac' programme where they tried to destroy a number of
different media by doing things like shooting cannons and flame throwers at
them. Even when it appeared to have been smashed up, they still managed to
get data back off the flash drive - in a laboratory admittedly!)


Additional points:

As capacity rises, is JPG on the way out too?
Should I be saving pics as TIFF (JPG2000? Raw?) to make best use of the new
space, and only converting to JPG/PNG for emailing?
Presumably it is faster/more reliable to connect any new hard drive via
cable than wireless?
Network storage?

(For example of why I want to 'get this right for once': I had a habit of
compressing old floppy discs, and, only by chance discovered that the
ability to mount them went out with W98, before chucking out my W98; now XP
is on the way out; my email on OE seems to be on the way out - and hotmail
too!; I'm only a quarter way through copying my video tapes to DVD - how
nice it is to have access to old programmes with no channel 'water mark' and
with the credits not shoved to one side at the end! -, but now expect I will
have to do it all over again from DVD to whatever, before I even finish...
Presumably 'High Definition' means that soon ordinary DVD will be obsolete
because no programmes will fit... Nice to know that storage capacity is
rising so rapidly but so it seems is 'losage capacity!)

Liked the bit about hard drives 'parking their heads' these days: I am
extreemly lucky to be writing this on a laptop where all the info and
operating system was almost permanently 'parked' after the owner trod on it.
Amazingly, I risked opening the drive, and found that a little manual
rotation got it moving again!

I hadn't thought of actually putting another hard drive inside the pc
enclosure. Ours is a dell Optiplex desktop model, which does not seem to
have spare slots like the tower versions do. Are there any 'good ones' you
would recommend that might fit?

I just bought a nice 'dj' storage box for my CD/DVDs too...

Keep em coming.

Kind regards,
S