At the end of one's lifetime, where will all the data be saved?

[Greenone]

At what point does one stop doing backups of backups? I wish there were a tree or diagram of the most efficient ways to backup one's data over one's lifetime!

Does data eventually need to end up on c.d.'s since some say we're not really supposed to be trusting external hd's to save our valuable data? Or should one have an external HD per each computer they ever own (its life span) plus a backup of each of those? But still...each external HD would eventually die, right? So does that mean we should just keep rolling data into newer and more powerful external HD's as the years pass/as technology allows, and keep ALL computers' data on one very powerful external HD (plus one other of course, for ITS backup)? At what point is the data going to be too much for any external HD to be able to hold, or will none of us live long enough to see that day? Interesting...

 

[Gonzo3333]

That's really deep Who knows? I guess it is up to everybody to adapt to their specific data keeping needs. It is no doubt that as time goes by larger and larger HD's will be around and be made smaller and smaller, lighter and lighter. The question should be what do I need to share with people that I would really like to keep to myself. I guess that is what we came up with passwords.

 

[akadmon]

While I don't think it's a given that you should accumulate stuff indiscriminately in your backups over time (it's good practice to "clean out the attic" when aggregating backups on a new medium), yet chances are that 10-15 years from now we'll see devices with hundreds of terabytes of storage (just think, 15 years ago 1GB was huge!), and there really will be no incentive to go through our old files trying to decide what to hold on to, other then for the sake of reminiscing.