Right. What about things of great sentimental value? E.g. family
photos? What about financial records? Sure 7 GB is chickenfeed. It
fits on one DVD. However, to put that on the shelf, what to use to make
it last?
Chickenfeed is still important... to chickens.
So I wasn't trying to denigrate your 7GB of important data, but to
express that, in today's world, tape would be a radically cost-
inefficient means of storing only 7GB.
[snip]
If a reputable archival company like Iron Mountain offers on-line
storage, then I'd encrypt it and drop it on their servers.
So how do they store it? If they're just going to drop it onto a hard
drive and forget about it, how is that different than me putting it on 2
hard drives: one on a backup server that runs so that hard drive errors
show up; one in an external case that gets a fresh backup put on it
every month or so and goes to the bank's safety deposit box? Or, if
they're just going to archive it in a tape library, how is that
different than me putting it on a tape and putting that in the bank?
Nothing... except expertise. It's their *job* to monitor the SAN,
replacing failed disks, taking backups, etc.