[Adam Shapiro]

Originally Posted by Fruity Pebbles

Now, let says you have someone who is an avid computer graphic artist and they have all sorts of programs like Photoshop and Paintshop for example, which both come on CD's (or is it DVD now?) now if people are telling you to get out your house so when it floods you aren't out to harm, are you going to think to grab the CD's for each and every one of your programs?

I definitely agree with you on this. There is no simple way to backup a program itself onto optical storage (that is, not until holographic storage comes down in price). The article however focused mainly on the need for the average user to back up his or her data, making mention of Christmas card lists and tax returns. While the more knowledgable computer user would have a much greater need for backing up large amounts of data and programs, the so-called "average" user probably wouldn't.

Originally Posted by Fruity Pebbles

Ok so far, this post seems to be really confusing, even to me and I apologise, I just don't think CDs/DVDs are the best bet for a back up.

I was worried that it might end up sounding a bit confusing. I initially started with the intention of just calling the misleading data calculation to people's attention. Once I got into that I just couldn't help myself and had to continue...

Originally Posted by Fruity Pebbles

I believe that no matter how hard you try there is never going to be a 100% guarantee that you're data is going to be safe.

I agree, and I think you could probably say that about just about everything. Unfortunately, there's no way of ensuring that this won't happen either