Mochabomb

2 seconds in the microwave and after a nice pop! and sparks… while I don’t recommend this and it very well could damage the microwave, it’s a quick and effective way to destroy a CD ROM. » More: Quick CD Destruction

I wrote a recent article about backups – but what about backing up the software CD’s we pay so much for – between XP, Office, Nero and McAfee, it would cost $400+ to replace the SW – and in a pinch I’d buy it again.

After wrecking my photoshop LE CD (I put tape on it – and a year later peeled off the tape and the silver data layer along with it), back-ups were needed of my valuable software disks also. » More: CD back-up copies, save your license codes!

10 years ago, if a hard disk failed, I mostly lost some word documents and a couple excel files. Now I save movies, photos, financial data, and more so as time goes on. Hard drives have an average service life of 3 years, see an article at Storage Review here about this – they are products that are designed for short term use – the vendors could spend more and make them last, but would we spend the extra money on it?

Its not if they fail, but when – how much loss are you willing to live with? » More: Back-ups – disk imaging and cloning