Free online back-up

Hello,

I am in the process of backing up all my CDs onto my computer - a laborious but, I believe, a necessary task. CDs may be robust but they are not indestructible, and they can become flawed and unplayable.

I don't believe there are any copyright issues with this; I have purchased the CDs and it is for personal use only (if anyone knows that this is not the case would you please advise).

Of course, computers can and often do crash which means losing all these backups. I know there are external storage devices that can hold a large amount of data, but I am wondering if there is a free storage facility on the net that would hold several gigabytes of these files. I am not sure of the total space required, but there are approximately 900 CDs in total.

Thanks,

Vavaseur

 

I don't know the laws in other counties but in the U.S.A. you are allowed ONE archival copy of purchased copyrighted material. Hence, if you live in the U.S.A. you are correct in that you can make a copy of the medium. I cannot speak as to laws in other countries.

There are many services out there that allow on-line backups; some are free, others not. This is all part of what is being termed as 'Could Computing'. While there are many such systems I will only speak of the one that I at least use a little. If you sign up for a Microsoft Live account I believe that you still get either 25 or 50gig of on-line storage. I have 50 but that MIGHT be part of a package as I was involved in the beta testing. A current sign up MAY only be for 25.

While I do use this service for the purpose of allowing someone else to easily get a file I do not use it as a backup. For backups I use external drives holding disk images. Some will say this is not safe as the backup could be destroyed along with the system in cases of flood or fire. I avoid this potential failure by keeping my image backups at work. Another option would be to keep the backups in a safety deposit box at your bank.

 

Further to the above.
You live in Australia so you would have to checkout our copyright laws.
There is no free cloud backup that would let you store anywhere near 900 CD's
My advice is to copy your media to another hard drive in your computer or to an external Hard Drive.

 

Thanks for the advise. External storage kept in a safe place looks like the way to go.

Cheers,
Vavaseur