Security has become a bigger issue in technology lately (has always been an issue), and I just read an article glorifying the abandonment of physical media storage. It sorta made me upset, because I don't like the way things are being pushed to soft copy only.

You have hard-drives, but they fail

You have the cloud, but I don't trust "their cloud (I prefer the My Cloud hard-drive by Western Digital if any).

Servers fail.

You have digital copies, but where do you store them? On a hard-drive?

I actually prefer CD or DVD over all of the above options. The worse that could happen is that they crack or you loose them, but with 2 backup CDs that hasn't been an issue for me (for important stuff). I have DVDs a decade old that I didn't have to worry about loosing the data with.

It's sorta the same reason I don't like paying for a promise. Nor do I like paying for a guarantee that isn't legally binding.

A big issue with storing data on paper was the fact that when it comes to large amounts of data, paper is insufficient.

But security wise, and backup wise, I think it is more efficient.

I always say that we pay too much for convenience. And I like to use old reliable methods more often than newer un-reliable methods. Most of the time I prefer the wisdom of the "hard but sure" way than the foolishness of the "new way."

There are times when I use the convenient way for it's convenience alone in a specific case.

This whole IRS fiasco, these site hacks and account stealing etc at "convenience" stores. It all doesn't make sense. When the power is out, people don't know what to do, and what if the internet went out? Would we have systems in place to continue to function?

Can cashiers add without a computer? Surely can't swipe your card under that magnetic block if the POS system is down.

Yes, I still desire a home phone. No, I don't have a contract phone, nor a cable bill, nor a television. Yes, I do have internet (my means of gathering information while I can). I have abandoned the library for the convenience of the internet.

If Steam, PSN, XBOX live go down, and they are pushing this interconnected game play, you are going to have a bunch of upset people. They hardly make any 2 player Co-op games anymore (LAN party friendly games).

Maybe this is why I have seen people buy safes?

And yet, it seems there is a push for digital currency? The day they get rid of cash, is the day the beginning of the end of the world is certain.

Sounds like a good video game. I should release it on Steam.

Should we be so reliant on computers?

P.S. If you say Soft Copy, please explain why.

Wait, what do you mean by hard copy and soft copy here? Local copy vs. server copy?

Personally I prefer to keep copies of my stuff in my own drives, I don't trust any service with my back-ups. I have uploaded back-ups to servers before (since there's always a risk of your local copies getting destroyed in a fire or something), but those were servers I had control over (e.g. my hosting), not some random "cloud" service. For the most part I just use my pendrives though.

If Steam, PSN, XBOX live go down, and they are pushing this interconnected game play, you are going to have a bunch of upset people.

I think the biggest issue here is DRM =P Those services are designed specifically to lock you out when you don't use them. This is directly at odds against long-term preservation.

I like both.

There's one massive problem with hard-copy-only: paper burns. I work in an office where one group of people have paper-only files going back donkey's years. If there is a fire they are screwed. All those records are gone. If they had an electronic version of them, and and assuming it was reasonably designed, it would be searchable, it would be backed-up, it could be brought back on a DR site. As things stand they get none of that.

Despite that a paper copy is sometimes convenient (it's at least easier for me to read: the first thing I do when I get an important email that I need to pay attention to is print it). But the electronic copy is important.

Over the years I have lost so must data to hard drive failures it's unreal.

I hate using "remote hosting and data storage" ( what techies call "the cloud" now-a-days ) due to the fact that I have no clue how secure their servers are - or how trust worthy their employees are.

I keep backups on thumb drives, CDs, and paper. My important documents are stored in a fireproof safe.

I hate using "remote hosting and data storage" ( what techies call "the cloud" now-a-days ) due to the fact that I have no clue how secure their servers are - or how trust worthy their employees are.

You do know you can encrypt your files and fingerprint them, right? This is a solved problem - it doesn't matter how trustworthy the host is, just that it works properly and retrieves all your bits when you ask it to (which is of course a concern, making it useful only as secondary or even tertiary backup storage, but completely unrelated to security). It's really not hard.

In any case, data backup or archival is not a two-step process. Data, like everything else, needs to be cared for in order to survive. Fail to keep your backups to date and face the consequences (which are to try and recover your files once an accident occurs and finding that every single one of your backup sites has failed or is otherwise unrecoverable, either because of old age or because it never really worked in the first place but you never bothered to try recovering your files periodically).