"A Snickers bar last longer than a floppy."

"A Snickers bar last longer than a floppy." Today's profound statement from class. It is both humorous and true; a snickers bar last 7 years and a floppy only 3. A simple fact that points out a larger issue: backing up data and storage medium life. In reality none of the storage mediums available to consumers is permanent: floppy disks have a short life, hard drives and flash drives wear out with use, and CDs & DVDs deteriorate as the inks used in them age. Disk inks do have long lives - depending upon the quality of the disks used, when burned properly they have been reported to last between 20 and over 100 years. Lower quality media and burning, however, can result in much shorter data life. The point of all this? Proper backup techniques - both selection of media and its creation - is essential to ensuring data safety.