Originally Posted By: joemikeb
Those annual drives would be good for anywhere from three to five years before the magnetic fields would deteriorate to the point they become unreliable. (SSDs wouldn't last that long.) Which brings up an issue plaguing data storage technology, there is no reasonably priced media available for archival electronic data storage. The only viable solution at this point is to periodically refresh the data by rewriting it on the media.

Since you mentioned it, I dug out my TurboTax 2009 CD, and judging from "Show Package Contents", which is as far as I even attempted to go with it, there's been no deterioration since 2010.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire