Back to topic, he asked about IDE storage (Score 2, Insightful)

What we have is a plethora of opinions about what's wrong with IDE. Why don't you solve your problems. 1) It's unreliable over the long run. - Have multiple disks that will be unlikely to fail at exactly the same time. 2) Remote storage - Get a friend that has some space and get him to store a disk for you. 3) Jostling hard drives might reduce life expectancy. - Perhaps try remote incremental backups over the net. Do one large copy locally then locate the disk at a remote connection and backup incrementally. ( remember the local part for the first copy - I got a note from my ISP when I did it over the net.) 4) Lubricant failing in disk. - Two things, you can either replace the disks on a cycle, perhaps every two or three years. ( prices keep going down) or keep the disks spinning on a remote computer that is UPS protected. There are many other ways to do this. What we need here is people with solutions. Not more problems. Think outside the box.