I've got a very large collection of 50's and 60's jazz (and other stuff, too) on LP that's been slowly transferred to digital media. Thing is, I want to save it as such on an external drive, while pulling things off as-needed onto MP3 chips for my wife and I to hear in the car or at work.
The latter bit's of course no problem. But there's plenty of crap on the Web, as we all know. And when I read that storing stuff on an external drive that's been powered down means it will be corrupted pretty shortly, I tend to...wonder. Is it just the usual garbage? Extra grade garbage? Or is there some real sense to it? Granted, all things deteriorate in time; even Dick Clark finally died in his third millennium. But I want to know if I can safely transfer those LPs to a terrabyte drive, unplug it when full, store it, and replug it in, say, five years from now with expectations that everything that's still going to be listenable. And that I won't find my recordings of Lee Morgan and Sonny Stitt have decided to bite the big one.
In advance, thanks.
