Further to Ruth Milner's question, Mark O'Connor's solution sounds
ideal - if you can afford the £4K. A cheaper solution is to use a
Paperport sheet scanner (approx £200) and a CD writer (approx £200).
Scan documents into your PC and then save them to CD. Mark's comments
about backup are, or course, correct. You can achieve this with a
simple tape back up device (approx £100) or by making multiple copies of
the CD's. I have a separate CD for each of my clients plus two backup
CD's which are stored away from my office. It sounds a bit complicated
but providing an efficient backup routine is established it works well.
The tape back-up is run at the end of each working day as an additional
precaution. Re-writable CD's are very cheap now and although I
acknowledge Mark's solution to be ideal, my solution costs approx £500
plus the cost of CD's.
The big question with any electronic storage medium is whether, in forty
years time, it will be readable, but a similar question could be asked
about hard copy paper storage too.
Hope this is of help in exploring options.
Mike James
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