SuperDuper! as backup/restore program?

[dnanian]

I understand your feeling about hard drives, and those that are in constant use definitely run into their MTBF zones. But, given the right hardware (perhaps a RAID setup with auto-failure detection), they can be quite reliable.

CDs, unfortunately, don't last terribly long either before they start to generate unacceptable and uncorrectable error rates. If you're really concerned about long-term access to the data, you should definitely consider using tape... not cheap, but fast and much more stable.