one error equals all lost not necessarily so. IMO any competent unzip software should be able to recover from simple errors -- i use winrar for my zipping needs, and a media error means one file lost, not the whole zip. if your zip software can't do it (and you don't want to switch) there are also zip recovery tools that can often recover most of the archive. in combination with double backups, with verification turned on, that's a pretty safe system. i store hundreds of thousands of images that way, and i can't actually remember the last time i lost something completely. sometimes it's also the drive that's the problem -- my laptop combo drive comes up with more errors than my external plextor. if you come across an error, first try the disk in another drive. and last but not least -- not all media and drives (including their low level software) are created of equal quality. read reviews by hardware gurus, and buy accordingly.