Best blank CD/DVD brands?

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KellyP

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#10773 11-Dec-2006 00:18

I've decided to get serious about photo/video back ups and I'm looking for something to save my files for a long period of time. What are the best CD and DVD brands that you can buy in terms of quality, error free and long lasting without loss of data?

freitasm

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#55173 11-Dec-2006 00:33

CDs and DVDs are not that long lasting after all...

Actually I have about 30GB of pictures, so I have backups on external HDD, and on-line. Much faster this way, to both read/write. Backup to DVD is so tedious...

Since I have a laptop and a desktop, I have everything synchronised between both machines as well. With this I have about 4 or 5 copies of this data around, in different places.

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rcw

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#55184 11-Dec-2006 08:47

http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

Hard drives are basically free now so I'd be inclined to go with that for data I care about. Make two copies of everything and then recopy to fresh drives every 5 years.

freitasm

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#55185 11-Dec-2006 08:50

Well, not exactly free. Internal HDD could be, if part of a system, but external HDDs still cost - and if you want safety then it will cost more.

You can have a single external 250GB HDD and store multiple copies of your data using a backup program, or like me go for a Maxtor 1TB box, RAID 0/1. With RAID 1 you only have 500GB, but mirrorred. With RAID 0 you have 1TB, but fast. The cost? About $1500 these days.

You can also go for some NAS units with RAID. These cost more, but are available to everyone on a LAN, at home for example.

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rcw

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#55186 11-Dec-2006 08:58

For simple archives, tho, getting a USB IDE enclosure (cheap) and whatever disk they're selling for $100 at any moment works pretty well.

When it fills or when you want to cycle it out, put another $100 in and store the drive under a rock somewhere.

It's not a perfect system for sure but it solves 80% of the problem for small cash.

And it's easy.

And for double lazy points, manual file copying instead of backup software.

TinyTim

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#55193 11-Dec-2006 10:29

When I back up onto DVD I make sure I always have a full backup no more than a month old. I'll never archive to DVD - I always keep a version on HD. If you use archive quality DVDs your mileage may vary.

rcw: And for double lazy points, manual file copying instead of backup software.

Automated manual file copying:

FOR /F "tokens=2-4 DELIMS=/ " %%F IN ('date /T') DO (set today_date=%%H.%%G.%%F.full.zip)


"c:\program files\winzip\wzzip" -a+ -rP -s -ycAES256 -x@excludes.txt "u:\backups\%today_date%" @includes.txt

(WZZIP is the command line interface for Winzip)

rcw

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#55201 11-Dec-2006 12:03

Getting further off topic but the original poster did mention videos...

I've lately been using my miniDV camera for backups with--

http://www.coolatoola.com/

(Mac only)

The whole thing feels a little retro. Probably more performance art than future proof backup system.

But it does work just fine and you can put 10G of data on a one hour tape (and read it back out).

[Moderator (MF) edit: hyperlinked]

Apple TV

Stream your favourite shows now on Apple TV (affiliate link).

freitasm

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#55202 11-Dec-2006 12:05

Are these tapes readable in other devices (if your camera goes fubar)?

Is this software going to work with Mac OS X 10.9?

The advantage of HDD backup is that for the foreseable future the format is quite universally used. But you can't guarantee that data on a tape will be easily retrieved in a few years time.

This is a problem for long lasting data storage...

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#55203 11-Dec-2006 12:22

freitasm: Are these tapes readable in other devices (if your camera goes fubar)?

They say it normally can and that it works even better if you use the lower density recording and if you crank up the error correction (it will add more parity bits to the output or something). I get the impression that miniDV and similar are really designed to store uncompressed frame rate data so the scheme is reasonable.

Is this software going to work with Mac OS X 10.9?

The advantage of HDD backup is that for the foreseable future the format is quite universally used. But you can't guarantee that data on a tape will be easily retrieved in a few years time.

This is a problem for long lasting data storage...

That's exactly my biggest concern with it or any system that doesn't put a well documented representation (tar,zip,ntfs) of your original files on whatever backup media you're using.

Multiple copies of data on various live systems, as you mentioned at the start of all this, is really the only safe place to keep data you most care about.

--

The real solution is going to be trusted third party data storage services. Amazon S3 is the first of these but it's not well productized yet.

lapimate

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#55292 12-Dec-2006 10:46

James Bond: ... CD and DVD brands ... error free and long lasting without loss of data?

When I checked last year, it was not clear that any DVDs were available which were actually "archival" quality (in the sense that a public archive might regard them) but DVD-RAM might be the technology to consider re error protection. Archival quality CDs seem more readily available eg see http://www.prodisc.com.au/

w00t

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#55294 12-Dec-2006 11:15

A link to this article...

http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/30/how-to-choose-cddvd-archival-media/

Showed up on Slashdot (http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/12/11/1714232.shtml) today. It has some specifics on recommended brands and an overview of DVD-[+|-]R and their differences for long term storage.

HTH,
Andy.