Hey technical people- Which brand of archival disc is best?
Sparkle
Posts: 185
Time for a comprehensive back-up of all our digital photos, numismatic and otherwise. For several reasons, I want to store them on discs. Anyone know if the discs marketed as archival gold or silver are truly better? Or should I just stick with a name brand quality disc? Thanks for your advice.
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Comments
i hate messing with cdroms and dvds which were never designed for archival purposes.
they simply do not last as long as a hard drive packed away securely or tape medium.
also the access time is superb on the harddrive, for reads and writes.
my two cents. and i backup 100s of gigs of data every day here at the isp i work at.
i use hard drives.
The newer SD cards might be a good solution as well, but I don't think there have been many long term tests done on them yet.
Make sure you do a read-after-write test on the backups. I consider backups, on any media, without this step to be blanks. You can write a script or batch file using md5, etc checksums to do this. Google to find source code if you are not up to the task.
Check the backups for readability and consistency at least every six months.
Though hard drives are enticing due to their fast speeds and low cost, they are usually a bad choice for archives as they have very high failure rates. A tape drive is the most reliable, but expensive and slow. CD and DVD may be the happy medium for most home uses.
The linked article contains perhaps everything you need to know about CD/DVD recordable media, and is the best writeup on the subject I have seen.
How to Choose CD/DVD Archival Media
As was stated before, whatever media you choose be sure you verify the backups are good and check them on a regular basis (6 mo - 1 yr). You will definitely want more than one copy, maybe one at home for fast retrieval, one in the safe deposit box, and perhaps another at a friends house.
Another good idea is to keep an inventory of the disc contents with each copy. This will greatly aid in retrieving something specific when you need it.
Hope this helps.
Aaron
http://www.amazon.com/Devices-ARCHIVAL-DDVD-R-25-SPINDLE/dp/B000AQH5MA
Sunshine Rare Coins
sunshinecoins.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html
Apropos of the coin posse/aka caca: "The longer he spoke of his honor, the tighter I held to my purse."
<< <i>I work in the IT field and this question comes up a lot. The medical device manufacturing company I work for has regulatory requirements that require our data be available for 7+ years after a project is completed. Most CD/DVD media will begin to degrade after only a few years. We have had great success with archiving medical imaging to Taiyo Yuden brand.
Though hard drives are enticing due to their fast speeds and low cost, they are usually a bad choice for archives as they have very high failure rates. A tape drive is the most reliable, but expensive and slow. CD and DVD may be the happy medium for most home uses.
The linked article contains perhaps everything you need to know about CD/DVD recordable media, and is the best writeup on the subject I have seen.
How to Choose CD/DVD Archival Media
As was stated before, whatever media you choose be sure you verify the backups are good and check them on a regular basis (6 mo - 1 yr). You will definitely want more than one copy, maybe one at home for fast retrieval, one in the safe deposit box, and perhaps another at a friends house.
Another good idea is to keep an inventory of the disc contents with each copy. This will greatly aid in retrieving something specific when you need it.
Hope this helps.
Aaron >>
I fully agree with the above...the one thing I would add is that if you use CD/DVDs as backup, also backup to an external HDD. If you use an external HDD to backup, also backup to a CD/DVD. Redundancy is key for important backups. Also, store a copy "offsite" at your work instead of all at home, or your SDB, etc.
The other option is a flash disk.....no movable parts. Still be redundant though.
I've been told I tolerate fools poorly...that may explain things if I have a problem with you. Current ebay items - Nothing at the moment
An authorized PCGS dealer, and a contributor to the Red Book.
A hard-drive is an extraordinarily bad choice for backup media. Tape is ok but can be effected by environmental forces and they do degrade.
can you imagine searching for a picture you want to reuse that
could be on many dvds that you have? what do you do? stick in
each dvd and search? talk about time consuming and slow.
if you have a need to replace a damaged computer can you imagine
the time it will take to copy how many cds or dvds to the new PC?
a new hard drive can easily hold 500 gigs. that is, say 100 normal dvds. it
is totally searchable at once via windows search tools, by date,
filename, file type, etc...
the advantages are countless compared to cds/dvds.
if you have 100 gigs of data now you need to break it all up into
the right portions to fit on the dvds. time consuming. you need
to create a complicated plan to back up fresh material.
with two 500 gig usb external drives and the software that comes with it
you can easily automate the whole process. select the directories
to be backed up and hit "OK". repeat with the other HD every other
week. store it in a dry safe place. USB will be with us for many decades to come.
there is quite a few considerations to think about before choosing.
for example, when i have a PC die, i need to get it back up and online
in less then 4 hours or customers start complaing. (employees also).
If i had to sit around and wait for dvds to copy over it would easily
ruin my plans. the speed of the HD for reads and writes is awesome
compared to optical media.
if you only have a few gigs of data, then dvds may very well be
the best option.
more to think about!
<< <i>A hard-drive is an extraordinarily bad choice for backup media
can you imagine searching for a picture you want to reuse that
could be on many dvds that you have? what do you do? stick in
each dvd and search? talk about time consuming and slow.
..................
if you only have a few gigs of data, then dvds may very well be
the best option.
more to think about! >>
I stand by my original comment.
What you are talking about is online backups of live data needed for quick recovery, for which a hard-drive is great. For real backups, that is offsite, archival backups, CD/DVDs are much better than a hard-drive. For a situation where you need a quick recovery, using a combination of online backups to hard-drive, then weekly dumps to CD/DVD isa good method.
The OP specified simply archival backup suggestions for which CD/DVD is the best answer.
Your situation, on the other hand, is a good candidate for snapshots. That is a mechanism that takes a copy of what has changed from the original and is good for both quick restores and accessing previous versions of files - check it out!
If this is the case, you probably need to think about a back up strategy. Once defined, the back up strategy and recovery point objective lend themselves to the medium you choose. If its just a psychological good feeling your after, blaze away with whatever medium you feel comfortable about with regard to price and performance.
Dan
First Place Winner of the 2005 Rampage design contest!
<< <i>Judging from Stonehenge and The Pyramids, I would say 4,000 pound blocks of stone..... >>
Too cumbersome and they take up too much room.This is the new age.....Stickey Notes.....!!!
Dan
First Place Winner of the 2005 Rampage design contest!
What was particularly interesting is the range of opinions. When you consider the number of digital cameras across the land, and the massive number of images stored on computers with no back up whatsoever, you wonder what is going to happen to all of these images. It's not easy to figure out how best to archive them, and there doesn't seem to be an across-the-board 2008 solution that's as easy as saving 35mm negatives in a box.
Eventually we'll use an external drive to back everything up, in addition to CD's or DVD's. For right now, it will just be discs. I estimate that we'll need to archive about 10,000 images a year, chronologically, by event or project name.
As advised, we will use Taiyo Yuden media, not RW, with an index sheet for each disc, and should store a duplicate disc somewhere else. The discs need to be checked after they're written, then every 6-12mos, and probably reburned or saved onto contemporary media (possibly CD or DVD, possibly something else) in about 5 years though they might be longer lived. As I type this I can see that over time, the discs will become unwieldy though they solve my immediate problem.
I'm enough of a dinosaur to still believe in getting photo prints. Is it wrong to think of images saved to disc as equivalent to 35mm negatives?
There are whole decades of U.S. Census Bureau records that are unreadable in their original computer form. Only the printouts can be read. It only gets worse, faster and faster.
TD
<< <i>U could use the stonehenge from Spinal Tap. Its compact, goes to 11, and is probably not very expensive.
Dan >>
"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working" Pablo Picasso
When you "check" the discs....do so on a handful of different CD/DVD readers.
I've seen, too often, where the only CD/DVD that can read them is the one that wrote them (even if the session is properly closed).
Also, write at 1x speed (slowest)....
Good luck
I've been told I tolerate fools poorly...that may explain things if I have a problem with you. Current ebay items - Nothing at the moment
One thing that might have been overlooked, is a backup software program. I use Norton Save and Restore for my personal needs. I find it to be very user friendly for my needs.
Hope this helps?
Gary