Current options in more stable CD-R's for archiving

<p>The last spindle of CD-R's I bought for archiving is almost out. My practice is to burn two copies, one to Delkin Gold disks and one to another brand of CD (usually Verbatim), and keep them in different locations. I don't care about (or really even want) inkjet or Lightscribe printability. All things considered (dye stability, disc sealing, metal content, etc.), do you have a current recommendation or preference for a specific disc type? Thanks.</p>

 

<p>I've been using the HP brand for the Lightscribe capability with no problems. Just out of curiosity, why CDs and not DVDs? Big difference in capacity...</p>

<p>My best experiences have always been with Verbatims - and also those I have had to throw some away. I completely abandonded the idea of using CDs and DVDs. It's just not practical anymore - too much time would get wasted on testing whether discs are still readable, plus the 4.7GB capacity of a DVD is limiting.<br>

If optical storage is a must, I'd only use the special archive Gold discs, though they tend to be pricey.</p>

<p>But instead, I'd look at alternatives....External hard disks have reached a price point where they're just more practical, faster to work with and hard disks that are used little have a pretty good life span. Testing whether they still work is easier too. Add an online backup service (such as Carbonite, Norton Online Backup etc.), and you'll have the multiple-location multiple-copy backups as they should be, in a much more convenient way (I am only halfway there myself, though - my internet connection is just too slow for online backup of ~250GB of data).</p>

<p>And of course you can buy decent 8 or 16GB USB flash memory sticks for about the price of a sandwich. Don't trust one? Buy four, for the cost of four sandwiches. Your hard work is worth four sandwiches. And those are good for years and years if you're not physically abusing them or doing lots of erases/writes. Write once, drop in a static bag, protect from huge temp/humidity swings - and do so redundantly with a couple in different places. Mirror those with an external HD or two, and you've got your bases covered. <br /><br />Return to them in a few years and dump the files to whatever's next on the horizon.</p>

<p>I use the Delkin Gold DVDs, then I further back up to two different external hard drives. I use the Gold DVDs pretty much on faith, I've never tested them. And I've gotten a new spindle that had to be returned because the first 3 or 4 discs were defective, I've also gone back to one disc recorded about 4-5 years ago and it couldn't be read. So maybe my faith is misplaced. But I keep using them because I don't know of any that are certifiably better.</p>

<p>While memory sticks and hard drives have gotten relatively inexpensive, there are still reasons to use optical media to back up. I live in an earthquake area and I can't wait to fill up a hard drive for off-site storage. I back up everything onto hard drives, but those get shipped out every six months or so when they fill (2TB is a lot of shooting). I make DVD backups as soon as I have 4GB and ship them to the opposite end of the country where they can be destroyed by hurricanes instead of earthquakes. I can't see spending close to 50 cents/gb for a USB drive when I can spend about eight cents a gigabyte for a DVD.</p>

<p>good advice the posters are correct.<br>

but do not leave the drive spinning all day every day.<br>

buy two drives and keep one off-site. at the home of a friend who owns his home and has no children.<br>

the main problem with any brand cd is they buy evcerywhere.,<br>

the brand is not the manufacturer<br>

there are a very frew manufacturers that make durable dilks, there are different coatings somne last somne do not.,<br>

I took my collection of backups 200-300 cd's and attempted to copy them to a hard drive so I could them make a fresh compiled copy on dvd's.<br>

there was no reason why some nes dilks were full or errors and othere much older were perfectly good.<br>

I read that cd/dvd;s cannot be trusted. they are correct.<br>

I also had a small hd uses as an intermediate step fail for no apparent reason.<br>

every time I backed up from cd to hd., I put a piece of paper betweed the cd;'s on the stack.<br>

and was able to go back and start over at the correct point.,<br>

be a little paranoid., it will save hours and days of your time<br /> </p>

There are the m-disc DVDs which are granite and not dye based. An m-disc capable writer etches the code into the

granite. The military likes them and in a disc to disc comparison they are cheaper than high quality gold disks. They are

rated for a much much greater archival qualities than gold disks as well. They can be read by standard DVD and Blu-Ray

players. More info at http://www.mdisc.com

<p>I highly recommend online storage and flash memory. Rotary drives fail in 3-5 years on average. I personally don't trust the quality control of CD/DVDs. I've never had a problem with flash memory. Online storage should last as long as you pay for it (perpetuity), as a bonus you get a second location. </p>

Flash memory is volatile as well, and online storage is costly on a monthly basis once you start talking terabytes of data.

>>> Online storage should last as long as you pay for it (perpetuity), ...

 

And as long as the company remains in business. There have been a couple in the past that have gone

out of business, with little warning.

<p>Thanks all for your input.</p>

<p>I should have noted that I'm not interested in debating the merits of CD-R's as an archiving format. But since that topic has generated substantial interest, here goes. Once every month or two, I back up the most important new stuff; the quantity is small enough that it has never taken more than three CD-R's, and usually just one. The masters reside on my home computer's internal hard drive. One copy goes onto an external hard drive that is usually (but not always) offline / disconnected (no power), one copy goes onto a Delkin Gold CD-R (and when the 10-pack gets filled, to an offsite location), and one copy goes onto another (usually Verbatim) CD-R (which I keep at home). Anything originating on a flash card remains on the flash card until archiving is complete. External hard drives are cheap (and I have a fairly big one, relative to my needs), but over my time working with computers (continuously since 1982), I've seen a lot more hard disk drive problems than CD-R problems; not saying I'm a scientific sampling (hardly!), but I have my biases. I'm reasonably comfortable that the odds of my totally losing anything are quite low, and the costs (in time and materials) of my system are quite modest (which might not be true if the volume were higher).</p>

<p>As for CD-R's versus some flavor of DVD's: I do use DVD's for some archiving, but at least some years ago, there was substantial thought (not as confident about evidence) that CD's were a more archival medium. Given the obviously-larger physical size of the dye blobs, it seems like they ought to enjoy an inherent advantage. But again, that's hardly a scientifically-established conclusion.</p>