Is blu ray the way to go yet?

[marc_felber1]

<p>Since blu ray prices has started to come down where you can get a burner for $187 for an external blu-ray burner and a pack of 5 delkin disks for $79, $16 a disk, is it worth to go to blu ray since my files are too big. I have around 25 GB plus for each liabary of aperture that I need to back up. Saving on harddrives only works up to a point, since drives will only last up to 10 years if your lucky. But there are programs out their where you can recover you lost photos from a crashed disk. But why go through the hassle. </p>

<p> </p>

[craig_big]

I'm done with discs altogether. Just buy 2TB hard drives in bulk. They cost around $140 right now and can hold 80 Blu-Ray discs, or 425 DVDs. Each pair of these drives will give you 2TB with 100% redundancy, cost $280, and last 5-10 years before replacement. To get the same redundancy in DVDs would cost at least $340 at $.20 a disc, and in Blu-Rays at least $480 at only $3 per disc. Hard drives are not only cheaper, but immeasurably more convenient, as they will copy over directly with 1-click, no need to change or catalog discs, maintain your entire collection in 1 contiguous heirarchy, and transfer and backup in much less time, also taking up less physical space. Even if you copy to discs at around 1GB/minute, that's still 2000 minutes, or 33 hours during which you are indisposed, having to monitor the process and swap discs every few minutes. With hard drives, your transfers will go much quicker, at around 4 GB/minute, and you can run it unattended for 8 hours while you are sleeping, and be done in time to check your email over breakfast. Also, I hope you aren't counting on more than 10 years of shelf-life for your discs. I've had discs go bad in as little as 3 years with DVDs, 6 months or less with CDs. I expect that even the venerable Blu-Rays will be hard-pressed to make it reliable past the 5 year mark. 10 years will probably net you 1 in every 2 discs. A digital archive is not like a film drawer. It needs to be perennially monitored, maintained, and transferred from one medium to the next as technology advances. Right now, large capacity HDD arrays with built-in redundancy (i.e. 2 copies instead of just 1) are the state-of-the-art for digital archives. In 5 years or so, we will be consolidating our current archives into Petabytes drives. You'll be better off to abandon the use of discs for long-term storage. Keep them around for passing out copies of your work, and making deliverables for your clients.

[Charles_Webster]

<p>I agree with Craig, with the cost of external hard drives plummeting, 1 and 2 TB hard drives are the way to go.</p>

<p>I use DVDs for deliverables (when I have to deliver a disk), and use two 1-TB drives in a rotation backup plan that has one HD stored off site at all times (except during the transfer every week).</p>

<p><Chas><br /><br /></p>

[john_deerfield]

<p>I agree, Blu Ray won the battle over HD but lost the war. Too many people have been burned (!) by optical disc failure in later years (including me), and while Blu Ray is said to be archival, we won't know its true success rate until much later! The simply fact is that any storage method will need to be re-visited and upgraded periodically over the years and as such, why not stick with the fastest and least expensive, at least right now: hard drives.</p>

[colin_mattson1]

<p>As far as I'm aware, we haven't even seen any accelerated testing results for burnable Bluray media yet. If Sony or anyone else has them, they're playing them close to the vest.</p>

<p>Delkin's claiming 200 years on their BD-R, but there are no detailed results available on that as there has been with CD and DVD media making similar claims.</p>

[stwrtertbsratbs5]

<p>I agree that hard drives make the most sense. FYI Delkin is selling archival blu ray discs:</p>

<p>http://www.delkin.com/products/archivalgold/archival-blue-ray.html</p>

<p>Pretty expensive backup at $1/GB.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>In my experience, whatever the vendors say discs have a life span. Hard drives do as well but I don't think you can do a very good job of predicting which will last longer. Craig's suggestion makes a lot of sense - use redundant drives for maximum safety.</p>

[carbon_dragon]

<p>It's my impression that the pros are using something like Drobo enclosures with 1 or 2TB drives slotted in to create very big fileshares. I don't have anything like that much stuff yet. I have a 1TB iMac with my stuff on it and my backup solution definitely doesn't use anything as small as Bluray disks. I use a 1TB external drive for SuperDuper, a 2TB external drive for Time Machine, and a 1TB Seagate Freeagent Go drive for offsite backup.</p>

<p>I use the Time Machine to get back most stuff. I use the SuperDuper perfect copy drive if the main drive fails to restore the original drive, and I update the off site backup about once a month (not optimal, but if I get burgled at least I won't lose too much). Those Seagate Freeagent Go drives are very compact and nice looking and I like the little dock.</p>

[marc_felber1]

<p>I had the Delkin DVD gold plated for 5 years and they still work. I do know that HD have a much higher failure rate than blu ray disks especially internal drives b/c I know some that had a failure just after a year. If disk were not that good then why do you see photographers, wildlife org selling them? See lots of people selling photos on DvD. I know if you have a Mac that G-tech is the way to go for the HD, built with better parts. </p>

[john_a5]

<p>The secret is to be sure you have multiple back up and in most cases, the best solution is to use hard drives. In fact, the best to me is to get one of the e-sata boxes where you can hot swap drives and back up with some mirroring software--preferred by me to proprietary raid formats.</p>

<p>But seriously, I do think having a non magnetic file is a good idea, but only of those images that are truly finals. Keeping these and making new copies every few years, is really a good idea. If you keep it to finals, you can use DVD's and wait until Blu-ray gets cheaper yet.</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>Ok, pack of 5 blu-Ray discs is $79. And a 50 "cake" of DVD's is maybe $30. The Blu-Ray capacity is what: 6 times greater? And you're asking what?</p>

[mattb1]

<p>IMO never use a removable disk (CD, DVD, Blueray, or whatever will be promoted) it is just asking for your data to be lost. Too much can happen to the disks: dust/dirt, pollution, scratches, heat, lost discs and so on. Sure buy a blueray movie, but that is because you can buy the movie again when the disc fails, gets lost or the format changes.</p>

<p>IMO only use hard drives, and treat them like the delicate electronics they are...</p>

[craig_big]

If you really want to create an end-all-be-all final glass archive, and lock it in an environmentally controlled chest, then by all means back up everything to 200-year archival Blu-Rays at $16 a pop. It's just possible that those will still be playable in 20, 30, or even 50 years. But don't mess with them until you need them. Those should be treated as a "write-once, read-never" solution. For your day-to-day storage, you will want your ENTIRE archives copied on 2 separate hard drives on-site, and preferably 1 hard drive off-site. As has been noted, RAID is not a good solution for this. RAID solutions use variable and proprietary methods for distributing and copying data (much like how every version of RAW is unique). Much better is a software backup program. Such a program compares the data on the Master drive and copies any changes onto the Slave drive. Having a complete hard drive backup locked away off-site protects against flood, fire, electrical storms, theft, and any other hazard I can't think of at this time. The one obvious problem with trying to maintain a 50+ year backup on disc is that there is no guarantee you will have access to the hardware necessary to read those discs that far in the future. I used 5 1/4" floppies as recently as 15 years ago. If I had to read one today, I don't know where I'd go. Let alone technologies like tape drives or even punch cards. One infamous example is the video archives from NASA space shuttle programs on the 60s and 70s. There is one tape machine left in existence with the technology to decode much of that video. The machine is owned by a private party, and his repair efforts are not subsidized by the government. NASA does not have interest to invest any money in maintaining the footage, and much of the historical footage has been overwritten or destroyed in the course of time.

 

I bring this up, because I see Blu-Ray as the last hurrah of the removable media phase of history. Pretty soon, flash drives will be the only necessary mode of transporting or storing data. Spinning disc drives will disappear completely from computers probably in another 5 years. Already, computers like the iPod touch, MacBook Air, iPad, and all the Netbooks and Tablets slated to be released this year are being introduced with NO OPTICAL DRIVE whatsoever. It won't be much longer before they disappear from desktop PC's, too. Much of the world's data exists only on hard drives, and is accessible only on the internet, in what is being called the "cloud". That's the next step for your photographic archives: online storage. For now, hard drives. In a couple years, online. Blu-Rays? That's a gamble, I'd say.

[tonybynum]

forget blueray for long term, too many other cheaper more reliable solutions. . . . online, multiple drives,

etc. . . .

[craig_big]

To add on to what I just wrote, you need to progress your data from one medium to the next, as they are introduced. When 3 1/2" drives got big, all my 5 1/4" got copied over. I believe I could fit 4 discs onto 1 of the new ones. Then when CDs came out, I copied everything over again, in redundant copies of course, and I could fit around 450 floppies onto 1 CD. At the time, I didn't even have that much data TOTAL, as digital photography was still non-existent. Mostly, I used CDs for music, like everyone else. With DVDs, I copied my entire life's archives again. 6 CDs to 1 DVD. I could fit everything, even several thousands digital pictures in the 2-3MB range. A couple years later, my entire life's work occupied 2 DVDs. Everything has always existed for me on my hard drive, and copies on disc. Now, with entire libraries of MP3s, movies, and RAW photographs, PSDs, scans, TIFFs, etc, I archive several TERABYTES of data. Even Blu-Rays are insufficient for my needs, so it's hard drives only for me. I have a half-dozen terabyte drives on a server that I built myself. It maintains redundant copies of all my critical data, including photographs. Non-critical data, like TiVo'd broadcasts and movie pre-downloads are kept on non-redundant drives. If one of those crashes, oh well. At least none of my own personal work has been lost. Long story short, I'm waiting for the next affordable, simple, reliable backup solution. It isn't Blu-Ray. It would takes hundreds of Blu-Rays to accomplish what I'm doing on a handful of hard drives. And those buggers aren't cheap. Hard drives are cheap and easy. They are abundant, reliable, and easily replaceable. The back themselves up, creating their own redundant protection. They are easily removable for off-site storage. The future of removable media has become, in essence, to not remove media at all. Simply keep 2 computers loaded with everything. Most people have 2 computers anyway, or at least have the "old" computer lying around from 3 years ago. Put some hard drives in it and keep it around for storage. As for the "10 years reliability" argument, I think it's a moot point. Long before your hard drives wear out, you will want to, indeed have to, migrate all your data to a more advanced, infinitely capacious new generaion of hard drives, and the timeline to destruction will restart back to zero. The only thing that will replace DVDs would have to be a 500GB disc that costs less than $.50 and copies in under 5 minutes. As I don't see anything like that on the horizon, I'm done with removable discs.

[garrison_k.]

<p>People are mistaken if they feel they are backed up only on hdd's, or only one medium. You need both optical disk and hdd.</p>

<p>I wouldn't go blu until the prices have dropped. I use dual layer, 8 gig, disks. Burner is $30 and a 50 pack from Costco is $30.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>People are mistaken if they feel they are backed up only on hdd's, or only one medium. You need both optical disk and hdd.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I agree completely. Especially living in earthquake country, the likelihood of DVDs handling the shock is far better than any hard drive.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>It's my impression that the pros are using something like Drobo enclosures</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I haven't met anyone using Drobo. It's a proprietary format, and there's no way to deal with the drives if you have a software problem and the only vendor has gone out of business.</p>

 

[garrison_k.]

<p>Lots can go wrong with mechanical hdd's. Especially if they haven't been used very often. I've had friends that have chased viruses around and more of less in the end, couldn't plug in their hdd with their archived data: hours and hours of scanning just sitting there rendered useless. There's a few hundred thousand that went through Hurricane Katrina that wished they had dvd copies of the material on their hdd's. Examples of why you shouldn't be putting all your eggs in this basket, or just one basket, are plenty.</p>

<p>I'm not a fan of Drobo, either. No need and as Jeff says, it's proprietary and has it's risks. I use bare drives and a docking station via esata; fast and simple.</p>

<p><strong><br /></strong></p>

[sarah_baird]

<p>I was once advised to back up on hard drive plus 2 DVD copies (or whatever other disk you like to use). Keep one copy of the disks in one location and the other copies in a different location. Put them in fire proof boxes. </p>

[garrison_k.]

<p>I've typed that advice here plenty, Sarah :) But include a hdd copy that has a clone of your system and a mirror of your files and put them with one set of your dvd's.</p>

[tom_schneider]

<p>I agree with Garrison and Jeff. You want multiple copies on different types of media. Hard drives are cheapest per gigabyte, but blu-ray disks do not get taken out by viruses, power surges, accidental deletions, nor are they likely to be stolen in the event your home is broken into.</p>

<p>As far as longevity, I'd trust blu-ray over DVD, despite the shorter track record. The fact that organic dyes are not used in the recording layer is a big plus in my book. It reportedly also has better error correction. Also, just from my experiences burning hundreds of DVDs, I encounter far more burn errors and read incompatibilities when burning DVDs, compared to CDs or Blu-ray. You'd think by now the DVD-R format would be pretty mature, but I've had nothing but headaches. I religiously update the burner firmware, but somehow that never seems to fix the problem!</p>

<p>Blu-ray may not be around forever, but the 120mm disk format now has about a 30 year track record. Blu-ray is backed by a lot of big companies, and the non-rewritable aspect of BD-R disks is a major selling point for industry folks charged with data preservation.</p>

<p>Here is a link to an interesting article discussing the possible longevity of BD-R media. Looks like it was translated from Japanese - it has some good info:</p>

<p>http://www.optical.com/optical_storage/IEEE_Bluray.pdf</p>

[bill_tuthill]

I'm baffled by prices quoted above. Amazon has a 20-disc Blu-Ray spindle for $1.60 per.

 

Also if you store on HDD you should be using RAID-5, which can tolerate two disk failures, with with hot spare. Despite what Craig says.

[carbon_dragon]

<p>"<em>I agree completely. Especially living in earthquake country, the likelihood of DVDs handling the shock is far better than any hard drive."</em><br>

I'm no more confident in optical storage for long term than I am for HDD, but the important thing is having some kind of multi-tiered strategy. You already know what mine is, and I'm pretty confident a removable 1TB HDD disconnected in a case in my office is just as "survivable" as an optical disk which has it's own potential demons. The problem with optical is mostly the limited capacity. At this point to be useful the optical storage would have to be 20 to 30 times as great as it is and much cheaper. The future is probably online storage like Carbonite but that's a little too radical for me at the moment. I'm not a professional so I don't get as crazy as I would if I were a professional photographer, but my philosophy combines quick recovery of files for normal use and an emergency backup no more than a month old.</p>

<p>I think what you have to remember is that we're preaching to the choir here. That is what you have to worry about is having NO strategy. As a software engineer I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to that have no backup at all of any kind.</p>

[john_ashby2]

<p>@Bill--<br />RAID-5 cannot tolerate two disk failures, only one. To include a hot spare and then say it can tolerate 2 is just silly. By your logic, a RAID-0 mirroring system can tolerate 3 disk failures if you have 2 hot spares. Hot spares have nothing to do with the RAID level.</p>

<p>We used hot spares where I worked in 1995 with $2000 SCSI drives, it just doesn't make sense for a personal system with today's drives. I still say RAID-5 is the way to go, but without a hot spare, and for the cost and reliability of modern hard drives, as soon as you have a failure replace the whole array with bigger new drives and copy the data to that, because these days when one goes, chances are the rest aren't far behind.</p>

<p>Edit: Oh, and blu-ray is not a good solution for all the reasons on the thread. Use a raid and plan to replace it every 5 years or so and copy all your data to the new one.</p>

[martin_howard1]

<p>I would avoid RAID 5 unless using a high quality RAID card, the parity checks kill performance on motherboard based RAID controllers that use the CPU. Watch out for the cheaper RAID cards that also use the CPU rather than their own onboard processors.</p>