backing up to dvd or bluray?

[virginia sustarsic]

<p>Am getting a new 15" macbook pro, and rethinking my plans for handling images...have been using aperture, so probably moving to lightroom, have been keeping the images on a portable external hard drive and backing up to a second drive and/or dvd...one of my external hard drives became corrupted, so would like to continue a second backup on another media...dvd or bluray?...would be nice not to have to break up my 16G camera cards to 3 or 4 dvd's, so considering bluray but have never used it...i see a few older posts about bluray, but nothing recent, what do you think of getting a burner (suggestions on brands?) and burning to bluray instead of dvd...i know a second external harddrive would probably be quicker and easier, but losing one was kind of traumatic, luckily i had almost all the images on it backed up...thanks for any thoughts and support, virginia</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>See: http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00ciAw<br>

I'd skip DVD or similar, stick with multiple external drives. </p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>To backup what is said in the thread referenced above (which offers sound advice and a lot of intermittent noise, unfortunately): long term reliability of DVDs or BR discs isn't better than hard disks (in my personal experience, the reverse, but I am a very small sample stastically - I've thrown away a lot of CDs and DVDs in the meantime - completely unreadable. I've had one hard disk fail on me). Any backup device you use can and will fail. A single failed hard disk isn't a sign you should change to something else; it is a thing that can happen and luckily your backup setup seemed to work properly.<br>

Checking DVDs or BR discs all individually intermittent to ensure they are still OK is a tedious job (and needed, because how else do you know you need to make a new backup until it is too late?); plus for hard disks there are simple better tools out there to do such checks.</p>

<p>So, despite the nasty experience, stick with external drives. Optical discs are slow, tedious, not very reliable and generally less economic too. Consider an online backup service as secondary alternative in addition to external HDDs as well (note: that is *not* dropbox and similar online storage services, but dedicated backup services such as Carbonite with matching service level agreements).</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>Two portable hard drives, dedicated as backup. Backup daily with an automated program. Put one hard drive off site and swap them on a regular (weekly) basis. Limits the amount of data you can loose with any one hd failure because there are two copies of almost everything, and three copies of somewhat less, depending on how often you swap.</p>

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

[mendel_leisk]

<p>I'd say DVD, over BluRay. Aren't they still prohibitively expensive, per storage capacity? It's been a while since I checked.</p>

<p>Like other responders, I primarily use back up to a second hard drive (internal, very fast transfer rate, but when they start approaching capacity I archive to dual DVD burns.</p>

[Spearhead]

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>I'd skip DVD or similar, stick with multiple external drives.</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

 

 

 

This strategy doesn't work well for regular off-site backup. I have two drives, but also burn disks regularly and ship them to a location that doesn't have earthquakes. It's a whole lot safer than waiting for a terabyte or two to send a hard drive off.

 

 

<blockquote>

Aren't they still prohibitively expensive, per storage capacity? I

</blockquote>

 

 

No. Blu-Ray has gotten a lot more competitive, price-wise, with DVD. And with dual layer DVDs, you can burn 50GB per disc.

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>This strategy doesn't work well for regular off-site backup.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It does if you use something like CrashPlan (and only backup a subset of data since it's slow). <br>

Or rotate an external drive that is sent back and forth off site (family member, PO Box, etc). </p>

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>so would like to continue a second backup on another media...dvd or bluray?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>perfect. the more media types you have, the better. I think it's foolish/cheap/lazy/virus prone to only use hard drives...all eggs are in one basket imo. Aside from also using the cloud and hdd's for my backup, I use dual layer 8gb dvd's. The trick to optical burning and longevity is a good quality burning software that verifies and I use the open source free Image Burn.</p>

 

[q.g._de_bakker]

<i>"all eggs are in one basket imo"</i><br><br>Not in my opinion. They (HDDs) are all the same, all eggs, yes. There's nothing wrong with that. They work quite well, are cheap and fast. Unless you do indeed keep them all in one basket. ;-)<br>Where's the problem with using one medium, shunning others (that are too expensive and too slow)? Should we fear a global event that wipes all HDDs at once?

[eric_brody]

<p>I'm with Andrew and the others who recommend hard disk drives. The good news is that they are fairly reasonably priced per GB, reasonably reliable, and fast to use. A good thing is that once you have 3-4 backup hard drives, the issue of reliability almost becomes irrelevant since a single hdd failure is not a disaster. Some of us have enough OCD to do complex backup schemes, some do not. Many people who are not super serious photographers tend to fall into the latter, eg most of my non-photo-wacko friends. For them, the only system that will work is a simple one. With no backup scheme at all, data loss is essentially inevitable. Hard discs with a decent auto backup program such as Carbon Copy Cloner, which I use, or Super Duper, which I used to use, are the way to go.</p>

[EricM]

<p>Nothing more can be said than what's in this lifehacker article<br>

http://lifehacker.com/5889422/whats-the-best-way-to-back-up-tons-of-data</p>

[virginia sustarsic]

<p>Thanks, everyone, for sharing your insights and experiences, it's been very helpful, Virginia</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>only backup a subset of data since it's slow</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

That's why I don't do it. I back up all the images. I'm still surprised by some of the things I didn't bother with when I look through contact sheets from the 90s. The same thing happens with digital.<br>

</p>

<blockquote>

 

</blockquote>

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Or rotate an external drive that is sent back and forth off site (family member, PO Box, etc).</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

 

 

 

This is too slow in terms of data accumulation and too expensive. I can send a couple Blu Ray drives to the East Coast for $1.50 every week or two.

<p> <br>

</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Should we fear a global event that wipes all HDDs at once?</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p> I'm worried that an earthquake could easily wipe out everything I own locally. You must have a magic field around your home that protects you, I don't.<br>

</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Jeff, you might want to look into a fire proof media safe. I have one set of backup's in mine, then I rotate on a regular basis. Between that and CrashPlan, I feel pretty well protected but S&^t can happen. In the end, if there's a major ccatastrophe, I'm going to be more concerned with my wife and dogs than photo's in a safe. </p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

For Blu-Ray: http://www.mdisc.com and an LG Blu-Ray drive

 

I like the Drobo 5D for an expandable capacity hard disc drive with eithera 1 or 2 drive redundancy. For a fixed capacity (because small capacity RAID arrays work best with matching drives, I like OWC RAID 5 capacity arrays. There also the Thunderbolt arrays from Pegasus.

[q.g._de_bakker]

Distributed redundancy is indeed the way to go, Eric~. Decrease the risk that a catastrophic event (minor or major). You can achieve that without using as many different media as possible. Just one will do.<br>(We had an earthquake here some 20 years ago, Jeff. 5.8 on the Richter scale - we're not in a earthquake zone. 4.9 some 10 years ago, but 100 km from here, so hardly felt. Minor damage to some buildings. All hard drives survived. No need for a magic field.<br><a href="http://www.extremetech.com/computing/93794-how-an-earthquake-affects-hard-drive-and-website-performance">How big must a quake be to destroy a hard drive? 5.8 appeared strong enough to have drives park their heads until it is safe again.</a> I have accelerometers in my laptops, and they 'kick in' with an annoying 'beep' far too often. Have yet to experience hard drive failure due to me shaking the thing harder than a major earthquake would. But they are there (and i have them activated) because it could do damage, of course. So it would be interesting to know: how big must a quake be to do damage to a (running) drive?)<br><br>What does play havoc with the odds of not losing everything is a time consuming and (relatively) expensive back up regime. It promotes an 'i will do that ... later' approach.<br>The choice of medium is not that important as far as being able to survive a catastrophe is concerned (they are all more or less equally bad). It however is as far as setting up a 'sustainable' back up regime is (compare, for instance, what you will have to do to create a redundant distributed store of optical disks to how easy it is to send data over the net to another site to achieve the same.)

[StanleyBeck]

<p>No foolproof solution. The library of Congress makes back-ups of digital made movies onto film for archive purposes. Just saying. I'm not suggesting this for all of your files.</p>

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>You can achieve that without using as many different media as possible. Just one will do.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Opinion formed as fact, again. It seems every three weeks we're going over this and I'm not sure if you have a memory problem Q.G. or if you're trolling. This is your preference, as it is with many, but that's all it is. Hdd back-ups is simple, easy, cheap, <strong>but also the most vulnerable. </strong>It is not my preference and had I have followed this advice, I would have lost most of my digital library due to infection. I doubt I will stop anytime soon.</p>

<p>I spend more time editing 8 gb of images than it takes to burn it to dvd. It's easy to burn as you complete a project and I don't even notice it going on in the background while working on other material. Easy.</p>

 

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>The library of Congress makes back-ups of digital made movies onto film for archive purposes</p>

</blockquote>

<p> <br>

Are they still doing this? Their website indicates otherwise.</p>

[lenny_eiger]

<p>I've been around for a while, along with many others here. I've been through Syquest drives, Zip and Jaz drives, tape, etc. All of these units have slowly disappeared, and for good reason. They weren't reliable. The removable idea is a great one, but it turns out that the devices lacked the tight control of a dedicated device. If you take apart a hard drive, you will find rare earth magnets that hold the stylus half the thickness of a human hair off the drive platters. They are incredibly strong. Removable devices have not been able to match the tight specs, and thus the lack of reliability.</p>

<p>We were told when the CD's came out that the laser chipped into the plastic of the CD and that the data would last forever. (Once again.) And once again, it was a lie. People report that they put their very valuable data on one of these discs, and every once in a while they can't get it off again.</p>

<p>Anyone that uses CD's and DVD's must be willing to lose whatever they put on there. There is no way of knowing when one of these will fail. In a number of years, CD's will be gone, so will DVD's and Blu-Ray. Everything is moving to the cloud. Netflix will not be sending discs thru the mail when the internet gets reasonable fast at delivery, which despite the efforts of the larger providers like Comcast, it ultimately will.</p>

<p>The only way to solve this is to use hard drives. They are cheap. And yes, you have to buy new ones as the technology moves along. We no longer use SCSI drives, Firewire 400 or ATA. Now its Serial ATA, or SATA, and soon it may be Thunderbolt, or maybe not. Maybe a USB 4? However, when that time happens, I will move all my data over there before there is nothing I can plug it into to read it...</p>

<p> </p>

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>Anyone that uses CD's and DVD's must be willing to lose whatever they put on there. There is no way of knowing when one of these will fail. In a number of years, CD's will be gone, so will DVD's and Blu-Ray</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Moot. Can you name an alternative that this doesn't also apply to, Lenny? I have a stack of ide hard drives that are pain to get access to if I wanted. It wont be long before sata is gone as well.</p>

[lenny_eiger]

<p>We all come to this world thinking that things don't change. You buy a car, it should last n years. Manufacturers have long figured out that if they make things that well, they won't sell as many, so now the world is all about planned obsolescence. This is more true in computing/technology than just about anywhere else.</p>

<p>If I had a stack of IDE drives, I would get a stack of 4TB SATA's and copy everything over, then throw them out. (You would need quite a few less of them because of the larger size.) That's what's expected of you. <br>

We may not like this, most of us don't, but we live in a world where everything is a commodity, everything is disposable. Reminds me of that bar in college, where there was a sign in the bathroom that said, "You don't buy beer here, you just rent it."</p>

 

[digitaldog]

<blockquote>

<p>I've been through Syquest drives, Zip and Jaz drives, tape, etc.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Let's not forget Bernoulli and even floppies (800K) which is what I started with. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>In a number of years, CD's will be gone, so will DVD's and Blu-Ray.<br /></p>

</blockquote>

<p>And worse, the devices to read them. Doesn't NASA have rooms of data they can't read due to the lack of any supported hardware? Got to migrate that data. What's better today than hard drives? Certainly NOT CD's or DVDs. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>The only way to solve this is to use hard drives. They are cheap. And yes, you have to buy new ones as the technology moves along. <br>

However, when that time happens, I will move all my data over there before there is nothing I can plug it into to read it...<br /></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Right, and the migration to the new data should be relatively speedy. Not the case for DVD or CD's. </p>

[Spearhead]

 

 

<blockquote>

<p>Right, and the migration to the new data should be relatively speedy. Not the case for DVD or CD's.</p>

</blockquote>

 

 

<br />You don't have to copy from DVDs if they are secondary backup. That's what I use them for. It's only if the hard drives are damaged. Seems pretty easy.

<br /><br />

Maybe I'm unique, but I have data I originally stored on 8" floppies using WordPerfect. I've just migrated it every five years or so to new media. Not that difficult if you're diligent.

 

[EricM]

<blockquote>

<p>You don't have to copy from DVDs if they are secondary backup. That's what I use them for. It's only if the hard drives are damaged. Seems pretty easy.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, it is.</p>