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I have learned over the years that optical media is a terrible archival solution. Burned disks are good for sneaker net use only.
For real back up and long term storage I use hard drives exclusively. As cheap as HDDs are burning just seems silly.

Shadowless wrote:

Pariah wrote:

I have learned over the years that optical media is a terrible archival solution. Burned disks are good for sneaker net use only.
For real back up and long term storage I use hard drives exclusively. As cheap as HDDs are burning just seems silly.

Obviously I haven't even owned a computer for as long as Pariah has been archiving stuff, but I agree. I back up things pretty much exclusively on HDDs. Considering there are 1TB HDDs out there going for under $200 during Black Friday, I can't see reasons to stick to that format for long-term storage.

A Blu-Ray disc may not have the failure rate of an HDD. If your HDD dies, you lose the data. With a disc, it's pretty safe.

Youthdude wrote:

Shadowless wrote:

Pariah wrote:

I have learned over the years that optical media is a terrible archival solution. Burned disks are good for sneaker net use only.
For real back up and long term storage I use hard drives exclusively. As cheap as HDDs are burning just seems silly.

Obviously I haven't even owned a computer for as long as Pariah has been archiving stuff, but I agree. I back up things pretty much exclusively on HDDs. Considering there are 1TB HDDs out there going for under $200 during Black Friday, I can't see reasons to stick to that format for long-term storage.

A Blu-Ray disc may not have the failure rate of an HDD. If your HDD dies, you lose the data. With a disc, it's pretty safe.

The National Archives: FAQ about Optical Storage Media wrote:

6. How long can I expect my recorded CDs/DVDs to last?

CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable.

Here's a link to that FAQ.

Burn speeds, speeds in general, increase for years until they plateau for a given tech.

Chickenhawk wrote:

if you're actually using HDDs to backup stuff, you don't throw it on a single drive. RAID 5 FTW

OF course, there goes the price/GB ratio.

If you live in FL you soon figure out that even with electrical protection, off system, secondary storage backups are a good thing.

Macskeeball wrote:

Youthdude wrote:

Shadowless wrote:

Obviously I haven't even owned a computer for as long as Pariah has been archiving stuff, but I agree. I back up things pretty much exclusively on HDDs. Considering there are 1TB HDDs out there going for under $200 during Black Friday, I can't see reasons to stick to that format for long-term storage.

A Blu-Ray disc may not have the failure rate of an HDD. If your HDD dies, you lose the data. With a disc, it's pretty safe.

The National Archives: FAQ about Optical Storage Media wrote:

6. How long can I expect my recorded CDs/DVDs to last?

CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer. However, a variety of factors discussed in the sources cited in FAQ 15, below, may result in a much shorter life span for CDs/DVDs. Life expectancies are statistically based; any specific medium may experience a critical failure before its life expectancy is reached. Additionally, the quality of your storage environment may increase or decrease the life expectancy of the media. We recommend testing your media at least every two years to assure your records are still readable.

Here's a link to that FAQ.

My experience is that 5 years is the very longest you can expect burned media to last and that on average you are lucky to get 3 years out of even very carefully stored disks. Burned CDs and DVDs are only slightly more reliable than floppies were but at least floppies could be repaired with a disk utility occasionally. Once a burned disk goes bad your only hope is data recovery and even then you wont get but a fraction off.
I learned this the hard way because back in the day  I believed the bullsmurf about CDs lasting 10+ years. That is complete bullsmurf and believing that cost me some family pictures I dearly wished I still had.

I think it is entirely possible Apple may never offer Blu-ray. Not too long ago I was skeptical about the whole movie downloads thing but after a week of being sick where I was watching a lot of DVDs I realized how smurfing annoying DVDs had become.
All I ever want to do is just watch the movie. "Extras" mean nothing to me, the ads at the beginning are incredibly irritating, the ..er... creative navigation on many makes late 90's web design look sophisticated by comparison.
For example I impulse bought a Hellraiser collection disk out of a bargain bin sometime ago and I watched it several times before I noticed this tiny little right pointing arrow that was so low contrast to the background you could barely see it, way down at the extreme lower right corner of the screen and out of curiosity I clicked it and low and behold the disk I had thought only had the first three movies on it actually had all 6.
Ridiculous Design..
Basically you get the movie but it's wrapped up in 6 layers of crap you have to slog thru to get to it.
So I have come round to really liking the idea of just being able to download the movie as a file, assuming they strip out all the crap before hand of course.

Last edited by Pariah (2008-12-10 8:42 pm)

Pariah wrote:

. . . cost me some family pictures I dearly wished I still had.

Sorry man, that REALLY sucks. My worst nightmare.

Since 99% of the photos of my kids growing up are in digital format (my oldest is 6 so we have six years of family pix as well in the mix as we got a camera just prior to my 6-year-olds birth) I am a little paranoid as I constantly back up my iPhoto library(6,097 photos) on three different hard drives. Of course things of importance off my primary Mac are also updated on those drives as well.

Too bad I have to do this manually (the drives show on my MBP's desktop remotely but Time Machine is not supported (AirDisk) as they promised it would be and therefore does not work. It worked for a time or two, then it seemed to be killed via an Apple software "upgrade".

wellfleation wrote:

resedit wrote:

They take up more room to store.
They are also heavier to send to a relative for off site storage.

Umm, what are you talking about?

I'm talking about archiving to HD instead of Blu-ray

resedit wrote:

wellfleation wrote:

resedit wrote:

They take up more room to store.
They are also heavier to send to a relative for off site storage.

Umm, what are you talking about?

I'm talking about archiving to HD instead of Blu-ray

What about online storage?  I'm not up to speed on the options but I've heard good things about Amazon's S3...of course there's that monthly fee.

Pariah wrote:

My experience is that 5 years is the very longest you can expect burned media to last and that on average you are lucky to get 3 years out of even very carefully stored disks. Burned CDs and DVDs are only slightly more reliable than floppies were but at least floppies could be repaired with a disk utility occasionally. Once a burned disk goes bad your only hope is data recovery and even then you wont get but a fraction off.
I learned this the hard way because back in the day  I believed the bullsmurf about CDs lasting 10+ years. That is complete bullsmurf and believing that cost me some family pictures I dearly wished I still had.

Are there any services out there that can make pressed copies of burned media? I understand that pressed CDs/DVDs are more durable and reliable than burned optical media. I'm guessing such a service would be very expensive due to the equipment involved.

jeremiah256 wrote:

resedit wrote:

wellfleation wrote:

Umm, what are you talking about?

I'm talking about archiving to HD instead of Blu-ray

What about online storage?  I'm not up to speed on the options but I've heard good things about Amazon's S3...of course there's that monthly fee.

Online storage is for sharing and access, NOT archiving. My opinion is that anyone who would trust anything important to a remote server is an idiot.
Not to mention the obvious security and privacy concerns. I don't like the idea of some tech school grad working for $8 an hour amusing himself by browsing thru my personal files.

Macskeeball wrote:

Pariah wrote:

Not to mention the obvious security and privacy concerns. I don't like the idea of some tech school grad working for $8 an hour amusing himself by browsing thru my personal files.

Nor do I, but that's where solid encryption comes in. The point is to have, in addition to your local backups, an off-site backup in case of fire, natural disaster, or theft.

That was res' original thing with ext HDs. I say just rent a safety deposit box and swap drives every week/bi=weekly/monthly, whatever you want. I don't think the monthly fee is that much and it doesn't get much more sure than that.