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Posted by Smarty on 05/18/07 18:07
Amy,
I respectfully disagree when it comes to using DVD-R as archival storage. I
have burned thousands of them beginning around 7 years ago, and ***MANY OF
THEM*** are now unreadable. The dyes and soft sectoring are both to blame.
In particular, the read errors grow as the disks / dyes age, and (unlike
some optical formats like DVD-RAM) the drive has trouble accessing sectors,
producing check-sum / redundancy code errors from blocks which are
unrecoverable. I readily admit that the better brands like Verbatim and
Taiyo Yuden are the least affected compared to the cheaper disks, but none
are really worthy of being considered "archival" in the long-term sense.
Also, small error rates are correctible if they are used for their intended
video playback purposes, but data storage is less tolerant of bit / block
errors when reading, and most burners and software don't even do a
"read-after-write" verify step since it is time consuming.
Also, on the subject of time-consuming.....
modern 7200 RPM hard disks are cheap, fast, and very reliable, and make
backups much, much faster than optical drives, and are vastly more capacious
in size. Most video projects and data backups run out of space very quickly
when using an optical disk as media, whereas hard disk backup does not have
this problem either.
If optical disk storage is your preference, might I suggest you also
consider DVD-RAM, a profoundly better format for data archiving.
Smarty
"Arny Krueger" <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:sZWdncG0spGtM9DbnZ2dnUVZ_s2vnZ2d@comcast.com...
> "Peter D" <please@.sk> wrote in message
> news:134orrdppre2l55@corp.supernews.com
>> "Arny Krueger" <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote
>>> <leekazimir@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>> Looking for a good backup solution for big HDV files and
>>>> projects.
>>>
>>>> Currently looking at Maxtor's OneTouch Turbo III
>>>> (available in 1 TB or 1.5 TB sizes) and Lacie's BigDisk
>>>> 1 TB drives.
>
>>> I tell my clients that anything by Lacie or one of the
>>> prime drive manufacturers (Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi,
>>> Western Digital) is going to be a better choice than
>>> some no-name cheapie.
>
>>> But, watch the GB/$ index. You generally pay a big
>>> premium to get the highest possible density. A cursory
>>> look suggests that GB/$ is relatively flat up to a
>>> surprizing 1 TB.
>
>>> However, I'd rather have 4 each $100 250 GB external
>>> drives rather than 1 each $400 1 TB drive. Shelf space
>>> isn't an issue for me at the 3.5 form factor. With the
>>> 1 TB drive, one human or hardwaer destorys lots more
>>> than it would with 4 smaller drives. If the goal is
>>> backup, then the smaller drives give you better options
>>> for off site backup. Also, I would probably never buy 4
>>> drives at one time, but buy 2 to start for redundcancy
>>> and watch the cost per GB of the remainder of my future
>>> disk drive farm drop as the price of storage continues
>>> to drop.
>
>> Good advice. I would also recommend DVD-R as a viable
>> backup medium. Now before anyone disregards the idea
>> because of problems with long-term storage of some DVD
>> medium, let me suggest that a combination of recoverable
>> methods make it very viable except in the most extreme of
>> cases. Simply use a combination of RAR/ZIP or any
>> software that can break large files into smaller chunks,
>> and create PAR files to act as verifiers and recreators
>> should a files get damaged or lost. You can store a lot
>> of info on a DVD at very low costs (less than 10c/G), and
>> properly stored it is less susceptible to damage than a
>> hard drive.
>
> Good advice. IME well-made, well-stored optical media has all of the
> advantages you've mentioned. The biggest problem are the inconvenience
> factors.
>
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