Posted by Toshi1873 on 11/15/10 11:37

In article <0dCdnQt7rOraPFfenZ2dnUVZ_tSdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
CliffWild@xemaps.com says...
>
> Well lets see now. You can write to a 300gig drive how many times? What
> happens to the DVDs when they are full and how long do they last? How many
> gigs worth of coaster are floating around compared to used HDDs that still
> work fine? How long does it take to burn just ONE DVD a coaster or not? I
> will stick with my HDDs for backup and archive.
> Wild idea you say? Thanks
>

Different strokes for different applications.

Write-once DVDs are best for archival snapshots where you're only
burning 1-2 discs per day on average. Older discs should be kept around
as fallback positions if newer generations of the backups fail for some
reason. Really old discs typically end up in a closet, stored in a
cakebox on the off-chance that things really go bad. Discs also have
the advantage of portability. (Although the 2.5" laptop drives are
lightweight and tiny.)

HDs really compete against tape and rewritable DVDs. Good for daily
backups and you can rotate the units out periodically for multi-
generational backups. You probably shouldn't let the drives sit unused
for more then a few months to a year without checking the contents (and
whether the drive will still spin up).

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