Life of DVD±Rs and HDs

Since a lot of us are backing up our absolutely legal music, movies, and other precious data on hundreds of DVD±Rs and/or your brand new 1TB Hard Drive, I was wondering what the life expectancy of those are.

What's the best way for my data to last the rest of my life? Do I need to make copies of each DVD±R every 10 years? Should I toss them in the freezer? What are you guys doing to preserve your data?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by striped phantom

Since a lot of us are backing up our absolutely legal music, movies, and other precious data on hundreds of DVD±Rs and/or your brand new 1TB Hard Drive, I was wondering what the life expectancy of those are.

What's the best way for my data to last the rest of my life? Do I need to make copies of each DVD±R every 10 years? Should I toss them in the freezer? What are you guys doing to preserve your data?

I still think hard drives are best unless you fork out a ton of money for archival-quality DVD-Rs. But once you compare costs then, hard drives are cheaper.

I use a two disk RAID-1 array in my fileserver. I can't be bothered to burn only 4GB at a time at shit speeds to less-than-reliable optical media.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Depends on what brand you use... or rather, what manufacturer ID, since each MID can be used by several brands. If you use Ritek, you can expect some deterioration after six months. If you use Taiyo Yuden, you could easily be good for a couple of years.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I'm using Verbatim discs with an MID of "MCC 03RG20." I've been reading that good quality discs could a decade or two, to a century.

I don't know much about hard drives (still haven't grasped the concept of RAID, etc.) How reliable are they? I've been seeing threads from members here crying "my hard drive crashed! I lost 200000 songs and 300GB of data" or something. Is it because they bought a shitty drive or even played doctor with it?

I dont want to put my trust in a hard drive and have it die on me all of a sudden, for no reason.

And how would a Hard drive be cheaper? DVD-Rs seem cheaper to me when I break it down to dollars/ per GB.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I have an external firewire 400 rack-mounted 3.5'' drive system that lets me swap out drives in a few seconds. It makes for a pretty good high-capacity backup system. Fill a drive, index it, slide out the rack, label it, stick it in a plastic bag and shelve it in a climate controlled environment. I built the box for twenty-five bucks, and racks cost five.

Im building one for a guy who does a lot of digital photography. He's been shooting for close to thirty years now, and he wants to keep all of his work protected with archives. As of right now, when he needs to back up he just buys another LaCie external hard drive. My recommendation to him is to make two sets of backups; one on a pair of racked hard disks and one on a pair of DVDs. Keep one set on site and one set off site in a climate controlled environment out of heat/light/moisture.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I've been thinking of archiving al my music compact discs (around 350-400) on DVD+R discs in case I lose them in a fire or similar disaster. But then I'd have to keep these backups somewhere else too. My music collection cost too much and is too precious to me to have it lost for all time. I think I'd kill myself if that were to happen and not have made any backups...

Not dvd-related but I have CD-R's of suspicious brands (as in low-quality, I kind of bought out of ignorance) dating from 1999 that still play as good now as in those days. High quality discs must last even longer then.

And archiving on hard disc seems to be the better solution, but must be handled with care at all times, and you could lose all your data at once if the drive crashes.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

It doesn't matter, as long as you take care of your media.

Don't get it wet, don't drop it, don't toss it in a fire, etc.

Personally though, if you have a large collection, just get a HD, plop it all on there, and put it in a safe location if you're really worried about it.

FELIPE NO

"Climate controlled environment"? Whew? Now where in my house could that be? I cant afford to build an IBM like lab where they always keep th temperature under 15 degrees.

Ah I know, The Bathroom!

Double Post:
BTW, dvds/cds with Gold colored sides last longer the the silver ones.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Roan

"Climate controlled environment"? Whew? Now where in my house could that be? I cant afford to build an IBM like lab where they always keep th temperature under 15 degrees.

Ah I know, The Bathroom!

Double Post:
BTW, dvds/cds with Gold colored sides last longer the the silver ones.

This sounds kind of silly but how about u place it in water? Water has quite a high heat capacity and unless the weather changes a la the day after tomorrow, the HDD should be kept at a rather constant temperature. Of course, one has to seal the HDD - with water a meant surrounded by, not literally throwing your hardisk into a bucket.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Are movie DVDs made on the same DVDs that we use to burn our data? I've got some really old DVD movies that work perfectly, so, if burned properly, couldn't your data DVDs last just as long? I'd rather make backups on DVD to supplement my HD ones, because I've had HDs fail and crash on me before, but you can't really crash a DVD; I guess you could hit it with a hammer or melt it or whatever, but generally speaking if you're just using it to transfer files from the disc to your computer and storing it afterwards I don't see how it could go bad.

How ya doing, buddy?

I doubt the production studios would utilize the same brands we use for burning, but I could be wrong. And DVDs you find in the shops are not burnt in the way we do, the movies are pressed onto disc in huge quantities and the machines for manufacturing are a bit better and more powerful I think than the writers for home use. They can even produce invisible high quality layers on the surface of the discs so they wouldn't suffer as much from bad handling, scratches and so on. Rental movies are made with extra layers for enhanced durability.

And DVD going bad, well years ago I've a lot of talk about DVD Rot, where some movies would just become unreadable and you could use the disc as a coaster. But that were just flaws of the DVD standard in the beginning years which I gather have been resolved by now.

How ya doing, buddy?