Anyone Using Blu-Ray Data Discs for Backup?

[Anderton]

The amount of data I need to back up around here is absurd...DVD-ROMs just don't cut it any more.

 

So, I'm thinking about using Blu-Ray discs for data but figured the avant-garde, bleeding-edge computer denizens of SSS might have practical experience they can relay about whether it works, how well it works, what kind of computer you use it with, etc.

 

Any advice/ideas/warnings?

[Cry Logic]

I've bypassed optical media altogether for backing up.

I use Hard Drives to back up now.

It's much less hassle to simply slip an HDD into the

external drive bay and copy the files over to it.

Burning to optical media seems primitive in comparison.

And HDDs are so cheap these daze.(sic)

[cooterbrown]

Same here...I have a 500g and 1t hd for backup.

[Ed A.]

I was considering using Blu-Ray discs for backup, but I decided to use large capacity hard drives instead. They're cheap enough now where it's practical. Besides, I still can't find a small portable Firewire 800 Blu-Ray burner for use with a Mac. The Apple Store manager I deal with can't find anything.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

TB hard drives and data tape.

 

Blu-ray is for high definition content.

[UstadKhanAli]

I'm mostly backing up to HDs as well. The occasional DVD just because I've had a DVD drive for years.

[Goobers]

 

The amount of data I need to back up around here is absurd...DVD-ROMs just don't cut it any more. So, I'm thinking about using Blu-Ray discs for data but figured the avant-garde, bleeding-edge computer denizens of SSS might have practical experience they can relay about whether it works, how well it works, what kind of computer you use it with, etc. Any advice/ideas/warnings?

 

 

Flash drives and hard drives are so cheap per GB, it's hard to get all that excited these days about an optical format with a short half life. Seems like the Blu-Ray train has passed.

[UstadKhanAli]

Did the Blu-Ray train (for data backup) ever arrive?

[Goobers]

Did the Blu-Ray train (for data backup) ever arrive?

 

Not at my station.

[ggm1960]

Another HD backer upper here. I have internals and a 1T external for my PCs and another 1T external for my Macs.

 

I've also experienced the phenomenon of home burnt CD backups that become unreadable in time.

 

I try to maintain a backup theory in accordance with a quote from a magazine article I once read, "digital data does not exist until it exists in two places". It's a similar idea as seen in the film Quest for Fire:

 

the Neanderthal Ulam tribe, who possess fire in the form of a carefully guarded small flame which they use to start larger bonfires. Obtained from a natural source, it must be fed constantly to keep it alive, for the Ulam do not know how to make their own fire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Fire_%28film%29

 

[1manband]

you get something like a 25 gb 10 pack for less than ten bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817607024&cm_re=blank_blu_ray_disc-_-17-607-024-_-Product

 

And you get a blue ray burner for 50 bucks:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=27-106-325&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo

 

The thing that makes them better than a hd is no moving/electrical parts to fail. If you handle and store the disk with some care, they should last quite a bit.

[1manband]

 

I've also experienced the phenomenon of home burnt CD backups that become unreadable in time.

 

 

I haven't come across that yet and I have some that are going on ten years old already. And they haven't been handled with care either. They are on spindles, not jewel cases, and are kind of scratched.

 

Reminds me, I need to do another big back of up of all my current and back ups.

[Anderton]

 

The thing that makes them better than a hd is no moving/electrical parts to fail. If you handle and store the disk with some care, they should last quite a bit.

 

 

Yes. I already back up to HD, but I need an archival medium. If you drop an HD, it's over. If you drop a DVD-ROM, odds are it will still be fine.

 

I have CD-ROMs that are 20 years old and still work fine. I have no HDs that have survived that length of time. It's not just platter failure but sticktion and the like. I tried data tapes, but they've been even worse for me long-term than HDs. In other words, sure, HDs are fine if you want to back up something for a few years at a time, but past that point, I need something else.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Yes. I already back up to HD, but I need an archival medium. If you drop an HD, it's over. If you drop a DVD-ROM, odds are it will still be fine. I have CD-ROMs that are 20 years old and still work fine. I have no HDs that have survived that length of time. It's not just platter failure but sticktion and the like. I tried data tapes, but they've been even worse for me long-term than HDs. In other words, sure, HDs are fine if you want to back up something for a few years at a time, but past that point, I need something else.

 

 

It'd be really great if USB drives were even cheaper or at least had a larger capacity. I don't feel completely comfortable *only* backing up to a HD either, and am always interested in another back-up technology that is robust and more conducive to archiving.

[Ed A.]

 

Flash drives ... are so cheap per GB,

 

 

That's also a pretty good solution. In a couple years a 64GB flash drive will probably be

Even now, the prices aren't too bad for 32GB.

[Anderton]

 

It'd be really great if USB drives were even cheaper or at least had a larger capacity. I don't feel completely comfortable *only* backing up to a HD either, and am always interested in another back-up technology that is robust and more conducive to archiving.

 

 

USB sticks and solid-state memory deteriorates over time. Don't quote me on this, but I seem to recall studies that based on stress testing, predict the useful life of USB sticks to be around 5 - 7 years - to me that's not a truly archival medium. Of course that figure will likely be improved in the future, but I have data I need to archive now.

 

LEDs were touted as lasting "forever," but what that translates to is "probably longer than I'll be alive, so I don't care." Nonetheless the brightness does fade visibly over time, it's just a long time - like 75 years or something.

 

So, as much as I love solid-state stuff, it's not always an answer either.

[Anderton]

Got this from Wikipedia:

 

"Another limitation is that flash memory has a finite number of program-erase cycles (typically written as P/E cycles). Most commercially available flash products are guaranteed to withstand around 100,000 P/E cycles, before the wear begins to deteriorate the integrity of the storage. Micron Technology and Sun Microsystems announced an SLC flash memory chip rated for 1,000,000 P/E cycles on December 17, 2008.

 

"The guaranteed cycle count may apply only to block zero (as is the case with TSOP NAND parts), or to all blocks (as in NOR). This effect is partially offset in some chip firmware or file system drivers by counting the writes and dynamically remapping blocks in order to spread write operations between sectors; this technique is called wear leveling. Another approach is to perform write verification and remapping to spare sectors in case of write failure, a technique called Bad Block Management (BBM). For portable consumer devices, these wearout management techniques typically extend the life of the flash memory beyond the life of the device itself, and some data loss may be acceptable in these applications. For high reliability data storage, however, it is not advisable to use flash memory that would have to go through a large number of programming cycles. This limitation is meaningless for 'read-only' applications such as thin clients and routers, which are only programmed once or at most a few times during their lifetimes.

[Anderton]

...and more info from Robert Mead's web site:

 

"Intel claims 5 years 'useful life' for their X-18M SSD is based on a large load of data writing 100GB/day. Metron prepared for a 5 years warranty on their SSD PRO 7000 series offer.

 

"A prominent SSD manufacturer, BiTMICRO recently estimated 12.9 years of life for an SSD in a database application. Its lifetime was estimated, despite the conservative assumptions of a relatively rigorous workload and no application for renewal of life as caching strategies and wear leveling. Wear leveling is achieved by balancing algorithms that drive the block write totals monitor and can greatly extend the operational life of an SSD.

 

"STORAGEsearch.com recent estimate (computational) that the life of SSD in enterprise server applications is of the order of 50 years."

 

So there's hope, but getting Terabytes of SSDs is certainly out of my financial reach for now compared to Blu-Ray.

[Goobers]

 

Yes. I already back up to HD, but I need an archival medium. If you drop an HD, it's over. If you drop a DVD-ROM, odds are it will still be fine. I have CD-ROMs that are 20 years old and still work fine. I have no HDs that have survived that length of time. It's not just platter failure but sticktion and the like. I tried data tapes, but they've been even worse for me long-term than HDs. In other words, sure, HDs are fine if you want to back up something for a few years at a time, but past that point, I need something else.

 

 

Isn't that just a fact of life for all forms of storage? Everything will become obsolete or broken, and require periodic transfers to other, more current formats.

 

So if you're on HD's, you figure you'll take all your HD's from today and consolidate them onto a bigger, newer, cheaper hard drive, SSD, or newer format, in a couple of years.

 

Optical discs will become incompatible with new formats, just as floppy drives did, and will require vintage blu-ray readers or the same inevitable task of upgrading your data onto holographic crystals or whatever else comes next.

 

So it's kind of a calculation of what's going to last for awhile in a reliable state, and also be accessible using equipment that's readily available. Maybe a blu-ray disc lasts for 25 years, but in 25 years good luck finding a vintage blu-ray reader that works.

 

Don't let The Man fool you! Universal archival mediums are a myth!

[Anderton]

 

Isn't that just a fact of life for all forms of storage? Everything will become obsolete or broken, and require periodic transfers to other, more current formats.

 

 

True. But, I want to make that process as painless as possible!

 

 

So if you're on HD's, you figure you'll take all your HD's from today and consolidate them onto a bigger, newer, cheaper hard drive, SSD, or newer format, in a couple of years.

 

 

My daughter's computer has no provision to read IDE drives - just SATA. So those are slippery targets, too. Still trying to figure out how to get data from an old System 9 PowerBook that doesn't seem to recognize anything I have...

 

 

So it's kind of a calculation of what's going to last for awhile in a reliable state, and also be accessible using equipment that's readily available. Maybe a blu-ray disc lasts for 25 years, but in 25 years good luck finding a vintage blu-ray reader that works.

 

 

Well, that's what's encouraging to me about optical...I'm having no problem reading CD-ROMs that are 20 years old with today's CD-ROM drives. And even if all my CD-ROM drives died, DVD-ROM drives can read them. Does anyone know if the average Blu-Ray drive can read CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs?

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Does anyone know if the average Blu-Ray drive can read CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs?

 

 

I had the impression that they did, but don't know for a fact.

 

Interesting about the shelf life of USB drives...didn't know that...although for some reason, it doesn't really surprise me.

[Anderton]

 

I had the impression that they did, but don't know for a fact. Interesting about the shelf life of USB drives...didn't know that...although for some reason, it doesn't really surprise me.

 

 

Well, apparently it has something to do with Flash memory in general, which is still in its relative infancy.

[Goobers]

 

Still trying to figure out how to get data from an old System 9 PowerBook that doesn't seem to recognize anything I have...

 

Could you just remove the drive from the PowerBook, put it into a new enclosure, and harvest data off of it like that?

[cooterbrown]

What about backing up to the cloud?

[Bookumdano2]

My observations on plastic media-

By Douglas C Neidermeir, sgt at arms

 

 

....If you drop an HD, it's over. If you drop a DVD-ROM, odds are it will still be fine....."

 

True. So ... don't drop hard drives !!! Really.. how many times have you actually dropped a hard drive in your entire life ? I've done it maybe twice. Accidently kicked a bunch too, but that never seems to affect. Just in case..I have stuff on at least three drives for redundancy. They are so inexpensive now, it just makes a lot of sense.

 

cd/dvd may be a bit more resilient, but way too small iin capacity. Even a 25gb blu-ray makes no sense to me.

 

I've had plenty of finicky cds and dvds over time that will no longer read or I have to sort through 5 drives to be able to read them, but that can be from lots of issues ..... I don't like the last-minute inconvenience when a cd or dvd decides not to show info.

 

My Roland Keyboards of the 60's cd that I loved now shows "blank" ... what's up with that???? How does that happen ????? I had a backup, but that always irked me. So .... I'm moving away from the plastic era of floppies and cd/dvd

 

I use flash drives sometimes to quickly move files around outside the network. Wouldn't count on them for archives.

 

I agree with the case against SSD. It seems like most of the planet is completely ignoring the fact that those have a finite lifespan. Go figure.

 

I have some hard drives from 1989-1990 (when they were big and bulky and clunky and only 60mb or something) that STILL open when I attach them to a system.

 

Throwiing a dead drive into the freezer for 15 minutes or overnight has almost ALWAYS worked for me to revive a drive long enough to move data when a last-minute "I'm dead" situation comes up with a drive. no wives tale ... it works ... it works... it works.

 

Bottom line .... these magnificent, inexpensive, spinning platters encased in aluminum that we call hard drives ... are pretty cool for archives and then throwing (placing) in the cupboard in multiples for nice and neat, somewhat reliable archiving.

 

Buy a dozen today at your favorite hard drive store.. as low as $8 per pound.... give one to all your friends .... add one to your stocking stuffer list this holiday season .... serve up with mashed potatoes. Sata hard drives are so versatile for the budding musician in your family