id be interested to know how long it takes to write and verify a full disk..
Me to - I am guessing that this is a Windows only writer also?
Info on buying the drive and disks also very much appreciated.
Chris
The projected life of DVDs seems to be vary enormously when you look into it, so I imagine BluRay must be the same.
1Tb HD for £50, 40 write only blu-ray discs for the same price (well about the same price) and the same capacity. I prefer to backup to HDs at the moment and store them off site.
1Tb HD for £50, 40 write only blu-ray discs for the same price (well about the same price) and the same capacity. I prefer to backup to HDs at the moment and store them off site. I wouldn't criticise anyone for backing up to blu-ray but if you are using optical disks to backup shoots then what about using DVDs for each ind shoot? A tub of 100 branded DVDs costs about £15. Stick each shoot in it's own disc or poss two and store them in the tubs.
Blu Ray recordable discs have a much longer archival life than DVDR's because of the way they are constructed.
There's quite a clear explanation HERE.
For all the shouts for HD backup, yes its not bad, but you have to power the drives up every 6 months at least and its wise to run surface checks too at the same time. Ive seen more HD crashes and problems than I have with DVD's or CD's so although I have 7 x 1tb drives (2 online and 2 backups of each) I also want to be able to archive my shoots on discs easily for storing in a carry case. 4.3gb on a DVD is worthless when Im out shooting 600 shots on a 32gb card and coming back with 20+ GB of RAW/JPGs. I also shoot video on SDHC and have 4x 16gb cards with me so DVDs would be a PITA again.
Just run my first burn last night on the £1.50 BD-R's and it took 40 minutes at 2x to write 24gb of data (2x seems to be around the 9.5mb/sec rate). I had it verify which took about the same again I think. I'll give 4x a bash later which should be 20mb/sec transfer and obviously 20 minutes per burn (which is similar to the 4x DVD time frame).
Its recommended they are spun up every 6 months at least to save the lubrication from solidifying and to make sure they are still in good working order. Just like the old days of tape backup where people would religiously backup but never checked if the backups were actually working. Checking the data integrity is also worthwhile due to the chance of data becoming unreadable too (has happened a couple of times for me in the past).
I wouldn't trust optical media as a main form of backup.
Why? Reliability wise, I still have a first CD I burned (Kodak CD) back in 1995 (nearly 15 years) and it is perfectly readable. At that time it cots me 10 GBP for the CD and to rent an hour time with our shared external burner (sized like a small PC) or rather the chap who owned it.
And I cannot say I particularly cared about it all these years - it has quite a few scratches but works perfectly.
Why? Reliability wise, I still have a first CD I burned (Kodak CD) back in 1995 (nearly 15 years) and it is perfectly readable. At that time it cots me 10 GBP for the CD and to rent an hour time with our shared external burner (sized like a small PC) or rather the chap who owned it.
And I cannot say I particularly cared about it all these years - it has quite a few scratches but works perfectly.
Never had problems with CD's or DVDs that have been cared for. Eg: put in cases which block out light that can interfere with the dye. Ive got a load of Princo 4x DVD's from 2002/3 that are fine plus CD's from back in 1994/5/6 when the Blobby and Cappacino discs game out - anyone know what Im talking about there
im with cowasaki.. scratching, dye degredation, lower capacity than HD. PERSONALLY i dont want 100's of CD/DVD's kicking around the place when i can just have a couple of HDs. yes okay HDs can also fail but thats why you always keep 2 copies.
I have never found them as reliable myself. I have tried to get something back too many times and found a problem. I am happier with my backup routine.
From the link earlier it suggests that the problem is oxygen, not light, but I've no doubt that storage conditions can affect the rate of the breakdown of the bond between the layers.
the basic rule of backups is multiple backups and multiple locations, I've always worked on a minimum of three in a minimum of two locations.
I am going to go down the Drobo Route.
I did the DVD route, yes 25G is nice, but with the 5Dii outputting 25mb RAW files, and I can shoot 50G in 1 day. With other stuff, i am back to the old DVD-R scenario again, where i have spinndles of the stuff (with no clear idea what is EXACTLY on each one). Not to mention after a few years, they don't work !!! And I use Taiyo Yuden stuff too........
I am going to go down the Drobo Route.
what are you putting your 2nd copy on?
:bang:
What if it corrupts itself? Gets nicked? House burns down?