[LaRee]

I searched and didn't see anything with DVD in title in this section. I believe DVD is considered an accessory. In any case, I am looking for recommendations on a good brand of DVD to use for archive purposes. I'm not interested in spending top dollar, I know Delkin DVD's are good, but they are about 3 times what the cheap ones are. Do you have any suggestions on a medium price DVD? Or any recommendations on a specific brand? What do you use?
p.s. if you think this post should be in a different section, please clue me in!

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Last edited by LaRee; 07-23-2008 at 06:47 PM. Reason: ps

[jmdeegan]

personally, for my DVD-Video work, I've sworn by one of two brands, readily available via sales from Staples and the like.

First is Maxell, I always took the 50 dvd spindle blue pack, back when I was stocking up I could get 50 for between 10-20 bucks, sales depending.
Second is Sony, similar price and quality.

Keep in mind I was using these to back up/burn videos.

In general, Tayo Yuden has been considered one of the best, if not the best, maker of DVDs in terms of how rare a coaster is, how reliable the media is, etc. you can get good deals on them here:
Taiyo Yuden Media, Taiyo Yuden DVD Media, Taiyo Yuden CD Media, Taiyo Yuden Printable, Taiyo Yuden Watershield, Genuine Taiyo Yuden

In terms of "archival" DVDs and CDs, to me it's pure marketing fluff. So long as you store them properly, I've yet to see evidence that convinces me those are really worth it.

One thing I do do, however, is keep multiple copies. Some folks will swear by RAID arrays, but even tho I am a computer geek, I don't. I opt for copies in many places, between backup HDD and DVDs. Might explain why I have several TB of drives.....but I know if one dies, odds are I still have 2 or 3 copies of the files.

[LaRee]

personally, for my DVD-Video work, I've sworn by one of two brands, readily available via sales from Staples and the like.

First is Maxell, I always took the 50 dvd spindle blue pack, back when I was stocking up I could get 50 for between 10-20 bucks, sales depending.
Second is Sony, similar price and quality.

Keep in mind I was using these to back up/burn videos.

In general, Tayo Yuden has been considered one of the best, if not the best, maker of DVDs in terms of how rare a coaster is, how reliable the media is, etc. you can get good deals on them here:
Taiyo Yuden Media, Taiyo Yuden DVD Media, Taiyo Yuden CD Media, Taiyo Yuden Printable, Taiyo Yuden Watershield, Genuine Taiyo Yuden

In terms of "archival" DVDs and CDs, to me it's pure marketing fluff. So long as you store them properly, I've yet to see evidence that convinces me those are really worth it.

One thing I do do, however, is keep multiple copies. Some folks will swear by RAID arrays, but even tho I am a computer geek, I don't. I opt for copies in many places, between backup HDD and DVDs. Might explain why I have several TB of drives.....but I know if one dies, odds are I still have 2 or 3 copies of the files.

Thank you for the good information. My old dvd burner was a DVD+R only burner, so I bought +R media naturally. My current burner will burn either type. I know the +R is a tad more expensive. Is the DVD+R media more compatible or standard? I wonder because I make DVD slideshows for friends and family and wouldn't want to have compatibility issues.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of Tayo Yuden. The prices in your link seem reasonable enough. Maxell is a standard name for me, I've always been pleased with their recording media. Fortunately I have time to mull this over a bit. I still have 1/2 dozen on my spindle. But I have a lot of photos I need to burn at the moment I'm lagging.

I just bought a 1TB Western Digital My Book and transfered a bunch of photos to it as my main drive was getting way too full for comfort. I was worried my pc performance would begin taking a hit. I know it isn't good when the free hard drive space gets to a certain percentage. What is embarrassing is that I also have (1) 250 GB and (1) 500 GB in addition to that new 1TB drive. I've used both the smaller drives to do multiple back ups because I'm lazy about burning and like to have back ups in more than one place.

Even though I have a good surge protector on everything, we've had neighbors lose their TV, VCR, etc with the power surges we have when we have thunderstorms. Our neighborhood has above ground electric poles and those transformers on top get hit often. We had a fireball travel down the line right to our roof one night when a transformer blew across the street during a storm. A palm frond performed the hot connection and arc'd across the line! Let me tell you when one of those things blows it sounds like a dang bomb dropped! KaaaBOOM! My oldest son and husband flew out of bed at 3am and manned the water hose in a hurry. So I feel I better have stuff backed up, no telling if my whole bank of computer equipment could be toasted.

[barondla]

Great questions LaRee! Have a few comments and questions too.
1. Have a seperate computer for pictures. It is all plugged into a Monster power strip surge protector/filter (ran about $100). Computer gets plugged in to "work" and then all unplugged when finished. Its easy to do since its onle 1 ac cord with surge protector. Don't plug it in if storming.
2. The gold dvds are supposed to last the longest. Someone posted the actual manufacturer of the Delkin. You can buy them cheaper from that company. Don't remember who it was.

Questions.
1. Have a 300gb hard drive now that is half full. Computer does seem to run a little slower than it used too. If it was replaced with a bigger HD would it speed back up? Or is it the size of the files?
2. Buying new hard drive is smaller one like 500g (maybe two) more reliable than bigger 1t unit? Have no idea how they make bigger HDs!
thanks
barondla

Enter POINT & SHOOT CONTEST #9 in P&S forum. Any type camera except slr. Any brand. Any subject. Less than a week left. Enter now.

[jmdeegan]

i really don't buy into the gold DVDs baron. And ultimately, a lot of the media sold comes from like one of three big providers. tayo is the biggest....or, they were last time i really cared to follow that market.

size of HDD isn't going to matter a whole lot. you have a few other factors coming into play...
what type-IDE, SCSI, SATA, etc? then, beyond that, the buffer size(cache), read/write times, spindle speed etc.

yes, you could speed up the drive by doing a defrag if you havent already, but when i bumped my laptop from 120 up to 320, there was no real speed hit because it was the same spindle speed and the buffer if anything went up a bit. searches might be a tad slower, but i am searching against 200gb more data.

as for one 1TB drive or 2 500tb drives...depends. I always have multiple physical drives in my towers, plus some external drives. i don't do RAID, initially becuase I had no desire to learn it, and ultimately because I realized that RAID, for me, wasn't a huge benefit. I am no worse by backing up my HDD as often as I wish (with time machine on a mac, its a breeze). Typically I have some partitions in addition to my multiple drives-one for photos, one for music, one for videos, one for the OS and one for Apps. Makes restoring things easier. but i tend to do all backups to external drives (because it becomes easier to say, stuff an external drive off-site, or in a fire-proof safe or whatever suits you). Just an added level of protection.

how they make them? miracles of modern tech. used to be cramming more platters in the drive, now they've gone and changed how they write data to the same platters, allowing for more areal density, thus bigger capacity without bigger footprint.

I definetly recommend the SATA drives, I think the 3gb/s drives are more prevalent now, but obviously this means your system would be pretty new, as the SATA standard is only a few years old. IIRC.

[George Lama]

Storage on just about any mainstream brand of DVD media should work just fine, however, you need to be careful about proper storage (dark, controlled humidity and temperature, and stored flat (sideways could eventually result in warping). Few manufacturers will provide you with longevity data unless you buy gold/silver label archival DVDs. They should last between 25-100 years, but it all depends on how they were manufactured and on the dye they use in making them.

I've been debating on archiving to DVD for a while as my backup drives are getting full, but it takes so long to burn DVDs compared to storing to HD.

So LaRee, don't feel bad about not burning, and choosing to store to HD instead. It's very practical to do it that way when compared to spending nearly an hour to burn 3 DVDs full to the hilt. That's partly why I have 1.5 TB of storage on two computers, including external drives.

[SpecialK]

I've been debating on archiving to DVD for a while as my backup drives are getting full, but it takes so long to burn DVDs compared to storing to HD.

You don't have to sit there and watch it.

I working through a spindle of TDK's. I make 2 copies - one at home, one at work. Plus external HD as an intermediate stage.

I supose it would be prudent to duplicate them every few years, but I probably won't.

[thirdofthree]

Glad to see people here talking and thinking about archiving. A year or two ago, I went through the process of developing and implementing an archiving plan for all my electronic data - personal, my other hobby (field audio recording), and now photography.

I don't think I'm addressing any specific questions, necessarily, but hopefully my comments will prove useful to others. I think an effective archiving plan includes two primary considerations: redundancy and backup. The question only you can answer: what plan provides sufficient redundancy and backup for you, based on your requirements - cost, ease of use, risk sensitivity, etc.

I think I approach this much the same way as jmdeegan...

Redundancy

Redundancy provides the ability to recover quickly, with minimal effort, in the event of a single-point failure like a HDD crash.

For redundancy, I mirror all my data nightly. For example, every night I ensure all the data on physical drive A is mirrored on physical drive B. For my purposes, nightly is frequent enough. I don't use RAID (real-time mirroring) for two reasons: my critical data doesn't change enough by the second / minute / hour to warrant real-time mirroring, and in my experience consumer-level RAID, while inexpensive, isn't terribly reliable. Instead, I use DeltaCopy to nightly mirror one drive to another. This way, if a single HDD fails, my data is safe, I buy a new HDD to replace the dead one, and then re-mirror.

Backup

Backup provides the ability to recover (typically more slowly) in the event of a systemic or catastrophic failure, like multiple HDD crashes or a house burning down.

I backup all my data on optical media, mainly DVD, though I still have a few CDRs I haven't migrated to DVD yet. These DVDs provide the ability - albeit slowly and time-consumingly - to recover all my data if the redundant systems fail. As someone else already mentioned: it's crucial to store optical media in an appropriate environment to mitigate risk of media failure.

Finally, I backup all my data quarterly onto HDD and store it off-site (at a family member's house). In the event of catastrophic failure at my home, e.g. my house burns down, I'll still have reasonably current data (within the last 3 months). If catastrophe strikes on the day before I perform my regular updates, I'll have lost 3 months of data. This is acceptable to me based on <a> the relative (un)likelihood of catastrophe striking, and <b> the fact that I'll have significantly bigger concerns than data backup.

Edit to add: LaRee - I think you're on the right track, ensuring you have multiple copies of your data. As with many things, I think the key is to develop a system that works for you and then exercising diligence in executing and monitoring the system.

[George Lama]

You don't have to sit there and watch it.

I working through a spindle of TDK's. I make 2 copies - one at home, one at work. Plus external HD as an intermediate stage.

I agree you don't have to watch it, but it does affect your ability to use the computer to do any kind of HD intensive work, like photo-editing. I would not risk doing any heavy work on the computer while burning a DVD, lest it corrupt the burn (I've had it happen a few times), which means forget about working on lightroom and accessing the HD while the burn is taking place.

I do use external drives - two of them for manual mirroring. My plan is to purchase another for offsite storage (at the inlaws' house ).

[Peter Zack]

good question and thread Storage is getting to be a huge issue for me as well (3 full hard drives and counting). Thanks for the info so far.

[jmdeegan]

I agree it was a pain that DVD burning used to lock up one PC....but between multi-core and all other stuff....it's becoming less an issue. I am all portable due to current living, but even now I have a mac and a pc laptop so if one is in use burning DVDs, the other is free--and the data more or less lives on both, or on at least one drive readable by both.

once I get re-situated at my home upstate, there will be a rack in the basement and a home SAN installed (just my iTunes alone accounts for 500gb and counting, and photos isn't far behind between multiple copies plus all RAW and converted JPG).

drives are so cheap, relatively speaking, nowadays, it's hard to argue against.

[NicholasN]

I just buy a new external drive when one is full and leave the full drive in storage. I had a 500GB external drive which I filled that went into storage and I bought another 500GB drive.

At $199 per drive it was just so cheap and effective to get another drive.

[barondla]

Anyone planning to archive to Bluray? Just saw Pioneer has developed a 25 layer 400g bluray disc! There will be a recording one in the future. Wow.
So far, I prefer archiving to HD vs burning dvds. It is quicker, takes up less space, and probably costs less. Love external HDs. Buy new computer just plug it in. If there was a fire you could just run out with the Hd and have all your images.
thanks
barondla

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[Lowell Goudge]

are you talking about archiving, or back up, there are 2 different issues.

Archiving means you have taken the photos off your main computer, back up meand just that a back up of data on your existing computer.

for archival purposes, I use both DVD and back up HD (usb2 500GB at present) I don't want to trust a single medium for archiving.

[Tom S.]

I agree you don't have to watch it, but it does affect your ability to use the computer to do any kind of HD intensive work, like photo-editing. I would not risk doing any heavy work on the computer while burning a DVD, lest it corrupt the burn (I've had it happen a few times), which means forget about working on lightroom and accessing the HD while the burn is taking place.

I do use external drives - two of them for manual mirroring. My plan is to purchase another for offsite storage (at the inlaws' house ).

Back in the "old days" (you know pre-dual processors and tons of ram) that could be and often was a problem. I am running a quad core with 4 gb ram and burn DVDs all the time while surfing and doing other computer activities.

The main problem used to be having the computer write cach keep up with the DVD burning process, which required a lot of resources.