Originally posted by jatrax I would be cautious using DVDs for archival backup. While the 'pressed' ones that movies are on will last a very long time, the DVD writable media is a different story. Longevity varies greatly across brands and quality but in general are not to be relied on for archival backup. If you insist on using DVDs make sure you buy ones that are labeled as archival and state how long they are supposed to last.
At the very least consider making new backup disks every few years.
You can use M-DISC - but you need a M-disc capable writer - developer claims an archival recordings will last 1000 years. Expensive starting at about $1 USD per single layer DVD but I remember paying that much for 650Mb CD-R back in the day.
M-DISC - Wikipedia
LG seems to have M-DISC capabilities on their DVD and Blu-Ray drives more than other brands.
I use
ImgBurn. Free, but no sort of functions for optimizing disc spanning. You have to do that yourself. It's strength is the formats it supports and the reliability of the burns.
The problem with using hard drives for archival purposes is like anything mechanical you have to spin them up every so often or they can seize up from lack of use. Also the connectors or interfaces may become obsolete and you may not be able to connect them in the future. The problem with using SSD or SD type cards is the "media" becomes unstable with usage so if you store to a well used card or device the data can deteriorate over time.
This white paper by Dell claims longevity can be a s low as 3 months and more than10 years at best depending on type of memory and other factors.
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/Solid-State-Drive-FAQ-us.pdf Quote: It depends on the how much the flash has been used (P/E cycle used), type of flash, and storage
temperature. In MLC and SLC, this can be as low as 3 months and best case can be more than 10
years. The retention is highly dependent on temperature and workload.
Last edited by Not a Number; 04-08-2017 at 08:14 PM.