[Wheatfield]

Over the weekend, I took it upon myself to transfer my backups from optical media to my Drobo. Mostly it went well, but for several discs that refused to read.
These were discs burned in around July 2004, and stored vertically in jewel cases in a cool, dark and dry place.
The disks were Verbatim, which at the time had a good reputation for longevity, and had been burned in a high end Plexwriter using NeroBurn software.

Some read fine, some read a bit before crashing my file manager, and some just crashed the file manager outright.
This is not the first time I've had CDs fail.

Anyway, a word to the wise, check your CDs frequently if that is your media of choice, and copy the data to new media more often than you think you need to. I wasn't expecting a sub five year life expectancy.

[denisv]

My observations are that consumer CD/DVD RW discs have a half life of one year even when stored in a cool, dry, dark place and never handled.

It's been years since I've used them for anything except making bootable Linux install cds.

[Ron Boggs]

AAArrrgghh! Panic...Fear...Millenium Collapse...oh wait, I'll be ok, everything is also on the external hard drive. Thank gosh for duplicate backups! And thanks for the heads up. Good luck getting everything to work for you, hope it comes out ok.

[Wheatfield]

AAArrrgghh! Panic...Fear...Millenium Collapse...oh wait, I'll be ok, everything is also on the external hard drive. Thank gosh for duplicate backups! And thanks for the heads up. Good luck getting everything to work for you, hope it comes out ok.

Sometimes the smart thing is to just move on. I gave up on a couple of discs and perhaps as many as 1000 jpeg files.
Unfortunately, I needed to shoot jpegs for a particular job because of the slow write times with the istD, and this one job is pretty much lost.
So it goes.

[ghelary]

The wise thing to do is to have several copies of the same files.

If you have only one copy of a file this is merely an archive, not really a backup. I personnaly maintain my picture on several hard drives (2 always plugged on my computer and that I use for backuping time to time) Every support can fail over time.

I feel sorry for your loss anyway. This is something that you don't have in mind until it happens to you. If those files had really some value for you, there are some companies specialised in restoring damaged data support that can recovert a good amount of your files. But they are not cheap.

Some example : Data Recovery Services from Xytron: Hard Disk Drive Data Retrieval

Regards,
Guillaume

[navcom]

This is interesting. I guess I should be aware. I've never had an issue. I have CD's I created 10 years ago that all work just fine. I've never had an optical backup crash or go bad. I have hundreds of them and never had an issue. Bear in mind many of them are not photo CD's...just data in general.

Optical drives themselves....THAT is another matter. I've had several of them give up the ghost.

[Jester_rm]

Have you tried reading those disks on a different machine? I've had that happen with some old DVD backups, and sometimes a different physical drive or machine can read them (don't know why that is, but it's worth a shot)

[George Lama]

Great advice from Jester - If these were made on a PC, I would go as far as trying it on a linux or Mac box if possible.

[navcom]

Have you tried reading those disks on a different machine? I've had that happen with some old DVD backups, and sometimes a different physical drive or machine can read them (don't know why that is, but it's worth a shot)

This is exactly what happened to me. I attempted to access them from another machine and it was fine. It ended up being the drive that was bad. Had this happen at least three times over the years. I fear the drives are made so cheap nowdays that they don't last too long.

[Tom S.]

Ah, storing them vertically caused all the data to sag due to gravity...


Seriously though, (cause I know you don't want a smart ass answer) are you trying to read them with the same drive you burned them with? Sometimes over time a cd/dvd head will "lose" position. Definately try another drive either way.


Good luck!

[Erasmo]

Why not back up you're jpegs online? A Flickr pro is just $20 a year.

[pentkon52]

Sometimes the smart thing is to just move on. I gave up on a couple of discs and perhaps as many as 1000 jpeg files.
Unfortunately, I needed to shoot jpegs for a particular job because of the slow write times with the istD, and this one job is pretty much lost.
So it goes.

I had some troubles a few years back when i was still doing the on site viewing and printing.
Some one asked to see a photo from a previous show, and my computer would not read the CD, only 2 months old.
I noticed a few partial finger prints of the readable side, and just for the hell of it,, wiped them off with my lens cloth.

CD worked.

But I'm sure you tried that WW.

Dave

[Wheatfield]

I can't go back to the writer that created the discs, as it, unfortunately, died in early 2007. I do have two drives on my present computer, neither of which would read the discs in question, and yes Dave, I did clean the discs.
The lost files aren't important enough to go after any further than I have, it's not that big a loss in this case, so I got lucky that way.
Over the past year, I have made some very large improvements to my back-up strategy. I now have a mirrored RAID in the computer and a Drobo hooked up as an external storage.
I also have a couple of external drives hooked up via eSATA passthroughs to a RAID controller card which I will set up as a mirrored drive in the near future and this will give me several layers of redundancy.
Any more than that, I'm just not willing to do.
Erasmo, I so rarely shoot jpegs, especially now with the faster K10 and k20 cameras that I presently use, that online storage isn't a consideration for me, but thanks for the suggestion.

Mostly my original post was to perhaps make people give some thought to how they are storing files, and to check fairly frequently to ensure that their optical media will read, and to make multiple back-ups.
Were I still using opticals, I would also be doing my back-ups on different brands of media, on the offchance I managed to buy discs from a defective batch, which is what I believe happened in this instance.

Thanks all for the kind thoughts and suggestions.

[barondla]

Wheatfield, feel bad for your loss. This post made me hook up the 2nd external hard drive and back the pictures up. Will probably get a third. Still making dvds but its a pain. May just do more hard drive backups in the future.
thanks
barondla

Check out POINT & SHOOT CONTEST #14 in P&S forum. Enter #15.

[PDL]

Sorry, I have to get out my short soapbox here....

There is a distinct difference between Archive and Backup.

Archives are long term data retention and 4 years with consumer quality media is pushing it.
Backups are mostly for disaster recovery. => 6 months to 1 year.

Hard drives fail - let me tell you my latest story.

ProLiant DL 380 G4(Dual hyperthreaded P4's at 3.6GHz) 8GB memory, dual channel Fast Wide SCSI controller, 6 72GB 15000 RPM HD. Turned 4 years old this month, motherboard, SCSI controller, backplane, cables all replaced after catastrophic hardware failure in 2006. 99.99+% uptime (only downtime was during scheduled maintenance) Came into work on Monday - the SCSI controller failed - again and ate two spindles of the RAID 5 array - data irrevocably corrupted. This is the second time in my 20 years of professional IT work where I have had multiple HD failures on a RAID 5 configuration.

Does not matter what OS is involved - the hardware gave up. We are talking 400+ USD HD (when new) and a 600+ USD SCSI controller. All located on a server that has not been powered down since Dec 2006, with air conditioning and "clean" UPS'd power and is heavily used by SW developers.

Just remember to test your media for reliability - and just think, on your Drobo - when the disks get full - will you be able to put in new SATA v6.0 drives? will you be able to purchase SATA 3.0 drives - If you buy new drives now - will they even spool up after sitting on a shelf in a box for <fill in the blank> years (I have had drives just refuse to start up - new drives that are still in sealed boxes from the vendors - they were 4 years old however). Oh -- here is a good one - - Will Drobo even be in business when something fries?

Do not bank on one solution - digital is fragile - no computer, no pictures. Just something to think about.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL