What is guaranteed 1st Class / Archive DVD media?

[Marcos]

If i needed to buy archive quality DVD media thats pretty much guaranteed to be 1st class discs, where/which would i have to buy?

[arthurleung]

I would say just buy Verbatim or if you could find, Taiyo Yuden discs. Favourite shop is quite obvious SVP

For Archiving I would suggest burning 4GB of files with 9% of recovery file like PAR2.
Or simply just make 2 copies of the disc.

Then it is down to avoiding sunlight and moisture, etc.

[Agent]

Agree with arthurleung - Use PAR, burn 2 copies, use good media like TY.

Although having said that, I wouldn't depend on DVD for anything critial. If your data is worth that much, spend the money protecting it.

There are many 'off site' solutions you could contract in rather than worrying about dealing with it yourself

[Marcos]

thats a point, i didnt think of PAR files

wish i didnt have so much to back up, i feel like i may aswell buy a terabyte drive or 2

[digit]

Buy a few large external drives and backup from your internal drives to them. Wrap the external drives up in there packaging and shove them in a cupboard, no dust sunlight or anything else can happen to them that way. Well its what I do anyway, saved me loosing my downloads and music collection! With the prices of HDD's both external and internal I'm not sure I personally see the point of making DVD backups.

[Saracen]

I agree with Agent - DVD is not suitable for archiving, though I'd have said DVD-R (or +R) is not suitable. DVD-RAM, on the other hand, is very different. The technology is very different, and far more suitable for archiving.

Personally, I;d suggest a structured approach using different methods, but much depends on the nature of the data being archived, and how valuable it is in terms of the cost implications if lost.

RAID gives a degree of resilience, but isn't really suited for backup. External hard drives eliminate one potential source of failure (controller problems) but are still vulnerable to other (like mains problems, or physical theft).

One possibility is to use removable hard-drive caddies and several spare drives. But if you're really being cautious, it needs to be more than one drive because if you only have one and you get a problems like mains surges, controller failure or an OS hiccup while your only backup drive is connected because you're backing up, you could lose the source and backup simultaneously.

Online storage, be it a service you pay for or just uploading backup files to a remote private FTP server gets your copy offsite, thus preventing it being stolen or destroyed in a fire, but you're probably then entrusting it to the care of a third-party, and perhaps making it subject to the attention of hackers ..... so if the data is sensitive, it needs to be comprehensively encrypted first.


There's any number of possible structures, with varying degrees of cost and varying degrees of hassle. Personally, I have data organised into logical drives, with the critical stuff separated from the stuff that's relatively easy to recreate. I also keep an eye if frequency of change. Some stuff changes constantly (accounts data, for instance) while my photo collection grows, but the older stuff generally doesn't. Stuff that doesn't matter sits on local PCs, important data is backed up to a RAID on a separate server, and from there is backed up onto at least two different DVD-RAM for archive, but also to rotating tapes. And each local PC is protected by tape (several old DAT-3 drives) and by image backup onto DVD.

Some of that is about ensuring data is protected, but some of it is about ensuring that I can get those PCs that matter back up and running quickly and easily after a hardware (or other) failure.

The above suits my needs, but I'm not suggesting it necessarily suits other people. It's all about analysing needs, evaluating risk and cost, and finding a solution that is both cost-effective, and simple enough in implementation to be practical to use.

In any event, personally, DVD is too unreliable and the longevity too questionable to play a part of it.

[Marcos]

yeah in hindsight, i should have just bought more external drives and less money on DVDs

just seemed like a lot of money upfront

im not backing up very important data, just media, but i'd be pretty gutted to have a drive crash and lose it all so i'd need 2x whatever drives i get.