Optical Storage Comparison

[jim]

they probably arent the best in the world, you get what you pay for afterall!

Im gunna get some and try them out so i will let you know if i encounter any issues. A lot of the issues i had with my current BD-Rs has been with the software rather than the disks though. Imgburn seems to be the best free piece of software around.
Im in the midst of a pretty hefty (3.5TB) backup session at the moment and i decided to go for optical disk. Also need to get a decent box/case for all of them.

Yeah, I've never had a burn go bad with ImgBurn, great software.

Sorry to be a pain, but if you do get anywhere with the box/case I would appreciate any comments... definitely something I'm giving serious consideration.

[Biscuit]

Ill keep you updated, itsd on a semi back burner at the moment as i need to get my car sorted... hopefully it wont be too expensive.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ALUMINIUM-St...xp_grid_pt_0_2

Is the kind of case i have been looking at

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMPS-656-C...item4ab063999d

seems good value, might fit in my ikea bookcase quite well too

[Funkstar]

I agree, I went to look for BD drive/discs for archival storage and expected them to be down to less than DVD £/GB by now! I don't remember DVDs being so incredibly expensive for so long!

Probably because people actually used DVD-R's a lot, I can't see people ever really adopting BluRay writables.

Lots of people still copy DVDs, I see it all the time offshore. Although it is a lot lower than it was, people now just swap external hard drives of pen drives. I've never seen or heard of anyone copying a BD. It's exactly the same with retail films, BD just won't ever get to the same level as DVD.

[scaryjim]

You've forgotten to update pen drive

50x64GB USB2 drive @ £40 = £2000, ~ 62p/GB
Time taken to fill the whole lot... 130 hours

Alternatively,
100x32GB USB3 pen drive @ £34 = £3400, ~ £1.06/GB
They'll only take ~ 24 hours to fill!

I have to say I'm of the opinion that the only logical way to regularly back up this amount of data - assuming you want it in a long term storage / archive format - is tape. HDDs are just not reliable enough if you can't afford to lose the data (and if this is high bit rate media I assume it wouldn't be easy to get hold of again?). LTO 2 (200GB/400GB) refurbished drives can, according to google, be picked up for < £300. LTO 3 (400GB/800GB) drives seem to hang around the £400 mark, and LTO 4 (800GB/1.6TB) start at ~ £800. Then there's the LTO 5 of course - up to 3TB per tape compressed, but drives cost ~ £1500. From there it's just a question of how often you mind changing tapes during a backup, and how much you feel you can afford to invest in the drive (and the SCSI / SAS card to connect it to, of course...).

[Biscuit]

It all depends what your backing up, for me its mostly media so splitting it into lots of smaller 25GB volumes is no big deal

[Biscuit]

Thread revival... i just ordered some of those BD-Rs

[badass]

You've forgotten to update pen drive

50x64GB USB2 drive @ £40 = £2000, ~ 62p/GB
Time taken to fill the whole lot... 130 hours

Alternatively,
100x32GB USB3 pen drive @ £34 = £3400, ~ £1.06/GB
They'll only take ~ 24 hours to fill!

It depends on how many USB controllers your motherboard has and whether the data can be backed up in parallel.

[Ross1]

I would rather do multiple backups onto hard drives than have to deal with optical media. Its faster, less switching of discs/disks, less noisy, and you can rewrite data simply and easily.

and even with the taiwan flooding, the price difference is simply not an issue compared to the advantages.

[jim]

I would rather do multiple backups onto hard drives than have to deal with optical media. Its faster, less switching of discs/disks, less noisy, and you can rewrite data simply and easily.

and even with the taiwan flooding, the price difference is simply not an issue compared to the advantages.

As the thread states though, it's not reliable enough, and hence other solutions are needed.

[Biscuit]

Drop a CD/DVD/BD and you pick it up, dust it off and use it. 95% of the time you have no problems
Drop a hard drive from anything above waist height onto any surface harder than thick carpet and... uh oh

[mikerr]

Quick update to prices - BD-Rs have gone down alot if you're willing to go to different brands:

Assuming I want to backup 3TB of data, here are my current options from Verbatim @ Amazon.co.uk (roughly):

650 DVDs @ £21 for a 100 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
360 DL-DVDs @ £25 for a 25 pack - £360 - 12p/gig

650 DVDs @ £18 for a 100 pack - £117
360 DL-DVDs @ £19 for a 25 pack - £273

120 25GB BD-Rs @ £110 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
60 50GB BD-Rs @ £220 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig

120 25GB BD-Rs @ £44 for a 50 pack - £105
60 50GB BD-Rs @ £37 for a 10 pack - £220

HDD prices are currently the same as 2009/2010 due to floods:

3TB seagate drive @ £139

[Biscuit]

Quick update to prices - BD-Rs have gone down alot if you're willing to go to different brands:


650 DVDs @ £18 for a 100 pack - £117
360 DL-DVDs @ £19 for a 25 pack - £273



120 25GB BD-Rs @ £44 for a 50 pack - £105
60 50GB BD-Rs @ £37 for a 10 pack - £220

HDD prices haven't come down since the first post due to floods.

I got 404 on that first BD-R link

[mikerr]

Ta, fixed it now

[Ross1]

As the thread states though, it's not reliable enough, and hence other solutions are needed.

You know, of the DVD backups I made a few years ago, there are a few which have become corrupt. I wouldnt call them any more reliable than a hard drive.

[jim]

You know, of the DVD backups I made a few years ago, there are a few which have become corrupt. I wouldnt call them any more reliable than a hard drive.

Well, I guess as with many things in life YMMV. I just don't like the idea of relying on hard disks forever given my experience of them thus far.

[watercooled]

It depends greatly on the quality of the media used, for example some made in Japan Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden discs should last decades if properly cared for.