Optical Storage Comparison

[jim]

I've been wanting to backup my server to a more reliable format than hard drives for a while now, so I was looking at optical storage. I'd always considered Blu-rays way too expensive, and hadn't bothered doing the maths until today, but I thought seeing as I was doing the calculations I might as well put them up here in case anyone's interested. Hopefully it's useful to someone

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

Or

2 HD154UIs @ £75 each - £150 - 5p/gig
19 Intel 160GB SSDs @ £340 each - £6460 - £2.15/gig


So effectively, as things stand, DVDs are roughly neck and neck with mechanical hard drives - although there's no way you'd catch me taking 650 DVDs as a preference to two hard drives. Equally though, there's no way you'd get me burning 360 dual-layer DVDs, so I think the only sensible route would be the blu-rays. In that situation, there's no difference between 25GB and 50GB when it comes to price per gig, so you'd obviously take the 50GB option in this situation. Maybe if it dropped to about £200 I'd consider it a possible buy... for files that need to be archived long term, it's a lot less hassle putting them on a disk and spindling it - as opposed to syncing and so on with hard drives. I imagine it will be a fairly long time before BDs drop to DVD pricing (per gig) though.

[mikerr]

I remember when CD-R came out, and their 600Mb capacity was as large as most hard drives of the time !


Equivilent to a new optical disk format being 2TB now...

[jim]

Yep, my first PC had a 650mb hard drive

I remember it well, wiped off all sorts of stuff in an attempt to get more disk space to install this ridiculous demo of a spaceship game - a sort of early Google Earth type thing. Was a pretty stupid thing to do tbh, I lost a couple of games that I really loved doing that.

[PeteSmith]

What about tape backup or even online backup. How do they compare to DVD/BD/HDD?

Edit. Just read you stipulated optical.

[mikerr]

online backup for 3TB ? doesn't bear thinking about

[jim]

Haha, yeah I think SDSL might be in order for that

[aidanjt]

Or T3, more like. o_O

[Funkstar]

T3? I'd rather a DOCSIS v3.0 at full spec

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._area_networks

You actually want something starting with OC to be honest. OC-18 would be nice. Just a shade under the theoretical bandwidth of gigabit ethernet

[aidanjt]

T3? I'd rather a DOCSIS v3.0 at full spec

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._area_networks

You actually want something starting with OC to be honest. OC-18 would be nice. Just a shade under the theoretical bandwidth of gigabit ethernet

Yeah, OC-18 would be lovely. In fact, all britons should have at least that, paid for by the social.

[Funkstar]

Yeah, OC-18 would be lovely. In fact, all britons should have at least that, paid for by the social.

Yeah sure, contention would be a bitch though

[jim]

Update:

650 DVDs @ £21 for a 100 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
650 DVDs @ £17 for a 100 pack - £110 - 4p/gig
360 DL-DVDs @ £25 for a 25 pack - £360 - 12p/gig
360 DL-DVDs @ £22 for a 25 pack - £315 - 10p/gig
120 25GB BD-Rs @ £110 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
60 50GB BD-Rs @ £220 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig

Or

2 HD154UIs @ £75 each - £150 - 5p/gig
2 HD154UIs @ £60 each - £120 - 4p/gig
19 Intel 160GB SSDs @ £340 each - £6460 - £2.15/gig

So in just over 6 months, DVDs and hard drives have gone down in price, blu-rays haven't moved at all. The only economical option as far as I'm concerned is 650 DVDs, and I've got slightly better things to do with my time than burn 650 of those damn things. So it's still hard drives or nothing

[duc]

It doesn't really change your sums by that much, but, 650 DVDs would mean you still have to purchase seven 100 packs.

[jim]

Yeah, it's not *totally* exact. When it's as ridiculous as this though, I don't get too worried about the finer details!

[DDY]

Hard drives, the only sane way to back up 3TB.

Get yourself some HDDs and a trayless 3.5" hot swap bay or dock.

e.g.

This* or this

* Connects using USB, there are eSATA versions available too.

[Attila the Bun]

What on earth are you backing up that requires you to consider 3TBs worth of DVDs or alternatives.

This is a legitimate question I'm not an industrial spy or anything...I just got the impression this was a "at home" situation

[jim]

Hard drives, the only sane way to back up 3TB.

Get yourself some HDDs and a trayless 3.5" hot swap bay or dock.

e.g.

This* or this

* Connects using USB, there are eSATA versions available too.

Oh I do, don't worry. Got myself a Sharkoon dock, with one 2TB and one 1.5TB disk (as per the server in my sig)

It's just that I don't trust hard disks long term. I see optical storage as a much more reliable medium, something that I'd be happy to stick in a loft for 5 years and expect to be fully working when I get it out again.

Whilst I currently have everything replicated once on hard disks, I'd like to have a second replication of data for long term storage on optical media, that I can leave somewhere else for protection against fire/flood/theft etc.