the best media for backups

Not so- the lowest cost 2TB drive on newegg.com this morning is $130, so about $0.06/GB. I just purchased a couple hundred Verbatim DVD+R retail in sealed cakeboxes (regarded as some of the best quality media) for about $0.03/GB, or half the cost per GB.

I like having optical backups, with the plan being to use them on low cost BluRay set tops once more of them can play *.mkv 1080p files directly from DVD/BD-R, or simply build low cost ATOM/ARM/low power CPU+VDPAU or equivalent media PC's with optical drives for every TV.

Hard drives ALWAYS die- not IF but WHEN, whether due to mechanical failure, malware munging the data, or filesystem/MBR/partition table corruption due to OS and/or driver/filesystem bugs.

OTOH, my CD's and DVD's burned from 1995 and the early 2000's respectively play fine in everything.

My motto is, if it ain't burned, you must not want to keep it...

I always laugh when some HT/HTPC enthusiast proclaims "optical media is dead- streaming and downloads are the Way" or "I rip all my discs to hard disc (or RAID) and throw away the optical discs!".

Both sentiments are naive, short sighted and lack wisdom from years of HT/HTPC/IP issues & experience.

If printed optical media goes away, we lose all control or power in deciding how to use/buy/sell media. Streams and downloads will be region controlled, DRM'd to the hilt, will come and go at the whim of the IP holder, be edited at the whim of the IP holder, with no resale rights.

Printed optical media will last decades if not your (human) useful lifetime, can be resold/loaned/traded at your discretion, cannot be edited once in your posession (scenes or episodes deemed politically incorrect in the future- this has happended FAR too much already- non-PC Warner/Disney/Popeye toons from the 30's-40's-50's-60's, many films from that time and later- guns for walkie-talkies in Speilberg's ET, anyone?), cannot be "turned off" or made unavailable for rent/streaming/download at any time, you can buy used optical media on ebay for hard to find/OOP films or shows, printed disc DRM will always be broken eventually, and can be played anywhere in the world (PC's or region free set tops).

Ripping/backing up your optical media to hard discs as a short term *convenience* is certainly OK, assuming you have all the optical media somewhere in your possesion as the Master backups, but hard drives/streaming/downloads as the *only* sources for audio/video- no freakin' way...and RAID won't save you from multiple hard disk failures, malware or filesystem/MBR corruptions.

...the locked down Kindle and other ebook readers have demonstrated how important retaining printed media is- and there is ZERO logical difference among printed words (books), printed audio (CD's, DVD-A) and printed video (DVD, BluRay).

With the advent of the LTH BD-R's

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817130070

BD-R media costs appear to be dropping. I would be happy once the quality (Verbatim) BD-R LTH media is at the same cost/GB as a quality hard drive, or about $0.06/GB, or about $1.50 per 25GB BD-R disc. I have recently seen sales of the Verbatim LTH BD-R 25GB media for about $1.60 per disc, so it's getting close.

Ideally, LTH BD-R media should be the same cost/GB as the quality DVD+R media available, or about $0.75 USD per 25GB disc.

When LTH BD-R's get reliably below $1.50, and LTH compatible BD burners, BD-ROM's and LTH compatible BluRay set tops that can play 1080p full bit rate .mkv's are all commonly below $100 USD, I may start experimenting with BD...

re: "wast collection"- you and Mr. Chekov, I presume


re: backup strategy

3-5% of bad original DVD's sounds like a lot. I've been ripping a large number of my ~8-12 year old original commercial DVD's, and only last week had an unreadable one with a bad spot, which I suspect was manufactured with the defect. So, I'm not experiencing anywhere near 3-5% failure of original pressed DVD's. If you count that one, then maybe .01% (or less) "failure" for me.

I sometimes do random read tests from CD/DVD burns that are 5-15 years old and can't recall any burned discs I couldn't read in a recent vintage drive. Some older optical drives may just be worn out or unable to read burned discs correctly (by design, before burned DVD's became standardized and the burn process debugged, which really wasn't until at least 2004), if the optical drive is >8 years old or so.

Also, the mfg id of blank media makes the BIGGEST difference in disc quality, burn quality and longevity. I only use 1st class media at

http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm

burned no faster than 4x, though I may start experimenting at 8x.

NEVER, EVER use adhesive labels on a disc of any kind, either before or after burning- they will make the disc unbalanced and drives won't be able to read them reliably due to the wobble, however slight, no matter how precise a label is applied.

For archival backups of stuff important to me, I might burn two backups on two brands of 1st class media, like Verbatim and Sony, +R only, which purportedly has better burn control and track control info on the disc.

DVD's are ripped to hard disk with the latest Fab then either shrunk with DVDShrink or DVDFab, or split into two using the Split funtion of Fab if I want to preserve 100% video quality without reencoding. I use the shrunk/re-encodes for travel, vacation home, wifes' classroom use (teacher) loans, etc.

The DVDFab split function (which separates a dual layer DVD into two single layers DVD's without touching the video or audio) is EXTREMELY fast about 3-4 (or faster) minutes to split a 7.5GB DVD rip from one hard disk to another, as fast as copying the 7.5GB files straight up from one hard disk to another, so this effectively adds no time to the process assuming you rip to one hard disk and move them later anyways.

I do not Verify every burn- just randomly verify every 20-30th burn to ensure the process and burner are still good.

Yes, burning takes time, but I do other things while burning/shrinking, like email, reading /. or digg, making HOWTO's and posts like this . All machines in the house have a DVD burner (3-4 functional at any given time, not always burning ). Burning over a 100Mbit wired network at 4x has been no issue, so you can burn from the same hard drive the rips are on to several different machines at once over a network- burning two discs at once at 4x is the same as burning one at 8x, but with higher burn quality.


Discs are stored either with the original in a Tyvek sleeve on the side with the inserts of the DVD case, or the original's case is replaced with a 6 disc stackable version like-

http://www.shop4tech.com/item5896.html

with the original(s) on top and backups underneath, plus another two discs can fit in a sleeve on the booklet side.

Originals are on shelves in alphabetical order, with special collections separated, i.e. Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones (in addition to all film release originals, I have all the Young Indiana Jones boxsets ).

Overflows go into the cakeboxes the blanks came in, sorted by either genre (westerns, horror, etc), actor (Ben Stiller films, Paul Newman films, etc), or director (Speilberg, Wolfgang Petersen, etc).

A 100 disc cakebox might have several actors grouped in the box, separated by one of those clear plastic false discs at the bottom (or top) of a stack of blanks, with a tag made from tape attached with the actor's name on it readable through the cakebox container, identifying all discs beneath the separator.

Cakeboxes effectively become film "canisters" in your "vault"

This media library is kept in a cool, dry, dark basement with relatively constant temp/humidity.

When I feel like a Newman film, I peruse the Newman "stacks", or a Weir film, and so on...

...I'm a Librarian at heart, I guess- call me Mr. Atoz

I have been quite impressed with the Venmill 3500-

http://www.venmill.com/products/vmi3500.html

only used to repair rentals or library discs I have seen, none of my own (yet)

re: "wast"- Star Trek's Chekov speaks with a Russian accent, pronouncing v's as w's

re: gold/brown commercial DVD pressings- I wasn't aware of specific issues with these- thanks for the heads up! I will double check the balance of my oldest commercial DVD's...I believe the one bad DVD I mentioned *was* gold/brown...

re: your archiving article

Nice writeup, though I personally would *never* trust any flash media (especially without a hardware write protect switch) over a good quality DVD+R burned properly (even the non-gold Verbatims ) for long term storage.

I really wish most hard drives had a hardware write protect switch like good ole 3.5" floppies...

Given the HUGE amount of CD and DVD burns I've done over 15 years, and the amount of use the burns have gotten, I am HIGHLY confident in them...

Will they be readable in 30 years? Who knows. I don't think a hard disk simply placed on a shelf would work 30 years from now due to spindle motor, actuator arm or bearing stiction or other issues, like availability of compatible interfaces at the time.

However, one way around this is to move all data from one hard drive to a new higher capacity drive every 3-5 years as you move forward, which appears to be your method, which I do for some data.

But reading quality DVD+R in 10 years? Definitely. 20 years? Probably. After that, I'm certain I would move the stuff important to me to holographic or similar higher capacity optical media with multi-TB capacity for a buck or so by that time. Much beyond that? We're all dead .

For the personal photos/videos issue, DVD+R is a total no brainer. Most people's entire photo library would fit on one or two (or 3-5) DVD+R's- simple to burn 5 backups on 5 brands of media and spread the burns among several locations, dirt cheap...

(always assuming the DVD+R burns are kept in a cool, dry, dark, stable environment most of the time)

The relevant posts from

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1082925

should be moved here in a day or so.

Needless to say, I advocate optical disc backup

By the time you spend the extra cash in redundant hard disks and the requisite complexity in managing RAID, the power consumption, managing the software issues with RAID and ZFS, it's MUCH simpler and less costly to just burn everything you want to keep long term.

The ripping step is the same.

Assuming you don't need to re-encode/transcode, there is no extra time there.

THe only extra step is reaching over and placing a blank in your DVD drive and burning, while you're doing something else. It becomes second nature after a short while and you don't notice it.

I suspect most of us do something else while discs are ripping, too- no difference when burning.

No cost to store- use the same cake boxes they came in and sort by actor/director/genre, or year.

I am most interested in BD because of the big boost in capacity per disc, even if simply backing up DVD's to BD! I am hoping future BD set tops will play VIDEO_TS folders burned as data to BD's, and/or play BD's authored as BAD's (Big A$$ DVD's)

(Remember- I coined the term BAD)

...it would be cool to turn a 3-4 disc DVD set into one physical disc, complete and untouched audio/video wise- or a complete 5-7 DVD disc TV season, first DVD-Shrunk (or transcoded to 480p BD compatible x264 or VC1) then reauthored for one BD-R...

I assume you mean USB *hard drives* and not flash drives?

Most "USB" hard drives are just SATA drives in a case with SATA-USB conversion.

The problem with hard disks for long term/archival storage of a lot of movies/video is the number of failure modes, and the severity of the failure if it does occur, looking at the whole reliability/failure equation from a Systems or Reliability Engineering perspective, in light of an FMEA-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure...fects_analysis

The number of failure modes of hard drives is much larger than optical discs- disc surface degradation, actuator arm failure, read/write head failure, head crash, spindle motor failure, and other mechanical or electronics failure sources.

On top of all the mechanical and electrical failures, you have to heap on top *software* failures- corrupted FAT/MBR/partition tables, general filesystems corruptions of many types, PLUS bugs in filesystem drivers/device drivers/OS kernal bugs that write to or manage the filesystem or hard drive!

That failure space is HUGE.

A properly burned optical disc is REMOVED from these potential failure modes once the disc is properly burned and verified and stored in a reasonable fashion.

Since your archive is spread over 200 discs, preferably burned to a couple quality disc brands and separate containers, the liklihood of losing ALL the material with a given failure mode is greatly reduced or eliminated. SOME discs might degrade faster than others, some discs might be lost if separated from the others, but you'll be able to read/use MOST of them.

A whole host of the failures mentioned would render ALL 200 movies unusable on a single hard disk.

Adding enough redundency using hard disks (JBOD, RAID) shoots up the costs and maintenance complexity to 4-6x the cost/GB of quality optical discs.

The only remaining issues for the optical disc are aging of the recorded dye layer and adhesives used to bind the layers (mainly DVD blanks).

While accelerated tests are can be useful, they aren't foolproof or the whole equation.

Simply elevating temps/humidity and other factors doesn't linearly extrapolate failure modes in all cases.

It could be that the adhesive or dye aging characteristics don't scale linearly with temperature/time curves, i.e. just because accelerated aging at 2x room temp yields a life of 3-5 years doesn't necessarily mean at room temp the disc will last only 2x (3-5) or 6-10 years. The aging characteristic could very well be non-linear with respect to temps and other factors, so that under reasonable conditions, the dye and adhesives may last 25-30 years minimum or significantly longer, for example.

Plus, even if some degradation may occur, sporadic hiccups in playback may be tolerable in a 25 year old disc to recover 95%-99% of the "signal" or video.

Mild degradation could be protected against by making a PAR set on the files in the VIDEO_TS folder...

I wonder if those XDCam optical discs were authored/burned properly to begin with, or experienced some abnormal storage environment issues- left if a hot vehicle in sunlight, etc. Or maybe the playback equipment had issues, or they were recorded/handled by an inexperienced user?

In my experience, when people complain about optical media, their backup and/or storage processes weren't right- authored improperly, wrong software settings when burning, burned too fast, poor quality media, mishandled in use after burning, stored in a poor environment, etc. All simple issues to address- it's about establishing a good *process* and procedures and sticking with them once they are known "good".

I think the benefit of +R is primarily with set top recorders- the ability to edit after writing and play without closing the disc and removing teh disc from the player without closing the session.

The -/+R debate has raged for years and I've never really heard a convincing reason why +R is better than -R for burning in PC drives, other than hints there is better track and burn control info/metadata on +R's. Since there is no cost difference, I've standardized on +R for the past 5 years.

I admit that the low capacity of DVD blank media makes this archive method more labor intensive, but once the process is good and you are experienced, it becomes second nature.

We *really* need 100GB+ optical media at $0.06/GB or less in the near future. Single layer BD-R 25GB discs are a big improvement over DVD in the short term, and maybe dual layer BD-R 50GB will become cost effective, hopefully sooner than later.

I have never even burned a dual layer DVD yet, though I want to experiment with it. I've found it difficult to justify the extra cost/GB of dual layer media, plus adding in compatibility issues with set top DVD players, although this may not be an issue any longer with recent vintage set tops.

Agreed- it takes years to reveal all the basic issues and get a good feel for the fundamental reliability/longevity, despite what all the BluRay fanboi's say

...and home (i.e. non-technical or mildly saavy) users could build and/or maintain a RAID with sufficient redundancy?

After explaining the basic rules of burning DVD's:

Only use first class media per

http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm

Only buy discs in cakeboxes or jewel cases- never in bare shrink wrap.

Use IMGBurn (free beer, Windows or Wine)
Burn at no more than 4x
Keep blanks in cakebox until burned in a cool dry place out of sunlight.
Do not touch the recording surface before burning- after burning just clean with soap/water.
Store long term in any hub mounted/supported container- cakebox, dvd case, jewel case, etc in a cool dry environment out of sunlight.

Every non-techie I've advised has been able to burn what they need and play it where they need- any PC, set tops, etc.

Again, I recognise that for mass, multi-TB storage, individual 4.3GB discs are a hassle in handling. But that's a separate issue vs. long term viability/reliability/simplicity/cost per GB issues.