Which brand/type DVD for long term storage

[Litlos]

Well just spent a few hours trying to backup a DVD that turns out was failing due to blank DVD problems. I used to use the Princo type and never had a problem. These were Princo purchased recently and I have now consigned the whole pack to the bin. Used some old Princo and no problems, grrrrr.

Anyway as I have a couple of DVD's I want to back up for prosperity and am have now gone off the Princo type, what are the suggestions?

In fact if there are suggestions for good ones and really good ones even better as I sometimes mail DVD's to family. Yes I know archaic but less hassle than trying to educate non technical people on other means.

Merry Xmas, Happy New Year and Cheers

[Forkinhades]

Are you sure it's your DVDs and not your drive?

[WitawatWatawit]

I would have thought that a flashdrive would be easier all round and much more convenient than a DVD (I've had the same problems as you with these). The flashdrive is merely plug and play, marginally simpler than a DVD, and reusable (and cheaper to post, I would imagine)

[Brit_Doggie]

Yes as stated flash drive the way to go, dvds easily damaged, although I generally buy the cheapest brand with no issues but also backup on said flash drives.

[TheCruncher]

Princo has different qualities, I once read that you can recognize them from the color.

If I needed to back up something for long term I would never use a media that has a limited lifespan like a dvd.

[Tywais]

I used Princo in the past with mixed reliability. Have a 6-cd player on my car and after a few months the Princos started skipping or worse. Probably the most hostile environment for them is the car.

Switched over to Mitsubishi Verbatim and they've been going strong for 4+ years now in the car and played everyday. http://www.digitalfaq.com/reviews/dvd-media.htm

Verbatim – This is the brand you want to go with if it’s available where you shop. These discs are widely considered to be the best blank discs that you can buy. However, they can be a challenge to find on the shelf. It’s best to order them online or special order them to the store you prefer.

Sony – This is another outstanding brand of blank discs. This isn’t surprising since Sony has a reputation for dealing with high-quality wholesalers and manufacturers. The specific factory or vendor may change from year to year, but it’s hard to imagine that you’ll get more than a single defective disc per 100 that you buy.

TDK – This is yet another brand with few complaints and high praise. These may be a tad more expensive than the discs they sit next to on the shelf. However, given their durability and consistency, the few extra cents per disc is well worth the price.

- See more at: http://dvd-copy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/what-s-the-best-blank-dvd-brand-.html#sthash.Mj9Rnc3b.dpuf

[CaptHaddock]

DVDs are not for long term storage; they are for distribution. My understanding is that they have an expected life of ten years on average. Best for long term storage is one or more external hard drives that can be verified frequently. Then you can detect when a copy has failed and copy the data to a new target.

[NeverSure]

For things that I really want to keep long term and are important to me I get really anal about backups. The contents of that DVD would be on my HDD. That would get backed up every night as I sleep via two ways. First, the external HDD that gets the backups is wireless and hidden. Once a month I trade backup HDD's with a friend in case either of us has a house fire or serious burglary. We simply store each other's backups.

At one minute after midnight Cobian Backup runs and backs up all files and folders I have chosen. Three hours later Macrium Reflect starts and makes an image of my HDD to that same external. Both Macrium and Cobian are set to save the two most recent backups and delete the oldest one. I also have "old" folders that I use to keep really older images and backups in case later find I deleted something I needed. Cobian and Macrium won't see them and delete them if they are in another folder.

Both Cobian and Macrium are free, have schedulers, can save as many backups as you choose, use the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service and can/do defeat the Windows File Protection Service which could stop them from copying a file "because it is in use by another program".

I do have DVD's I want to keep long term but if one fails I'll burn another from a HDD.

Cheers.

[alfalfa19]

I have had very good luck with tdk. Very bad luck with Sony, they are garbage.

[Tywais]

DVDs are not for long term storage; they are for distribution. My understanding is that they have an expected life of ten years on average. Best for long term storage is one or more external hard drives that can be verified frequently. Then you can detect when a copy has failed and copy the data to a new target.

Life expectancy of various media:

[TheCruncher]

DVDs are not for long term storage; they are for distribution. My understanding is that they have an expected life of ten years on average. Best for long term storage is one or more external hard drives that can be verified frequently. Then you can detect when a copy has failed and copy the data to a new target.

Life expectancy of various media:

Capture.JPG

I never considered that magnetic tapes would have such a long shelf life, in fact they are the best option, yet every one goes for the newer media types which are less good.

[NeverSure]

DVDs are not for long term storage; they are for distribution. My understanding is that they have an expected life of ten years on average. Best for long term storage is one or more external hard drives that can be verified frequently. Then you can detect when a copy has failed and copy the data to a new target.

Life expectancy of various media:

Capture.JPG

Thanks for that. Interesting. That gives a fairly short life for a HDD, but if the data is being re-written every day, and the HDD replaced as needed, it should be indefinite for the data itself. I have all of my data on 3 HDD's, any of which could fully recover. There's my internal, my external, and one at my friend's house.

I have 8 VHS tapes that are important to me from almost 20 years ago. They still work, but I had them professionally transferred to DVD. Then I copied the DVD's to my HDD. I said I am anal, LOL.

Cheers.

[MKAsok]

Taiyo Yuden are generally considered to be the best DVDRs available. Anything on Tywais's list above is also excellent.

Princo are pure garbage in my experience.

[DogNo1]

The longevity of magnetic tapes might be good but accessing your data is a pain. Large capacity HDDs are pretty cheap so you can have a lot of redundancy - external USB, internal duplicate HDD which can be imaged to, NAS and Home Server. You can also save your images online. I use both One Drive for Business and Bitcasa. I can't count the number of copies of my data that I have. And you thought you were anal?

[mopar71]

I would have thought that a flashdrive would be easier all round and much more convenient than a DVD (I've had the same problems as you with these). The flashdrive is merely plug and play, marginally simpler than a DVD, and reusable (and cheaper to post, I would imagine)

In addition, most modern TVs have a USB port and you can watch movies (play music or look at photos) from the flash drive directly, without needing an external player of any kind.

[xen]

The problem i have found is not so much the DVDs or the HDD is the format they were stored on. I had , for example, a lot of photoshop (psp) files and now because i no longer have Photoshop on my computer i can't read them unless i use something such as Irfan . There are probably better solutions out there and perhaps better software now.

It is interesting that apparently the Smithsonian has now reverted back to storing all its files on microfiche rather than( or in addition to) digital as the article I read said it can't predict what type of digital readers would be available in a thousand years or more where as microfiche is still relatively simple to read.

[CaptHaddock]

The longevity of magnetic tapes might be good but accessing your data is a pain. Large capacity HDDs are pretty cheap so you can have a lot of redundancy - external USB, internal duplicate HDD which can be imaged to, NAS and Home Server. You can also save your images online. I use both One Drive for Business and Bitcasa. I can't count the number of copies of my data that I have. And you thought you were anal?

And this is the point. DVDs and tape make verifiying your backup so difficult that you aren't going to do it. You'll find out that your backup is no longer readable when you go to restore from it. That's why multiple hard drives are the only practical solution because you can script verification and detect failure promptly enough to take action to save the data. It's not the longevity of HD, but the ease of access that makes it the best choice.

[Litlos]

Thanks for all the input. I was really surprised about the claimed life of the m-disc and as it happens my laptop DVD/BD drive will write those. I work with a few guys who live in the USA so will probably get a pack of those that way to ensure they are what they claim to be and not a local Thai version. That will be for long term storage of video's and photo's.

Shorter term and for distribution will be one of the better named DVD's. I have had to many flash drives die on me to really trust them and it is easier for my older relatives to just place the DVD in the drive and follow the existing step by step procedure to view the DVD. I have learned with the older relatives if it works, do not mess with it.

For my backups PC I have a USB hard drive and I will probably simply buy another and have one stored in my fire rated safe at all times and simply swap them around. I will have to investigate getting some additional cloud storage for additional critical item storage. I also visit Australia twice a year and have another fire safe there and already keep another backup there.

So pretty good with the backups, but you never really know until you need them.

Cheers

[CaptHaddock]

Thanks for all the input. I was really surprised about the claimed life of the m-disc and as it happens my laptop DVD/BD drive will write those. I work with a few guys who live in the USA so will probably get a pack of those that way to ensure they are what they claim to be and not a local Thai version. That will be for long term storage of video's and photo's.

Shorter term and for distribution will be one of the better named DVD's. I have had to many flash drives die on me to really trust them and it is easier for my older relatives to just place the DVD in the drive and follow the existing step by step procedure to view the DVD. I have learned with the older relatives if it works, do not mess with it.

For my backups PC I have a USB hard drive and I will probably simply buy another and have one stored in my fire rated safe at all times and simply swap them around. I will have to investigate getting some additional cloud storage for additional critical item storage. I also visit Australia twice a year and have another fire safe there and already keep another backup there.

So pretty good with the backups, but you never really know until you need them.

Cheers

If you use cloud storage you might look at duplicati backup software from duplicati.com. Use version 2.0. Duplicati takes backups and pushes them to any of many cloud servers. The key point is duplicati's backups are encrypted by duplicati and then sent to the cloud servers. It will will keep as many versions of your files as you wish and updates by sending deltas. This is preferable because letting the cloud service mirror some directory on your computer to the cloud means that damage to your files, such as an accidental deletion, would be propagated to the cloud version defeating the backup purpose.

[DogNo1]

How would you go about restoring a Duplicati-encrypted image to a bare metal machine (a machine that has no running OS.) Does Duplicati allow you to make a restore CD that would run some kind of OS and connect to the backup site, unencrypt the backup and restore it to your bare metal machine running the CD? If so, I'm interested.

[CaptHaddock]

How would you go about restoring a Duplicati-encrypted image to a bare metal machine (a machine that has no running OS.) Does Duplicati allow you to make a restore CD that would run some kind of OS and connect to the backup site, unencrypt the backup and restore it to your bare metal machine running the CD? If so, I'm interested.

No. It does a file system backup not an image backup. So, it can't do a bare metal restore. It's for your data which you specify, not the whole system. If you lost your system you would need to have the logon information to the cloud server and the duplicati password that you set. You would have to build a new system, install your applications, install duplicati, and then do a "restore from target." You would specify the latest version or as of a specific date. Duplicati would download the database for the backup and then restore the files you selected or all of them.

In my opinion the best way to run Windows is as a virtual machine. I use Vmware Workstation running on Fedora linux. This approach has many advantages such as the ability to revert to a snapshot very quickly thereby undoing damage, etc. In that configuration the windows vm is just a bunch of linux files. Duplicati will run on linux. So it would be possible to backup up your whole Windows vm to the cloud. Then if you lost your machine, you would download and reinstall Fedora, install Vmware Workstation, and then restore your Windows vm via duplicati and you are back. I don't do that because it would take more bandwidth than I have. My windows vm is 62 GB whereas the actual important data on Windows is only 3 GB.

[cyberfarang]

I had hundreds of CDs and DVDs in the past of many different brand names and qualities and they all gave up on me eventually even though I stored them in the correct plastic CD cases in a dark Cabernet at the coolest side of the house. Luckily I had backed up most of my important stuff on my hard drive and external hard drives otherwise I would have lost the lot.

Writable CDs and DVDs are not reliable and would not have faith in any of them for secure storage.

[RichCor]

DVDs are not for long term storage; they are for distribution. My understanding is that they have an expected life of ten years on average. Best for long term storage is one or more external hard drives that can be verified frequently. Then you can detect when a copy has failed and copy the data to a new target.

Life expectancy of various media:

Unfortunately, Nintendo Cartridges aren't compatible with my Windows 10 archiving system.

That was a strange article that data was pulled from.

Edited January 3, 2016 by RichCor

[BudRight]

Optical storage is crap - leave it face up in the Sun for an hour and you'll see what I mean. It will ruin the inks and you'll have a drink coaster.

Edited April 22, 2016 by BudRight

[Bench499d]

Someone mentioned above that magnetic tape is hard to verify. Actually this is not true. I've used LTO tapes with Symantec Backup Exec in an enterprise environment. You just pick the files and folders on the systems you want to backup, set various options and schedules and off it goes. It will automatically verify the backup after it has been written.

If you're paranoid (and you should be), Backup Exec allows you two restore single files and folders very easily, or whole systems. It keeps catalogue files so it knows the location of the data on the tapes.

If you wanted the Rolls Royce long term solution, with great capacity, magnetic tape is still the go-to solution.

[SoiBiker]

I had hundreds of CDs and DVDs in the past of many different brand names and qualities and they all gave up on me eventually even though I stored them in the correct plastic CD cases in a dark Cabernet at the coolest side of the house.

Try a Merlot instead.

[CaptHaddock]

Someone mentioned above that magnetic tape is hard to verify. Actually this is not true. I've used LTO tapes with Symantec Backup Exec in an enterprise environment. You just pick the files and folders on the systems you want to backup, set various options and schedules and off it goes. It will automatically verify the backup after it has been written.

If you're paranoid (and you should be), Backup Exec allows you two restore single files and folders very easily, or whole systems. It keeps catalogue files so it knows the location of the data on the tapes.

If you wanted the Rolls Royce long term solution, with great capacity, magnetic tape is still the go-to solution.

Do you think that this discussion is about enterprise systems with jukeboxes, automatic space reclamation, auto managment of multiple copies on separate reels, automatic head-cleaning, etc.?

[Bench499d]

Someone mentioned above that magnetic tape is hard to verify. Actually this is not true. I've used LTO tapes with Symantec Backup Exec in an enterprise environment. You just pick the files and folders on the systems you want to backup, set various options and schedules and off it goes. It will automatically verify the backup after it has been written.

If you're paranoid (and you should be), Backup Exec allows you two restore single files and folders very easily, or whole systems. It keeps catalogue files so it knows the location of the data on the tapes.

If you wanted the Rolls Royce long term solution, with great capacity, magnetic tape is still the go-to solution.

Do you think that this discussion is about enterprise systems with jukeboxes, automatic space reclamation, auto managment of multiple copies on separate reels, automatic head-cleaning, etc.?

No and that is not what I am talking about actually. It was not me who mentioned the tape option, I was just responding to other posts discussing longevity of media and ensuring said media was verifiable.

A basic low end enterprise system would just involve the purchase of one LTO tape drive and some tapes which would be manually rotated, and some software to backup and restore to same tapes. If you were serious and had a lot of stuff to archive long term, you could set this up for not much more than the cost of a couple of iPads I would think.

[Gary A]

I had a rather large plastic storage box for my DVD's and CD's. After a few years I found that some then wouldn't work. Holding them up to the light, I could see like pin holes. I ended up throwing about 70 percent of them away. I was told the holes were caused by a fungus. True or not, I no longer use CD's or DVD's. The little flash drives are cheap and I haven't had a failure yet. I was able to copy some of the CD program disks to flash drives and then threw those CD's away too. Time marches on. You can also back up important things on USB had drives. They too have dropped in price, maybe even cheaper per GB than DVD's.

[rhythmworx]

JVC/Taiyo Yuden

http://www.finerimage.com.au/Products/Media/ArchivalDVDCD.php

Edited April 25, 2016 by rhythmworx