Cost of DVD as data storage versus HDD (UK)

[smh]

.. --------------------------------------
Mike Richter, were you born with
"Scam Artist" emblazoned on your face?
--------------------------------------

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

( No Pipsqueaks have been able to prove ANY of the above is a LIBEL )
( -- despite Mikey claimed to have proof of misquotes !! )

I have used Nero to make a backup of drive C: to 19 DVDs . The messages were
all correct but I cannot restore now ,I have reinstalled windows XP home
but Nero wants a file that it did not write on the DVDs and if I try to do
it from the disk it starts a DOS prog then complains about the disk being
accessed directly and stops.

I thought I was using good software for the purpose it was meant for and I
would be able to restore. a lot of what is on there is un replaceable and
I thought I did the right thing by backing up . the Nero help files are
not much help.

13. How can I restore a partition or hard drive backup created with Nero
BackItUp?

http://www.nero.com/en/FAQs_Data_CD.html#13

 

[Andy Ball]

Sure, a small company I know decided a raid array on their server

meant they didn't need to backup. The sever fell over one day and
trashed the whole array, they lost everything. Hard drives inside
an active machine are a very bad idea for long term backup.

I met a network manager in Indiana, US who fell for that one, and I
just know there are plenty more where he came from. :-/ RAID is good,
it's just no substitute for a proper backup strategy.

- Andy Ball

 

[Toshi1873]

Personally I have seen Win2k trash a (cheap) stripped array because one of
the drives was a bit sticky on power up. The RAID BIOS didn't recognise the
set and w2k thought the remaining drive was corrupt and attempted to 'fix'
it on boot without any operator intervention.

Yeah, I've seen Win2k CHKDSK a drive (RAID5 array) into
oblivion... was rather entertaining in a very demented
sort of way.

Personally, I prefer a tiered system:

- RAID for the data and O/S drives (goal is keeping the
system running, even if a drive fails, one or more hot-
spare drives are required if you want minimum downtime)

- A large-capacity drive in the same or another server
that is used for quick-n-dirty mirroring and recovery of
deleted files, usually sync'd anywhere from once daily
to as often every few hours. Most tape backup software
now allows for "virtual tape" where you write to a hard
drive instead of a tape.

- Tape or removable drives for the daily backup,
tape/drive should go offsite at least weekly if not
daily.

- Optical for long-term archival if the data can be
managed in 4GB chunks. Otherwise, use tape for long-
term. Always make sure that a particular bit of data is
on at least 3 different pieces of media. (Generational
archives work well... if you can fit 6 months on a piece
of media, make one backup every month of all data
generated within the last 6 months. You'll have 5-6
tapes with the bit of data that you need to restore.)

IOW, don't put all your eggs in a single basket, and
always have a way to verify that the contents of backup
media are still unaltered (MD5/SHA/QuickPar PAR2 files).
Data is expensive, and backup hardware/software is like
buying an insurance policy for your house. Even $4k
tape drives start to look cheap when you consider the
price of the data.

 

[Andy Ball]

Hello Dorothy,

DB> For the most part, DVD-RAM offers a good half-way house:

I'm keeping my eyes open for a nice SCSI DVD-RAM drive. Perhaps they
are mostly IEEE-1394 these days though.

DB> ...even XCOPY can be forced to do a verification as I recall...

If I remember rightly, XCOPY's "verify" option verifies that what it
wrote is readable, not necesarily that it's what was in the source
file.

DB> If HDs are used, I prefer a "micro-PC" converted to NAS...

...Mini-ITX snails don't cost much...

If only VIA would make an Eden board with Ultra160 or Ultra320 built
in!

- Andy Ball

 

[Mushroom]

DB> ...even XCOPY can be forced to do a verification as I recall...

If I remember rightly, XCOPY's "verify" option verifies that what it
wrote is readable, not necesarily that it's what was in the source
file.

Go and get XXCOPY from www.xxcopy.com - it's freeware and does a
complete copy & verify.

 

[Michael Salem]

Go and get XXCOPY from www.xxcopy.com - it's freeware and does a
complete copy & verify.

But I think that this still has the problem, when used for barking up,
of not deleting from the backup files that have been deleted from the
source.

 

[Jeff Gaines]

But I think that this still has the problem, when used for barking
up, of not deleting from the backup files that have been deleted from
the source.

I think you're backing up the wrong tree here

 

[half_pint]

I think you are correct HDD's are cheaper, also you excluded the cost of
of a CD burner so you can add another £20 or more, much more
to the CD option.

Then you have to consider the huge ammount of grief you will get from
CD's (burning problems, scratched disks, disks which won't work,
CD writers which wont work .....well read this group and you will
get the general idea).

Then there is the time cnsumed bburning your CDs, how would you
cost that? Several hundred pounds?

Then there is huge problem of storing, locateing, indexing of the
CDs.......

Oh I see I am talking about CD's not DVD's but the argurements are the
same except DVD burners are very expensive.

All you get from burnable media is grief and coasters.

You 300DVDs are 3 meters high and hardly portable!!

I think burning media is a dying art, in 3 years time
a 200GB drive will be what? £20?

 

[guv]

I think you are correct HDD's are cheaper, also you excluded the cost of
of a CD burner so you can add another £20 or more, much more
to the CD option.

Who mentioned CDs?

Then you have to consider the huge ammount of grief you will get from
CD's (burning problems, scratched disks, disks which won't work,
CD writers which wont work .....well read this group and you will
get the general idea).

No one I know that looks after their media has any problems. Probably
best not to use them as beer mats.

Then there is the time cnsumed bburning your CDs, how would you
cost that? Several hundred pounds?

How much would you consume fitting all these HDs you would need to
buy? Burning a 4.7GB disc is hardly an issue. Even at 2x its only 30
mins. Go get yourself a 16x burner if you are counting seconds.

Then there is huge problem of storing, locateing, indexing of the
CDs.......

Why is it a huge problem? The 200GB hard drive you mention, is only 40
discs. Go by yourself a 200 disc folder and have the equivalent of 5
of your 200GB hard drives.

Now start working out the costs.

200 discs will cost you £48, plus £50 for the burner.

How much will 5 200GB hard drives cost you? How much storage option do
you get once they are full?

Oh I see I am talking about CD's not DVD's but the argurements are the
same except DVD burners are very expensive.

Very expensive? Best not shop at PC world then. They are available for
just over £30.

All you get from burnable media is grief and coasters.

You 300DVDs are 3 meters high and hardly portable!!

Your 300 DVDs hold 1,200GB of data. How many hard drives are you
buying? How are you going to connect them all?

I think burning media is a dying art, in 3 years time
a 200GB drive will be what? £20?

Oh ok guys. Wait for 3 years and all will be well.

 

[Guest]

How much would you consume fitting all these HDs you would need to
buy? Burning a 4.7GB disc is hardly an issue. Even at 2x its only 30
mins. Go get yourself a 16x burner if you are counting seconds.

I find DVD media to be incredibly unreliable.

Using a pretty nippy PC, a £300 (at the time) Sony DVD burner and £1 a
pop branded DVD media.

I've had discs that haven't burned/verified okay, then a few months
later gone back to them and Windows just sees them as empty media. They
may have one or two scuffs on, but nothing a CD would complain about.

DVD's I've bought from stores have become unglued after little play.

They're an absolute waste of time, and a very much over-hyped medium.

 

[half_pint]

Who mentioned CDs?

no one as i mentioned later :O)

No one I know that looks after their media has any problems. Probably
best not to use them as beer mats.

Tell me about it!! They are a pretty fragile media as is a cd burner,
one scratch or a spec of dust and its all fooked.

How much would you consume fitting all these HDs you would need to
buy? Burning a 4.7GB disc is hardly an issue. Even at 2x its only 30
mins. Go get yourself a 16x burner if you are counting seconds.

Not good for audio, even converting mp3 to.wav takes an age (on my ancient
machine)

Why is it a huge problem? The 200GB hard drive you mention, is only 40
discs. Go by yourself a 200 disc folder and have the equivalent of 5
of your 200GB hard drives.

I have about 80 cdr's finding a file on one of them could take *hours*.

Now start working out the costs.

200 discs will cost you £48, plus £50 for the burner.

How much will 5 200GB hard drives cost you? How much storage option do
you get once they are full?


Very expensive? Best not shop at PC world then. They are available for
just over £30.



Your 300 DVDs hold 1,200GB of data. How many hard drives are you
buying? How are you going to connect them all?


Oh ok guys. Wait for 3 years and all will be well.

Well I ws mainly talking about CD's but DVD have the same problems.

I cannot use my computer whilst burning and thats a problem.

My older cd drive dont work anymore either (occasionally works).
Its just too much hassle.
LIfe is too shor to burn media!!!

How long will it take you to find a file on 300 DVD's?
A month?

I have a big box full of floppies, another full of CD's
do i want another full of DVD'S?

 

[Arno Wagner]

I find DVD media to be incredibly unreliable.

Using a pretty nippy PC, a £300 (at the time) Sony DVD burner and £1 a
pop branded DVD media.

I've had discs that haven't burned/verified okay, then a few months
later gone back to them and Windows just sees them as empty media. They
may have one or two scuffs on, but nothing a CD would complain about.

DVD's I've bought from stores have become unglued after little play.

They're an absolute waste of time, and a very much over-hyped medium.

I could not agree more. Yet for some reason there are people that
keep kidding themselves about what CDs and DVDs are: Cheap,
mass-market media with the lowest reliability the manufacturers
think they can get away with. I wonder whether the perople that
do not get this are trying to convince themselves that their
set-up is reliable. Denial is not a good strategy to approach
a technological question!

I get the urge to buy a DVD burner about once every two months
or so. Usually does not take much research to get rid of it
again.

What saddens me is that it looks like blue-ray is going the
same way: The cartridge is likely to be dropped, a massive
indicator that price if a far bigger concern than reliability.

I will stay with 3.5" MOD for my critical stuff and RAID5 + copies
on several computers for less critical stuff.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

[...]
Oh ok guys. Wait for 3 years and all will be well.

Well I ws mainly talking about CD's but DVD have the same problems.

I cannot use my computer whilst burning and thats a problem.

My older cd drive dont work anymore either (occasionally works).
Its just too much hassle.
LIfe is too shor to burn media!!!

How long will it take you to find a file on 300 DVD's?
A month?

I think that is the key issue here. Of course you can do copies
of all data to 2 or more media. of course you can verify all
your media once a month and re-burn those with problems.
(Incidentially I do complete surface scans of most of mu HDDs
once a month, but that is completely automatised...).
But how much time will that cost? How mind-numbing will the
process be? Better get a job flipping burgers in that time
and buy external HDDs for the money earned!

I have a big box full of floppies, another full of CD's
do i want another full of DVD'S?

I recently copied all my ATARI ST floppies to one MOD. Took
almost forever but now I can find stuff and there is no
media decay anymore.

As for CDs, I find that I burn very few. Most of those are boot-CDs
(Knoppix), making copies of my (bought) music CDs or copies of student
theses to be included in the printed versions. I recently started
putting Knoppix on CD-RW (700MB CD-RW finally being available) so it
will be even less now.

Arno

 

[guv]

I could not agree more. Yet for some reason there are people that
keep kidding themselves about what CDs and DVDs are: Cheap,
mass-market media with the lowest reliability the manufacturers
think they can get away with. I wonder whether the perople that
do not get this are trying to convince themselves that their
set-up is reliable. Denial is not a good strategy to approach
a technological question!

Who is in denial? I have approx 300 DVDRs and dont have a problem with
any of them. Its best not to handle them with sandpaper gloves on
though.

Oh, and since the media is so cheap, I always make 2 copies - just in
case. Having said that, so far it has been unjustified.

I get the urge to buy a DVD burner about once every two months
or so. Usually does not take much research to get rid of it
again.

Ah. So you are not in a position to judge since you are not even a
user.

What saddens me is that it looks like blue-ray is going the
same way: The cartridge is likely to be dropped, a massive
indicator that price if a far bigger concern than reliability.

I will stay with 3.5" MOD for my critical stuff and RAID5 + copies
on several computers for less critical stuff.

Unless you use RAID 0 you will always be prone to data loss in the
event of a failure - which you know isnt "if" but "when".

 

[guv]

Tell me about it!! They are a pretty fragile media as is a cd burner,
one scratch or a spec of dust and its all fooked.

Solution. look after them!

Not good for audio, even converting mp3 to.wav takes an age (on my ancient
machine)

Eh? Is it the fault of DVDR media, that it takes ages to convert wavs
to mp3? Might that be the same process time storing to your HD?

I have about 80 cdr's finding a file on one of them could take *hours*.

So use some catalogue indexing software. Or is the issue you cant find
the discs because they are all over the place?

Well I ws mainly talking about CD's but DVD have the same problems.

I cannot use my computer whilst burning and thats a problem.

So because you have an "ancient PC" that wont use burn protection,
that writes of DVDR as a media does it? I always do other things at
the same time I am burning and have yet to have one buffer underrun
through doing so.

My older cd drive dont work anymore either (occasionally works).
Its just too much hassle.

Sounds reasonable to suggest you get a new CD drive then. ;-)

LIfe is too shor to burn media!!!

Since a 52X burner will take a few short minutes, how is that too
short?

How long will it take you to find a file on 300 DVD's?
A month?

Nope. Seconds. They are all in keep cases (apart from the 2nd back up)
and on a shelf and clearly marked.

Oh and another advantage is the fact my Hard drive doesnt fit in my
set top DVD player! ;-)

I have a big box full of floppies, another full of CD's
do i want another full of DVD'S?

But all your floppies and CDS will fit on a couple of DVDRs so it
sounds like another box isnt necessary in your situation.

 

[guv]

Unless you use RAID 0 you will always be prone to data loss in the
event of a failure - which you know isnt "if" but "when".

Sorry, meant RAID 1.

 

[half_pint]

Solution. look after them!


Eh? Is it the fault of DVDR media, that it takes ages to convert wavs
to mp3? Might that be the same process time storing to your HD?

I can play from mp3 on my pc, I won't buy a cd player (.wav) ever again
only mp3 playing devices, so I will never need to convert.

So use some catalogue indexing software. Or is the issue you cant find
the discs because they are all over the place?

Whatever I have tried alll that, its too much hassel and it
doesn't get done when you are in rush and it is a job in it self.
How many hours (days more like) will it take to catalogue 300 DVD?

And then you cannot reorganise your files as you can on a HDD

So because you have an "ancient PC" that wont use burn protection,
that writes of DVDR as a media does it? I always do other things at
the same time I am burning and have yet to have one buffer underrun
through doing so.

Ah so I heed to add the cost of a new PC into the equation now?
Well thats another £500 minimum, mind you as it will have a HDD
inside I won't need to burn!!

Sounds reasonable to suggest you get a new CD drive then. ;-)

Well I find HHD's infinitely more reliable so I will invest my money
in that direction, incidently that is not the original CD drive, the
original failed within the first year and I got a free replacent. So in
My experience they are not very reliable (also have a failed
portable CD radio thing).
And whilst it *may* be my fault they failed, none of my
HDD's have ever had a single problem!!!

Since a 52X burner will take a few short minutes, how is that too
short?


Nope. Seconds. They are all in keep cases (apart from the 2nd back up)
and on a shelf and clearly marked.

Seconds? you have to read 300 lists, you must be a quick and flawless
reader, like my PC find files function.
It is a major hassle manintaining allyou lists and puting the corect
CD in the correct box.

Oh and another advantage is the fact my Hard drive doesnt fit in my
set top DVD player! ;-)

Yes but you don't need a set top DVD player as you can play
direct from your PC.

But all your floppies and CDS will fit on a couple of DVDRs so it
sounds like another box isnt necessary in your situation.

Dont think I would trust a CD or a DVD, wont take up
much space on a HDD though.

 

[Isaac]

Whatever I have tried alll that, its too much hassel and it
doesn't get done when you are in rush and it is a job in it self.
How many hours (days more like) will it take to catalogue 300 DVD?

And then you cannot reorganise your files as you can on a HDD

There are some legitimate reasons to keep stuff on a hard drive rather
than put it on DVD or CD, but these reasons don't cut it. Any kind of
simple database makes it far easier to find stuff then doing directory
searches on a hard drive. If you are putting things in reasonable folders,
a few simple scripts of one kind or another can read the directory structure
of a CD/DVD and spit out something you can import into a database
with very little effort.

Most likely I would still use the database even if I was keeping everything
on hard drives.

You don't generally have to do 300 DVDs at a time. I catalog each disk
right after I make it.

Well I find HHD's infinitely more reliable so I will invest my money
in that direction, incidently that is not the original CD drive, the
original failed within the first year and I got a free replacent. So in
My experience they are not very reliable (also have a failed
portable CD radio thing).
And whilst it *may* be my fault they failed, none of my
HDD's have ever had a single problem!!!

When your cd drives failed did you lose any data? I'll bet you consider
your data to be more valuable than the 20 dollars or so it costs to
replace a cd drive.

Seconds? you have to read 300 lists, you must be a quick and flawless
reader, like my PC find files function.
It is a major hassle manintaining allyou lists and puting the corect
CD in the correct box.

You keep your lists on a computer and you use the computer to seach through
them. You can query a database in much more creative ways than you can
search through directories on a hard drive.

It takes seconds for me to find which disk contains what I want. Putting a
CD back in a box is no big deal.

I don't expect you to change how you are doing things, but your explanations
are not very convincing.

Isaac

 

[half_pint]

[...]
Oh ok guys. Wait for 3 years and all will be well.

Well I ws mainly talking about CD's but DVD have the same problems.

I cannot use my computer whilst burning and thats a problem.

My older cd drive dont work anymore either (occasionally works).
Its just too much hassle.
LIfe is too shor to burn media!!!

How long will it take you to find a file on 300 DVD's?
A month?

I think that is the key issue here. Of course you can do copies
of all data to 2 or more media. of course you can verify all
your media once a month and re-burn those with problems.
(Incidentially I do complete surface scans of most of mu HDDs
once a month, but that is completely automatised...).
But how much time will that cost? How mind-numbing will the
process be? Better get a job flipping burgers in that time
and buy external HDDs for the money earned!

Yes I wonder how much I could have earned in the
time it takes to burn cd's.

I am 100% certain that for what I could earn in
the time spend trying to back up a music CD I could have
ernt out and bought serveal backup copies!!
My experience is 4-5 hours and 5-6 coasters per
successful recording!!!!!

I recently copied all my ATARI ST floppies to one MOD. Took
almost forever but now I can find stuff and there is no
media decay anymore.

Yes I will try that maybe, as ST disks are readable from a
PC floppy drive I believe. Probably gonna take all day though!
I should really bin them as I have not used them for many years.

My ST is almost an antique, the spectrum I had before that
probably is not a genuine antique. (And what a wonderfully
reliable machine that was!)

As for CDs, I find that I burn very few. Most of those are boot-CDs
(Knoppix), making copies of my (bought) music CDs or copies of student
theses to be included in the printed versions. I recently started
putting Knoppix on CD-RW (700MB CD-RW finally being available) so it
will be even less now.

I think increasing music systems will become more like computers,
infact they already are (IPOD etc....) and disks of any sort (apart from
HDD) will
increasingly become a think of the past

 

[lysander]

Sorry, meant RAID 1.

Or RAID 3 or RAID 5 etc.