Legit Reviews

Ok, contemplating switching from DL DVD to Blu Ray for monthly archival backup of a NAS, roughly ~60GB now but growing.

Dont want tapes been bit to many times of tape drives failing and not having a way to get at the data because I cant get a drive. Yes have had the need to go back 10 years to find a file that was saved over and/or jacked up in some way but no one noticed until it was need to build something as a repair part for a machine.

The expensive part will be the drive, but the disks are under $2 each now so 7x 8gb DLDVD at $1.25 vs 3x 25gb BR at $2 in the long run will save money, not to mention my time burning the things.

Was wondering if anyone is using blu rays now for data backup and any issues with it?

Not sure about BD-R but retail Blu-ray video discs are pretty resilient due to the hard coating. I don't think I've even seen one with a scratch from Netflix.

I have not looked into it just because of the cost for the drive. I imagine over time it would pay for itself compared to $50 1tb hard drives, but it would take a little time.

Write speed on 4X+ drives seems very good plus the ability to get the dual layer discs to store 50gb is a plus.

Longetivity of a blu-ray...no clue. I have read that dvd's do not last as long as they have stated, yet I have never had any problems to this date with any I have made.

Also the blu-ray discs would take up a lot less space than the hard drives would.

So, theoretically, it would pay off in a bit of time to do it, but I have no personal experience due to the initial cost.

Mike

I know, not very helpful :p I felt like typing dammit

KnightRid wrote:I know, not very helpful :p I felt like typing dammit

I've had to go back over 5 years regularly, 10 a couple times. The disks are all stored in a 3 drawer fire cabinet in a climate controlled room. So dark, cool, and don't move unless I need to pull a file of of them. So I haven't had any issues pulling off CD's from back in the day, and DVD's of recent.

Just worried that Blu-Ray is still in its infancy just to find out is 5-10 years I cant get a file because the dam thing degraded.

As for using hard drives for long term archiving, drives can seize up from just setting there too.

Here's the more pertinent question, will Blu Ray be around in 10 years? Will there be any optical media in 10 years? I doubt it. You know road maps better than most people here, what interfaces are going the way of the dodo? Why not create a file server with a ton of storage capacity and back it up to that? You don't have to keep it on all the time and from what I recall an idle hard drive can store data for 200 years without corruption.

eh... CD's are what ~17 years old, DVD's ~13ish... Blu-Ray just come out. DVD drives read CDs, Blu-Ray drive read DVDs

In 10-15 years might look at dumping data that is 25-30ish years old... hell I'll be ecstatic if the company is here in another 15 years, let alone if I'm still working here in 15years.

Think I will get one and give it a shot.

Just from things that ship on a physical medium I don't see it lasting. Every large etailer sales digital music, there are more companies using a STEAM-like client to ship games. Netfilx is expanding their instant viewing collection. Even Blu Ray movies are shipped with a digital copy. With everything going digital I don't see the standard hanging around that long. Isn't HD 2 coming out fairly soon too? Is the 50GB Blu Ray disc big enough to ship a 2560x1600 movie at presumably a very high bitrate?

I dont see physical media going away, for at least another 10 years. Hell there are people I know still on dial up for the fact its the only net they can get other then satellite. Broadband has a ways to go before everyone can do digital. I know with my crappy 1.5 DSL connection I can get YouTube HD stuff to play smooth without letting the whole vid load first.

If/when physical media goes way of the dino then I may look at a giant NAS of some sort. Hell the floppy disk was around what ~25ish years.

bubba wrote:I dont see physical media going away, for at least another 10 years. Hell there are people I know still on dial up for the fact its the only net they can get other then satellite. Broadband has a ways to go before everyone can do digital. I know with my crappy 1.5 DSL connection I can get YouTube HD stuff to play smooth without letting the whole vid load first.

If/when physical media goes way of the dino then I may look at a giant NAS of some sort. Hell the floppy disk was around what ~25ish years.

I agree, physical media is not going away anytime soon. Storing 500tb online sounds like a great idea until you realize how long it will take to uplaod all that data with the crappy broadband most users have. Heck I have 3mbps down and 768kbps up and it just sux how slow it is. i have no option of getting anything faster unless i pay Comcrap the fortune they want for broadband.

Physical media in a fire and water proof safe is also better than a NAS just because it is hard to protect a NAS from certain catastrophic events ;)

Mike