PIcture backup-disc spanning?

[vulcan2912]

Hi

At the minute I'm slowly backing up 5 500gb hard drives that are full of pictures.All the pictures are split into date/event specific folders and some of these folders are upto 50-100gb in size.I'm presently using Nero 7 to back up the folders but I have to manually drag the 4GB of pictures to make up each disc.This is becoming very time consuming and boring!
I have also tried using the backup part of nero but I don't think it is really designed for doing this and it has also crashed a few times.
Does anyone know of any dvd burning software that I can just tell to backup a certain folder and then just have to keep supplying the blank dvd's into the computer and the software will automatically just span the folder over the right amount of discs.I don't want to use proper system backup software with compression etc because I want to be able to pull individual pics from the discs if I need to.

Thanks
Gary

[OdiN1701]

You could use a RAR program, compress everything and have it spit out 4GB files.

Would be a pain to find something specific on the disc though.

[Moppie]

Your backing up 2.5TB to DVD?





Surly it would be cheaper and easier to just buy more 500GB drives, and back up that way.

[Halliday]

Toast figures out how many dvds/cds the files needs and splits them up automatically. The files are just split and there's no proprietary program needed to read the dvd/cd.

I think Toast is Mac only.

[tim]

LMAO, there's a fundamental flaw to your approach - DVDs are small, hard drives are large. Back up to more hard drives, or some kind of tape system.

[vulcan2912]

Thanks for the comments guys.
Halliday-That's exactly what I'm looking for but unfortunately I use a PC.

I've thought about using the hard drive route for backups but I've always just used dvd's.I already have 4 internal and 4 external drives and the thought of buying more to just fill up and throw in a box to probably never be used again doesn't really appeal.
In the UK a 500GB hard drive will also set you back approx £60 where as 500 GB of DVD's will cost only £20.
My very poor bacup regime has caused this problem but I've now cross checked all my drives against my dvd's and I only have about 900gb to back up.

Lesson learned-backup as you shoot!

Cheers
Gary

ps still looking for a piece of software to make this job easier

[Moppie]

500GB needs 125 DVD's at 4GB a disc.

That is a LOT of DVD's to look after, and the chance of even one failing is extremely high.

I am willing to bet that at least 1 won't be readable only a month later.

They might be the cheaper option, but when you factor in how long it will take to burn them all, how hard they will be to index (unless your a librarian) and the very high change of failure, they suddenly don't look so good.

[Halliday]

Are you sure Nero can't span disks?

Try Roxio Creator and DeepBurner.

Read the features of Creator
http://www.roxio.com/enu/products/cr.../features.html

"Span large files and projects across multiple CDs or DVDs"

[vulcan2912]

Thanks Halliday

I've given Deepburner a try and it doesn't do disc spanning.Roxio looks like it should work but I can't find a demo to give it a try.I'll have a good look on their website in case I have missed it.

Cheers
Gary

[tim]

125 DVDs will probably need a solid day to do the backups. That's £40 for 8 hours, or £5 an hour. Is your time worth more than that? Plus as Moppie points out the chance of failure isn't just high, it's almost certain.