Blu-ray burner and storage

Hi All.

I considered buying a blu-ray burner and some blank discs for backing up some my photo collection. Do any of ye use them and if so do you recommend them and if not are there reasons to not use them? Thanks

I do and they are awesome. For more than just backup too! I have this ASUS and use these discs: LINKand LINK

Thanks for the info

No way. Unless you're only archiving a small number of images, they're too slow, too bulky, and too difficult to index. Most people use multiple hard drives.

Anyone know how long burned bluray disc's will last? I don't trust discs any more many old cds/dvds Won't read anymore even though they are not scratched.

emko wrote in post #15635004
Anyone know how long burned bluray disc's will last? I don't trust discs any more many old cds/dvds Won't read anymore even though they are not scratched.

It depends. As with most things it seems that you get what you pay for. Archive-quality Verbatims are supposed to last 30-200 years. Cheap Ebay rubbish might last until the weekend.

That's why people who care keep multiple copies.

hollis_f wrote in post #15634916
No way. Unless you're only archiving a small number of images, they're too slow, too bulky, and too difficult to index. Most people use multiple hard drives.

I agree. Hard drives aren't that expensive right now. On the other hand, blank Blu-rays are still kind of expensive. Anything other than 25GB discs are still ridiculous, and do you really want to keep track of hundreds of discs? I use regular internal hard drives with a USB 3 dock.

I bought 2 burners for a good price, but I'll be doing video. I wouldn't go out and buy a burner just to make backups. If you already had a burner, then I would say it'd be okay to use as a secondary backup if you didn't have any more extra hard drives.

jaomul wrote in post #15632210
Hi All.

I considered buying a blu-ray burner and some blank discs for backing up some my photo collection. Do any of ye use them and if so do you recommend them and if not are there reasons to not use them? Thanks

hollis_f wrote in post #15634916
No way. Unless you're only archiving a small number of images, they're too slow, too bulky, and too difficult to index. Most people use multiple hard drives.

I mostly agree with Frank; I just take a less strident view of this.

I have a 3 level backup using hard drives and a cloud backup service.

However, using hard drives only does have a disadvantage in that your data is dependent upon the proper operation of an electro-mechanical device that has a poor long-term reliability record.

I avoid that by having 2 local copies on hard drives plus the cloud copy and bet that I will never have the simultaneous failure of all three.

Using optical media does provide an archive that is independent of any one mechanical device (although it is dependent on a device capable of reading the media still being available to you... anyone still use 9-track tape

high quality archival discs

RTPVid wrote in post #15636268
Using optical media does provide an archive that is independent of any one mechanical device (although it is dependent on a device capable of reading the media still being available to you... anyone still use 9-track tape

... once the mainstay of corporate backups?)

But, if you are personally organized enough to perform the backup to Blu-ray and to keep your Blu-ray archive organized so you can actually find things when needed, then they are a "burn it and forget it" media if you start with high quality archival discs and burn them properly.

Personally, I wouldn't (and don't) use optical media for backup, myself.

A government archival document puts optical media in poor light...they even comment that optical media written on unit A might not be readable on unit B!
So if you write on DVD with DVD unit A, then there is the longer term issue wondering if DVD unit A has an interface which is compatible with the device interface cards of PCs of the future. We have seen ST-506 and ESDI interfaces come and go, ATA/PATA device interfaces come and go, parallel ports come and go, no doubt USB will evolve into something new eventually.

Wilt wrote in post #15636563
A government archival document puts optical media in poor light...they even comment that optical media written on unit A might not be readable on unit B!

Source?

Wilt wrote in post #15636563
So if you write on DVD with DVD unit A, then there is the longer term issue wondering if DVD unit A has an interface which is compatible with the device interface cards of PCs of the future. We have seen ST-506 and ESDI interfaces come and go, ATA/PATA device interfaces come and go, parallel ports come and go, no doubt USB will evolve into something new eventually.

Hmmm... I thought I mentioned that issue. But, that applies to hard drives as well, doesn't it?

RTPVid wrote in post #15636624
Source?
Hmmm... I thought I mentioned that issue. But, that applies to hard drives as well, doesn't it?

http://www.archives.go​v …ves/temp-opmedia-faq.html

The disappearing standards mentioned like ST-506 and ESDI and ATA/PATA applied primarily to harddrives, but some standards applied equally to other devices like floppy drives, tape drives, optical media.

Wilt wrote in post #15636563
A government archival document puts optical media in poor light...they even comment that optical media written on unit A might not be readable on unit B!
So if you write on DVD with DVD unit A, then there is the longer term issue wondering if DVD unit A has an interface which is compatible with the device interface cards of PCs of the future. We have seen ST-506 and ESDI interfaces come and go, ATA/PATA device interfaces come and go, parallel ports come and go, no doubt USB will evolve into something new eventually.

It was an early thing with DVD that some DVD copies didn't read on all other drives.

The big thing is that a drive shouldn't be used to burn at max speed without validating that it does a good job at that speed. Only better DVD/BD burners have support for reading back # of bit errors (there are always bit errors but also error correction information on the disk).

But the reality here is that I have burned a huge number of CD, DVD and BD. Regularly read them to verify. Have not had a single failure in all these years (and we are talking all the way since the CD was new an 2x was leet speed). Quality of disks matter, while all the scary reports tends to include info about real crappy disks.

For me, I either get a set of disks and finds out the disks are crappy directly when I use them first time. Then I just throw away. If disks are fine, then they seem to stay fine 10 or 20 years later too.

Only the BD disks I haven't had time to collect real statistics for - too few disks used and for too short time. Only been using them for maybe 3-4 years.

I have had some DVDs later unreadable. In fact, I have two free copies of Photoshop LE that came on DVD with products like my scanner and one digital camera. One copy is readble, while the other copy -- which I have read on multiple installations previously -- can no longer read!

Wilt wrote in post #15636933
I have had some DVDs later unreadable. In fact, I have two free copies of Photoshop LE that came on DVD with products like my scanner and one digital camera. One copy is readble, while the other copy -- which I have read on multiple installations previously -- can no longer read!

Unless what you have was a low-volume special distribution, that has little / nothing to do with the future stability / readibility of DVD-R or DVD+R disks. High volume distributions don't use DVD-R / DVD+R technology.

pwm2 wrote in post #15636874
It was an early thing with DVD that some DVD copies didn't read on all other drives.

I have a DVD recorder purchased about 5 years ago, and a BluRay player purchased about 2 years ago, and the BluRay cannot read the DVDs recorded on the DVD recorder! Same DVDs read fine on my 5 year old laptop!