External hard drives vs DVD's

Right now I back up all of my photos on an external hard drive and I save another copy to DVD's.

The DVD's take a long time to burn however and so I was considering saving to two different external hard drives instead of DVD's.

What do you think? Are external hard drives not reliable enough to do this? - even if I use two different external hard drives, duplicates of one another?

HDD are nice because they are fast, but also can fail much faster than a DVD can.

The DVD is read-only, will probably last longer than the HDD and you can take it and put in a different location, parents house, safety deposit box, etc. HDD, if you had a fire or theft you'd lose it all.

I would say backup to a HDD and the DVD as you are doing now. If they are really slow to burn get a faster burner, even a external firewire or usb 2 if you had to (although internal would be a bit faster)

aram535 wrote in post #5911823
HDD are nice because they are fast, but also can fail much faster than a DVD can.

Very true, I accidently knocked one of my 500gb externals (LaCie) onto the side of my PC - whilst it (external HDD) was running and it stopped working.

Luckily there wasn't much on it - you have to be very careful with external drives

i considered dvds then someone here talked me out of it. right now, i download my pics via lightroom to my main external HD while backing up to a 2nd. both are 500 GB Western digital.
i'm glad i did it as the dvd thing was pain and becoming cumbersome.

whatever method(s) you choose youll have cons to concider..

hard disks - fast and large size storage yet prone to failure and are fragile
dvd - not fragile, easy to store yet slow writing and scratches will cause issues

the more different types of backup you use and spread them out over several locations obviously the better. personally i have copys on my work laptop, my home PC, ghost my laptop onto a work NAS and upload all my photos onto an internet based storage site.

azpix wrote in post #5913092
i considered dvds then someone here talked me out of it. right now, i download my pics via lightroom to my main external HD while backing up to a 2nd. both are 500 GB Western digital.
i'm glad i did it as the dvd thing was pain and becoming cumbersome.

I wish I could get away with what you do, but my Dell PC is getting old and my internal hard drive is only 60 GB!!! Thus, I have to move photos off of my hard drive simply due to space issues.

I will probably just keep doing what I've been doing for now unless anyone has any other suggestions. Thanks for the input.

versedmb wrote in post #5914466
I wish I could get away with what you do, but my Dell PC is getting old and my internal hard drive is only 60 GB!!! Thus, I have to move photos off of my hard drive simply due to space issues.

I will probably just keep doing what I've been doing for now unless anyone has any other suggestions. Thanks for the input.

You do know you can upgrade that drive right? Just put in the second drive, run a couple of programs and it will image your disk over to the new 750gb drive. Pull out the old, and boot off of the new disk.... viola 700gb of extra space.

aram535 wrote in post #5911823
The DVD is read-only, will probably last longer than the HDD and you can take it and put in a different location, parents house, safety deposit box, etc. HDD, if you had a fire or theft you'd lose it all.)

Optical dyes in color films are damaged by light and by a number of common chemical fumes (wood! PVC!)Optical dyes make up a burnable DVD, and they have to be alterable at very high spin rate by the laser (faster than burnable CD), so does that sound at all stable to you? the RW type are the worst of all for permanane and the +R are the best of the DVD types in terms of long term. But there is NO FIELD PROVEN storage media that has over 50 year actual track record for permanence other than magnetic recording, not optical recording!

aram535 wrote in post #5911823
I would say backup to a HDD and the DVD as you are doing now.

For backup, DVD is fine. For archive, stick to harddrives that are not locked into the ever-changing CPU bus and harrdrive controller standards! USB external harddrives are a reasonable and portable way to copy data.

Wilt wrote in post #5921060
Optical dyes in color films are damaged by light and by a number of common chemical fumes (wood! PVC!)Optical dyes make up a burnable DVD, and they have to be alterable at very high spin rate by the laser (faster than burnable CD), so does that sound at all stable to you? the RW type are the worst of all for permanane and the +R are the best of the DVD types in terms of long term. But there is NO FIELD PROVEN storage media that has over 50 year actual track record for permanence other than magnetic recording, not optical recording!



For backup, DVD is fine. For archive, stick to harddrives that are not locked into the ever-changing CPU bus and harrdrive controller standards! USB external harddrives are a reasonable and portable way to copy data.

I would have to disagree with you just form experience, on everything but the ReadWritables. We're also talking DVDs more than CDs and there is no DVD-RW in general use today.

I don't think I have had a single hard drive ever that has lasted more than 10 years. Every one of them has failed. It's crazy to say a hard disk with its electronics, moving parts, multiple heads sitting on a platter as thin as your hair will last longer than a disc.

I still have my first backup cds and they work great (~15+ years now).

Get quality CDs/DVDs (not $0.01/disc ones) you can feel the difference when you hold a good one and a crappy one. Don't write on them with a Pen/Pencile/Sharpie, use a ball point. Put them in a proper case (not a paper sleeve) and put them in a bubblewrap or elecrostatic bag. They will last for a lifetime. If you really are worried, you can duplicate them every 25 years for pennies on the dollar.

[QUOTE=aram535;5927949​]I would have to disagree with you just form experience, on everything but the ReadWritables. We're also talking DVDs more than CDs and there is no DVD-RW in general use today.

aram535 wrote in post #5927949
I don't think I have had a single hard drive ever that has lasted more than 10 years. Every one of them has failed. It's crazy to say a hard disk with its electronics, moving parts, multiple heads sitting on a platter as thin as your hair will last longer than a disc.

No, the point was not the mechanical durability, but the durability of the recording media...magnetics has been in use now for over 60 years (70 years?) You can always TURN OFF a harddrive and the recording will continue to sit there with the permanence of magnetics...in fact my USB drives are never powered on unless I am retrieving or writing data to them...stretching out the hours in the MTBF stats.

OTOH we have only statistical analysis about the durability of optical dyes in CD and DVD, and we know that there is ONE long lasting dye family among the several CD dye famililes. And the manufacturers are being very, very secretive about DVD dyes. One thing that is known about DVD is that the DVD+R has better error checking than the other DVD technologies in the recording stream. And we do have incidents reported about CD-written data no longer retrieveable, including doctoral thesis work!

aram535 wrote in post #5927949
I still have my first backup cds and they work great (~15+ years now).

Yes, and I also know of incidents of failed burnable CD and DVD! I have one, myself.

aram535 wrote in post #5927949
Get quality CDs/DVDs (not $0.01/disc ones) you can feel the difference when you hold a good one and a crappy one. Don't write on them with a Pen/Pencile/Sharpie, use a ball point. Put them in a proper case (not a paper sleeve) and put them in a bubblewrap or elecrostatic bag. They will last for a lifetime. If you really are worried, you can duplicate them every 25 years for pennies on the dollar.

All good recommendations...exce​pt I have my doubts about the bubblewrap or electrostatic bag. I dunno about those, I do know that plasticizers in vinyl are bad on organic dyes, polyethylene is OK...one indicator is that if a photocopy sticks to it after it has been in contact for a while, bad; if not, good.

Get four 750 GB drives and setup a RAID5. Absitively posolutely guaranteed.

UncleRojelio wrote in post #5930410
Get four 750 GB drives and setup a RAID5. Absitively posolutely guaranteed.

Talk to the guy whose RAID failed when the fan when out, causing all the harddrives to fry!

If the data is that important, then get an internet based backup system along with the normal hdd backup.

i've always heard that CDs lasted longer and were more stable than DVDs. there are some companies, such as Delkin, that make archiveable CD, DVD media. the cds they say are rated for 300 ear, and dvd are rated for 100 years. they have some sort of gold plating or something, they make some that are more scratch resistant, the normal gold ones, and then ones you can print to. i'm sure in 10 years there will be a new media and everyone will start transferring files over to that.
in addition to what aram535 said, they make a set of markers that are designed for writing on the surface. i have some (red, blue, green, black) made by memorex. and i'm sure other companies also make them

one question i would like to ad that is relevant to this: are you supposed to store the CD/DVD upright (vertical), or flat (horizontal)? i've heard people swear by both.

jmcder53 wrote in post #5930641
one question i would like to ad that is relevant to this: are you supposed to store the CD/DVD upright (vertical), or flat (horizontal)? i've heard people swear by both.

upright