Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sevenlayermuddle]

Anybody have any thoughts suitability of using BD-R for long-term backup storage?

I've recently added a Blu Ray reader/writer to one of my PCs, and had planned to use it (among other things) to take occasional snapshots of personal data for long-term backups.

But  when I came to order some blank BD-R media, I notice that there's a recurrent theme in the amazon reviews for one particular brand (let's not name it), where people say the disks became unreadable after a year in storage.  I can play it safe and buy premium branded disks, but it's difficult to form opinions of other brands as few of them have been available (cheaply) for long enough for anybody to really know whether the data will be long-term stable. 

I have to say I'm fussy about backups.   I always tend to burn two copies of backups then one gets kept in the study, the other goes on a shelf the garage, and occasionally one gets stored somewhere miles away.  That gives me acceptable protection against either a disaster such as fire that destroys just the house, or even the house and garage together.   I suppose I could still be caught out by a country-wide obliteration by nuclear holocaust, but one can worry too much.   

[exo]

Verbatim are normally good and reliable.

Longevity should be good. I have some Philips CD-RW, over 10 years old, used for data storage and still going strong.

exo

[jeffbb]

Hi
quote :I could still be caught out by a country-wide obliteration by nuclear holocaust,

Reminds me,many years ago an anti Nuclear campaigner was invited to the Nuclear Power station I was working at . Someone thought it would be good publicity ??. During the tour of the site various safety features were explained to him . One of these was  the way the cooling system was duplicated in such a way that even a serious accident would not render both systems  non-operational .
After a few seconds digesting this information he quite seriously asked . "Ah  but what happens if a nuclear bomb was to hit ?"

Regards Jeff

 

[sevenlayermuddle]

Verbatim are normally good and reliable.
Longevity should be good. I have some Philips CD-RW, over 10 years old, used for data storage and still going strong.

Thanks Exo, I will bear your recommendation in mind.  But my real concern is whether Blu Ray media will prove as resilient as CDs and DVDs.  Maybe only time will tell.   

After a few seconds digesting this information he quite seriously asked . "Ah  but what happens if a nuclear bomb was to hit ?"

I wonder what his strategy for personal data backups, of family photos and the likes in the event of thermonuclear armageddon, would be? 

[exo]

As a blue ray disc hold more data, the data is closer to the surface than a normal DVD disc.
This makes the data vulnerable to scratches and rough handling of the disc.
Verbatim have pioneered their own proprietary HardCoat finish which adds extra protection from scratches and fingerprints and is more resilient than a standard disc.

exo

[sevenlayermuddle]

Verbatim have pioneered their own proprietary HardCoat finish which adds extra protection from scratches and fingerprints and is more resilient than a standard disc.

exo

Well you talked me into it 

I've ordered a stack of (4x) verbatims to get me started.  Cheapest I could find was an amazon trader, at circa £25 inclusive for ten.  Budget brands can be got for less than half that and I can't say I wasn't tempted, but I suppose the extra spend has to be viewed as a form of 'insurance'. 

Must admit though, at £2.50 a disc, I'm certainly hoping prices will drop in near future, as did blank CDs and DVDs.   

Maybe I should set a 'reminder' somewhere to make sure I don't forget to update this thread in October 2021, and report back whether the verbatims lived up to promise.

[chrisparr]

Have you thought about using memory cards for backing up important items? I've got a couple of 16GB micro SD cards which cost less than £10 for the pair. The cost is a bit more than blu-ray, but the writing time is quicker and they aren't as prone to damage, plus they take up so little space.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Thanks for the suggestion, but cost is the stopper here.   My short-term backup strategy is simply one of regularly copying precious data to a second disc so that, if the first disc crashes, I still have a copy.   One of the problems with that is, if a file becomes corrupt and I fail to notice for a week or two, I'm just taking umpteen copies of the same corrupted file.  And of course, if the house caught fire, it is likely that I'd lose the lot.   And I certainly don't trust commercial backup software... it could be 'buggy' such that restored files don't work, or the vendor may not produce a version for (say) windows vista that restores files originally backed up on CP/M.

So, I also like to have a second strategy of taking plain, uncompressed and unoptimised permanent copies of stuff whenever I get the urge.   I can then go back a few days, a month, a year, or a decade or more, until I find a good copy of any affected file.   At present, the cost of maintaining all that using SD cards seems excessive.

Since starting this thread, the price of Blu-Rays has about halved, although admittedly I couldn't find any (credible) source which had any in stock at these low prices, when I looked a day or two ago.