Backup to Blu-ray

FTb-n

Canonet QL17 GIII
Sep 22, 2012
532
8
St. Paul, MN
Anyone writing images to Blu-ray discs as part of you backup strategy? If so, which size disc?

I currently backup to multiple external hard drives. Previously, before 25+MB RAW images, I also burned images to DVD. A couple years ago I started burning to 25 GB Blu-ray, but I've fallen behind. I've also had write issues with some discs failing. Grouping images to fit 25 GB discs can also be a pain. It's now cheaper and easier to get another external drive, like the WD My Passport to use as a backup. But, will a hard drive only strategy be reliable in the long run?

There is something about write-once media without moving parts (like Blu-ray discs) that intuitively seems to be more reliable for long-term storage than moving-platter-based media. But, I've had issues with burning discs on one drive that can't be read on another (even after finalizing them). This leaves me with the fear that I could burn a bunch of discs on a drive that might drift out alignment only to find out years later that I can't read them.

I would like to incorporate the cloud, but last year (2014), I accumulated over 33,000 RAW images that consume roughly 950 GB. A TB/year can of data on the cloud can get expensive quick.
 
Nov 1, 2012
1,549
269
Just checked, I've shot 1.85TB during 2014.

No way I'm burning those to discs.

I use 3TB drives, and double those. So after editing on my faster SSD, I copy everything on 2 separate external drives.

Currently 3TB drives are less than $100 each, so <$200 investment takes me maybe 1.5 years. Not bad.

There's several online backups with flat fee, so in theory they'd be cheaper but uploading everything would be impossible task.
 
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http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/aboutblu-ray/whatisblu-raydisc/bdkeycharacteristics.aspx

According to the site, the technology will be relevant for at least 10-15 years from now.
As the discs have not been around for very long so it is not known how well they hold their information.
An estimate I found was 100 to 150 years. That's cool. Currently I am using hard disks.
How long does it take to write a 25GB BlueRay disc?

Cloud is not an option here with the current Net bandwidth.
And what if North Korea hacks the cloud server like they (supposedly) did with Sony? Or worse still, the Lezard Squad...
 
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Mar 1, 2012
801
17
For optical archiving, there's M-Disc...
http://www.mdisc.com/
Um, even with 25GB Blu-Ray discs, you'll need 40 of them for 1 TB.

For real simple HDD or SSD backups in a tower, the drive bay shown below takes any SATA interface 2.5" or/and a 3.5" drive in a slot (two at a time, one each size possible), no other enclosure needed.
Simply pop a drive in, switch on the bay's power, drive shows up as a removable USB 3 device.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998185

A couple reviewers had issues with drives not being recognized, ignore those reviewers. There are no active components anywhere in the device, it has just straight through connections from the device to the motherboard's USB headers. Those reviewers had other issues that they blamed on the bay.


17-998-185-TS




.
 
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Marsu42

Canon Pride.
Feb 7, 2012
6,310
0
Berlin
der-tierfotograf.de
No joke: If you want to preserve information, carve it into stone tablets or write it on paryrus scrolls (the ones from ancient egypt are still around because they don't contain acid as modern paper). Alas, digital image data doesn't fit on them :-\

martti said:
An estimate I found was 100 to 150 years. That's cool.

Right. And pigs can fly :->

martti said:
Currently I am using hard disks.

Imho the best strategy for us laymen, you just have to spin 'em up now and again - and to make sure, you actually have to *re-write* the data sooner or later to refresh the magnetic information.

If you have too much data, there's always the option for *lossy* archival (like lossy dng, jpeg, ...) for non-critical data. I know archival experts will cringe at the though, but do you really need a 1:1 raw backup of all your doggy shots as the original storage space isn't very likely to fail in the first place?

martti said:
And what if North Korea hacks the cloud server like they (supposedly) did with Sony? Or worse still, the Lezard Squad...

Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear :)
 
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Marsu42: Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear :)
Was it Michael Hayden who said that? The "Drown them a bit"-Hayden?

Did you know that 'marsu' means 'guinea pig' in Finnish? A misunderstanding from the German word 'marschwein'.

Apple's TimeCapsule gave be very hard time and my daughter, too. That was a mechanical issue with overheating and short circuit. It is possible that they solved the problem but no thank you. I do TimeMachine BU's after every upload and before updates and every once in a while a disc image with SuperDuper on a different disc.
I would love to have a WiFi backup disc but my IP cuts the connection several times a day. Yes, the WiFi, too.
Their excuses are funny. Ha-ha.

You pointed out the millions of doggyshots that just take up space. It takes time to only keep the keepers.
I am too lazy. Getting a bit better, though.
 
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Steve Balcombe

Too much gear
Aug 1, 2014
283
223
The number one golden rule of backup/archive (no real difference between the two here) is it must be *EASY* so you will actually do it promptly and regularly. One of the best decisions I ever made was to invest in a good NAS box - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Synology-DS413j-DiskStation-Desktop-Server/dp/B0095RYB36 but that was a while ago, there may be a better choice now. I fitted two 3 TB drives in a RAID 1 (mirror) configuration so it is as proof against hardware failure as I can make it. At some point I will fit a further two drives to give me more capacity.

My normal routine is to download files from camera to local hard drive (also RAID 1); delete any obvious dross then backup to the NAS. Only at that point, when I have two secure copies, do I format my memory cards.
 
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Marsu42

Canon Pride.
Feb 7, 2012
6,310
0
Berlin
der-tierfotograf.de
Steve Balcombe said:
The number one golden rule of backup/archive (no real difference between the two here) is it must be *EASY* so you will actually do it promptly and regularly.

Excellent point!

martti said:
Was it Michael Hayden who said that? The "Drown them a bit"-Hayden?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who've said it, at least in one way or the other. But the real problem is that there are no ends of the "silent majority" (Nixon) who *think* it. Well, imho the latest hacks of Sony and celebs might do some good here - even though the outcome probably only is "Never say anything controversial or put any private data online".

martti said:
You pointed out the millions of doggyshots that just take up space. It takes time to only keep the keepers.
I am too lazy. Getting a bit better, though.

Same here, sorting through the shots takes longer than postprocessing and shooting itself. My strategy is to "whitelist" the definite keepers, then archive the rest as lossy dng in case I have to pull them out against expectations. The decision to blacklist and delete shots forever makes it harder for me to decide.

martti said:
Did you know that 'marsu' means 'guinea pig' in Finnish? A misunderstanding from the German word 'marschwein'.

Interesting, esp. es "Meerschwein" (German) is a mis-conception in the first place - obviously guinea pigs are a completely different class of animal than the "oink, oink" pigs. But guinea pig fits perfectly - I've got several, two of them are right next to me on my desk, sleeping in their little houses :)

As for Marsu: It's from a comic book, I just happened to change my avatar atm.
13_ctln1.jpg
 
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dppaskewitz

CR Pro
Jul 19, 2011
186
9
76
So far, I've been downloading to an external hard drive (I use a laptop as my main computer and don't have enough room on it for anything except my LR catalog), burn to a DVD (and more recently, BluRay) then reformat the camera card. I have a second external hard drive. Once a day, drive one synchs with drive two (any changes on drive one are repeated on drive two, whether new CR2s, changes to XMPs, deletions (from culling), etc.). The point is that I should be reasonably secure from a mechanical failure of one hard drive. And at least in theory I have a back up of the original CR2s and the initial XMPs on DVD or BluRay - so that if there is data corruption on the hard drives (and any corruption would be copied from drive one to drive two as I understand it), at least I could restore originals from DVD or BluRay. Obviously, any post processing of a corrupted file would likely be lost. My LR catalog is in my Dropbox, so is stored on the cloud as well as on my internal hard drive. And drive one is a portable, so I can take it all with me when I travel.

Holes that I see in my system: (a) loss of all drives and DVDs/BluRays from, for example, fire; (b) no "future proofing" (archiving so that my kids/grandkids can see my photos in 30 years (when I am likely not around to continue upgrading to new hardware) - not that they care; (c) the aforementioned lack of protection of post processed files from data corruption.

I guess the points are: in the long run, storing on multiple HDDs seems to be the way to go, because they can be kept current with most recent changes. Cloud storage would solve the fire/earthquake issue, but at what cost (even as an amateur, I have over 1 TB of old dog photos) and convenience (with a fast connection, it would still take shortly less than forever to initially put everything into the cloud). Is there some way to easily (regularly and automatically) check for data corruption?
 
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Aug 29, 2013
195
1
I gave up writing to disc years ago. A combination of factors from the increase in the amount of data I need to backup to the disc write times (and number of discs needed) to the plummeting cost of external hard drives has me simply writing to multiple externals. I was intrigued but only momentarily by the MDisc. The longevity claims are interesting but I would quickly fill a room with stacks of them. And the burn times...yeesh. Might be practical for someone backing up the occasional couple of gigs of stuff but not when you have tbs of stuff.
Bang for the buck these days, no matter if you have a little info to backup or tons is externals drives. If you want to get paranoid, make sure you have a few, store some in other locations if you can or buy fireproof/waterproof ones.
I like the dock that tolusina posted. I have an older external Thermaltake dock for hds and use that for casual personal backups on various drives too. I think my next tower build will include that dock. With the price of SSDs dropping too, that will likely become the practical backup solution to simply pop in one of those and backup a ton of stuff in seconds.
 
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I'm a big music fan and archived a bunch of concerts(maybe 500cds) on the highest quality cd's I could buy(at a reasonable price, maybe $30 for a 50pack) about ten years ago...sony
I made double copies and kept the second copies in jewel cases in a box in a cool, dry closet. I never played them, or touched them.
ten years later, almost half of them have lost their sony paint on the top side and are now basically clear, and totally unplayable. I'm super pissed.
don't believe that cd's, dvd's or blu ray will last 100 years. that is 100% BS.
I now have triple backups of everything on different external hard drives in different locations(one at home, one at my mom's house, etc)
 
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martti said:
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/aboutblu-ray/whatisblu-raydisc/bdkeycharacteristics.aspx

According to the site, the technology will be relevant for at least 10-15 years from now.
As the discs have not been around for very long so it is not known how well they hold their information.
An estimate I found was 100 to 150 years. That's cool. Currently I am using hard disks.

I'm not sure you can trust what that site says, it appears to be a marketing type site. My personal opinion of marketing has always been: lie as much as you can without getting into too much trouble.

I can't speak for the longevity of BD. But I do have data from previous generations of optical media, and saying those discs will work 100-150 years from now is pure hilarity.

In my experience, user writeable optical media has a reliable life span of AT MOST 1 year. I've got discs that lasted longer then that, some much longer, but NONE have lasted longer then 10 years (CDRs), and most haven't lasted longer then about 3 years for CDRs and ~1.5 years for DVDRs.

The reason is the chemicals used in user writeable optical media isn't very stable. Since it has to react to light to change state, it means long term stability is an issue. It's just a consequence of the technology.

Again, I can't speak for BluRay, my oldest BluRay disk is about 2 years old, it's still readable, but I don't hold up much hope.

Note that PRESSED optical media is a different beast altogether, aside from some issues with early CDs (the aluminium oxidized, google "CD rot") they will I believe last many decades. I have commercially pressed CDs that are 30 years and still play fine, and commercial DVDs that are maybe ~10+ years old play fine as well.

Personally, the only viable backup media at the moment is multiple harddrives. Replace them every few years and you'll be good to go.

TTYL
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
293
tolusina said:
For optical archiving, there's M-Disc...
http://www.mdisc.com/
Um, even with 25GB Blu-Ray discs, you'll need 40 of them for 1 TB.

I'm going to give M-Disc a try, but only for those image subset I can't really afford to lose. I'm not going to backup everything on them, because they still require more storage space than TBs sized hard disks.
IMHO a sensible backup strategy doesn't threat each file equal - but you need to assess which ones are more important and need better, although more expensive protection, and which don't.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
16,848
1,835
EchoLocation said:
I'm a big music fan and archived a bunch of concerts(maybe 500cds) on the highest quality cd's I could buy(at a reasonable price, maybe $30 for a 50pack) about ten years ago...sony
I made double copies and kept the second copies in jewel cases in a box in a cool, dry closet. I never played them, or touched them.
ten years later, almost half of them have lost their sony paint on the top side and are now basically clear, and totally unplayable. I'm super pissed.
don't believe that cd's, dvd's or blu ray will last 100 years. that is 100% BS.
I now have triple backups of everything on different external hard drives in different locations(one at home, one at my mom's house, etc)

The early CD's often did not last a year, once the tech matured in about 2005, I've had no issues when using the best quality disks.

Right now I use Verbatim disks, they seem to be very reliable.

However, Hard drives have been far more reliable than disks for me, even so, its necessary to copy things avery few years. I keep my backups on a NAS. That automatically keeps a backup, and it has the benefit of becoming obsolete over time, so I move things to a new NAS with new drives every few years.

I have a big box of floppies that were carefully stored in the 1980's. Many of these can no longer be read, but the program disks as opposed to home written data disks are mostly still good. I pulled out a very old Microsoft Dos 5.5 disk last year, and installed it to run some very old software. I had to buy a replacement power supply for my old computer in order to run it. (The power supply had died and I never bothered to fix it)
 
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I used the DVD-RAM media (rewritable professional standard) for more than 10 years, writing and rewriting again and again, and I know it really last many decades. Unfortunately, the high price made it uncompetitive, and today the market is most new readers incompatible with this type of disc.

I imagine the M-DISC have the same type of material, durable and resistant for passing years.
 
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OK, IT Geek here. I'm just going to say this...

Burnable Media = DVD/CD/Blu-Ray/Whatever = NOT Long Term, the chemicals/dyes fade/die over the years.

Magnetic Media = Hard Drives ONLY = GREAT Long Term, the technology is mature and reliable over the years. NOT RAID Arrays. (RAID is fault tolerant working storage, not for long term archiving.) KISS. Simple is best. 2.5" Ext Drives, not large AC powered drives.

Pressed Media = CDs, etc that are actual metal media, not dye based = BEST Long Term, nothing to fade or corrupt as long as the physical medium, plastic, metal film, etc are not corrupted by heat, sun, or physical abuse like scratches, etc.

It all comes down to what the archive goals are. In general, I put everything on large external hard drives and store them in a cool, dark, fireproof place and check them every year or two. Refresh if necc. Create two copies if necc.

Read about how the big boys, National Archives, etc are facing this challenge and all the things they are trying to overcome. It's a fascinating topic.
 
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