How To Choose Archival CD/DVD Media 225
An anonymous reader tips us to an article by Patrick McFarland, the well-known Free Software Magazine author, going into great detail on CD/DVD media. McFarland covers the history of these media from CDs through recordable DVDs, explaining the various formats and their strengths and drawbacks. The heart of the article is an essay on the DVD-R vs. DVD+R recording standards, leading to McFarland's recommendation for which media he buys for archival storage. Spoiler: it's Taiyo Yuden DVD+R all the way. From the article: "Unlike pressed CDs/DVDs, 'burnt' CDs/DVDs can eventually 'fade,' due to five things that affect the quality of CD media: sealing method, reflective layer, organic dye makeup, where it was manufactured, and your storage practices (please keep all media out of direct sunlight, in a nice cool dry dark place, in acid-free plastic containers; this will triple the lifetime of any media)."
This bears repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeating again and again and again:
For backups and archival you need tape backups, stored offsite. If you want something with more capacity and faster recovery, a backup server with rsync and beefy hard drives. Nothing else will do. With the time and effort you'll spend searching and writing DVD media you could have already bought and set up a file server or bought that tape drive.
Unless you're going to be taking those backups with you and using them in high volume, backing up to DVDs is simply a waste of time and space, and when you get some dreaded CRC errors you'll be crying for not having done otherwise.
sig: Cosas varias de un sysadmin argentino: http://aosinski.phpnet.us/ [phpnet.us]
Re:Safety in Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's absolutely stupid to use a DVD jukebox. Really. Look into a NAS box with RAID.
Re:I have CDs good since 1998 (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably using the original dyes, then? According to the article, they are most likely to fail in 2008:
These people are talking about serious long-term archiving, not "it worked for this one guy for eight years".
No one has successfully used them as long as these people are talking about; they haven't existed that long. The lifespan claims are made from an understanding of chemistry (theory) and accelerated aging techniques (experiment).
All this long-life media are worth nothing... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This bears repeating (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree when it comes to backing up, but not necessarily on the archival issue. Whenever you are planning long term archival, your best shot is a nice laser print out on acid free paper. If this is simply not possible then your second best choice will be a media which you suspect you will be able to read in the next 25 years, and in this case my money is on CD/DVD rather than on a particular type of tape.
Try getting now a days a QIC tape drive which will read a 20 year old tape (QIC-40). You might be able to find a used tape drive in ebay, but I can assure you computer tapes do get eaten up, specially when the tape drive is not under pristine conditions. Sending the tape to an off site recovery center might not always be feasible (either due to the urgency of the request, data sensitivity or simply because there might be no service which can handle your format). Even now, you are better off with 3.5 inch floppies rather than QIC-40 tapes. Further more, don't even get me started on the issue that will be getting the device drivers to work on modern day hardware.
To cover your rear against data loss on unreliable media such as CDs / DVDs do make a second copy of the volume. Seriously, it takes 5 minutes and almost guarantees you that the data will be available no matter what. Store them separately, and you will be set.
Re:Bummer (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The usual vague personal testimony... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever heard of bait and switch? It's a deeply engrained trait in the human species. Under one set of conditions, such as not having much credibility to begin with, an organization will work very hard to establish the reputation of a product line. Then under another set of conditions--major stakeholders change chairs, new management team recruited, under a short-term cash-out-now incentive structure--all the expensive magic that made the original product good is discarded, and the newly watered down version of the reputable product continues to be marketed with no mention that it was changed at all.
Do you need that again in a short sentence? Brands suck. The brand is not the product.
I used to buy a lot of bottled pasta sauce under the Classico brand. No added corn sugar. Tasted like food. The tomatoes tasted like they were delivered to the factory on a flat-bed truck in the kinds of crates they picture on the front of the bottle. Then the situation turned evil. Some new brand manager decided to move the brand upscale. The best flavour of all, the plain onion and garlic, was replaced with a roast garlic that tasted like crap. Prices went up. The tomatoes began to take on the appearance of a puree. Now it is impossible to open a jar without thinking the tomatoes were delivered to the factory in a tanker trunk. The body of the sauce now conveys the impression "ultrasonically homogenized". All the bottles have fancier flavours and labels than ever before, and the price is higher for an inferior product.
This has nothing to do with experts whatsoever, and every to do with the human necessity of people needed to make themselves look good (e.g. in their role as the marketing director) at the expense of end result.
Brands exist to convey the message that you're still getting the good stuff long after the good stuff has taking the building with it, and the only left is debasement.
Burned verses Pressed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This bears repeating (Score:1, Insightful)
For backups and archival you need tape backups,
No.
For reliable 50+ year archival, you should consider UDO [plasmon.com]. 30GB per disc (15 per side) with a garanteed life of 50 years.