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Time to Purchase a DVD-R?
Evanrude asks: "With DVD writers having significantly come down in price over the past year more companies are coming out with their version of the DVD-R. My company has a large file archive of documents and data that don't necessarily need to be stored on read/write media, but need to be kept online. I want to accomplish this with online DVD storage but is this the right way to go? Who has the best value with the most features of all the DVD-R's on the market? What are some things to look for and things to avoid when purchasing a DVD-R? Is it even time to purchase one, or should I wait another six months?"
I would say to most people to wait, the standards haven't been entirely ironed out. But it seems that if you need large amounts of online storage and don't really need to worry about compatibility, I'd say go for it.
You'd have to have a fairly large jukebox system before it would begin to be cost-competitive with hard drive storage, wouldn't you? How much data are we talking about here?
I've been thinking of getting a dvd writer drive as well, but decided to wait. Mainly because there's too many differences in the writers, there's dvd-r, dvd+rw, dvd-rw and so on... I donno, maybe some of those are the same format. I read a couple articles about how certain types are better than others and how one was supposed to have support for just read only (currently it's rw), then backed out of that, and so on.
So I think it'd be better to wait till they got a format that was agreed upon by all. Otherwise it reminds me too much of the k56flex vs. X2.
Besides, the longer you wait, the more favorable the price will be...
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
Why mess with DVD-Anything for online storage?
I just picked up a few 120GB disks for $110/each. That will hold a lot of DVD's worth of Data. If the data needs to be kept on-line, HD's are much faster than any DVD drive. You'll also need another DVD drive for each 5-10GB of data, if using DVD's. So, the HD solution is much cheaper too.
DVD's are fine for backing up that data, but for real-time access, they are not ideal.
I've been told the only decent DVD-R drive out there is the Pioneer DVR-A04. One decent drive doesn't inspire me to go out and buy a DVD-R drive just yet. Anybody else know of a better DVD burner?
I've just been thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, there are a couple of competing standards out there now: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. The first, DVD-RAM, seems to have no future that I can see, and is apparantly a superclass for several different standards. Apple's DVD writers are the second kind and probably have the largest installed base. But it looks like the big players are going for the third ("+"). In addition, one of the -RW format's big supporters was Compaq and HP supports +RW. I'm assuming that Compaq will switch camps, leaving Apple more or less isolated. That has me leaning toward +RW.
One thing to watch out for -- the "first generation" of +RW drives can't handle write-once media. They're RW only, and the disks are more expensive. HP, for one, is releasing a second-generation writer (maybe called the 200i?) this month, that can do the write-once archival thing.
If I really needed it now, I'd go for a newer +RW format. But it would probably be less risky to wait 6-12 months to see how things shake out.
Kill, Tux, kill!
DVD burners will go the same way as CD burners. There may be a bit more competition over formats (since it's a lot more obvious how much of a cash cow DVD burning is going to be for corporations), but eventually they will become fairly inexpensive. Give it at least six more months, if not a year or so, before you consider making DVD burners part of your company's storage strategy.
The cheapest 4.7G dvd drive from pricewatch is $36 which is $7.66/gig. A 60 gig hard drive is only $69 which works out to be $1.15/gig. There just isn't any reason to use DVD for online storage when hard drive space is so cheap. The software raid driver in linux makes these large arrays easy with a trivial amount of hardware behind it.
As someone once said, that's the great thing about standards, there are so many of them. You might want to wait and let the dust settle rather than risk a heavy investment in a possible orphan format. Already HP and a couple of other makers are weasling on drives that were supposed to be software upgradeable to record more than one DVD-R or RW format, but it turns out it's not going to be that simple and the hardware will have to be replaced.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I work for a newspaper where we have just completed a cost comparison for CD based systems to DVD based systems. We have a large Image archive that was outgrowing our second 100 CD jukebox. Our quandry, should the new Jukebox be DVD or CD based.
4.1GB per disc (with double sided support not looking promising...) at 100 DVDs = 411 GB storage
100 CDs = 65GB storage. (roughly)
Our first look was at the costs associated. The Price difference between a DVD Jukebox and a CD jukebox was not insignificant, but was not a breaker. The writers have come down in price, and the Media is expensive, but not prohibitively so. So, from a simple cost perspective, the system was feasable.
However, when working with provided demo models, we found a 25% CHANCE OF BURNING A COASTER, with the write times being ridiculously slow. We then recalculated for the extra media expense and extended staffing. (The admin would need to keep a longer watch less often, but the CDs could be burned during the BU guys shift, now they will go past.)
With the addition of two hours employee time and planning for the purchase of 10% more media, the costs of DVD were slightly more. Then the vendor called, the DVD jukebox requires new switching Software that runs some $5,000.00.
So, we looked for used CD jukeboxes, found one for almost 1/2 the price of the hardware alone, and it still works with our old software.
Now, we did all of these calculations based on price per MB, and condidering the the DVD system has 7x the storage space, that also means it is 7x the cost. I feel confident that when we revisit this upgrade in 2 years the prices will be dramatically lower and the quality will be better. I still think you can't beat a $50 CDR and 0.20 media costs.
Unless you work for a company that enjoys having the latest and greatest (OOOH! I can access the SAN from my PocketPC with wireless.) I think you'd be better off sticking with the tried and true methods, wait for the writing SW to get more stable and wait for the standards to crystalize.
01 - That's my two bits
01110110 - That's the Byte I took out of "Crime"
Hammy
If you do go the DVD route, watch out for:
Running out of discs (these things go faster than you think)
Jammed discs
Depending on the client software, inane Windows error messages - quite a few programs don't know how to handle waiting for a disk to move into an active drive.
...and if you don't use Windows, well... lucky you. Just my experiences - everyone else's will undoubtedly vary.
Magnetic damage to CD's DVD's?? Hunh?? No, you HD is vulnerable to Magnetic damage because it is a magnetic storage medium.
The material that "holds" the data in most audio CD's is usually aluminum, and the way that the data is stored is through "pits" or tiny holes in the media. Other types of CD's use dye layers to
"expose" these pits, and still others use gold and other substrates to hold the data. As such, most CD's are basically immune to magnetic fields unless they are *extremely* powerful. There are
other types of CD's that do use magnetics (the Magneto-Optical CD for one) that could theoretically be affected, but it would need a
far higher strength magnetic field for a long period of time than you would probably have. It is improbable that you would come into
contact with these media in a music library (unless perhaps they are CD master pressings which are used to actually make the CD's at the
factory).
I have no Idea what you think a "True History" wold be on a non write once media type. Do you mean like a Journal in a File System?? Not needed due to the unchanging nature of the write once media. History as far as backups?? Well, write once means it can't be overwritten, so properly stored it could concievably hold the history of a file system much better than a Tape backup that gets overwritten every third week.
DVDr is great for archives that do not need to be accessed often, and are more convenient that using 7 CD's for the same purpose. Law and Real Estate firms can use them for storing scanned contracts, Graphic Artists can use them for storing large layouts, or an entire portfolio.
Goes to prove, don't believe everything you read on Slashdot.
Hammy
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
I just finished costing out a 3-petabyte database for a NASA project, and by far the cheapest way to back up data is to write them to hard drives, unplug the hard drives, and stick them in the closet. It's not an archival solution but archival media cost so much more and are so small compared to hard drives, it's ridiculous. For archival stuff we're holding out to see whether Blu-Ray takes off.
I had to take the plunge due to my having many GB's of digicam generated photos. My DLT backups were just using too many tapes.
Some random thoughts:
The second generation DVD+RW drives are just coming out. The only one availasble is the HP 200i. Here's an overview of the 2nd gen drives, and here's an overview of the 1st gen drives.
The 2nd generation drives support DVD+R, many of the 1st do not.
TheNerds.net have the best media prices. I looked a lot and could find no better.
The HP drive, which I bought, comes with "drive letter access" software. Basically, a packet writer so you can just use the Windows explorer (yes, where I use the drive) to drag and drop files onto it. I have the suspicion that my McAfee VirusScan 4.5.1 stopped working when I installed the HP software. McAfee has not been able to figure out why their software is not working (service error 5011, which is a timeout of some sort).
I've been trying to author some DVD's, and I had good luck playing my DVD+RW's in my DVD player. I used a trial of Uleads DVD Workshop.
I held off until the 2nd gen drives were available, and was forced to purchase the HP because it's the only one out. I would have prefered the Philips DVDRW228 over the HP, but no one has the Philips drive in stock, that I could find.
So far, I'm happy, and I'm hoping HP will update their drivers and VirusScan will start working again.
I also have been looking hard at DVD-R/+R as a backup solution, but two things worry me greatly.
#1. I want to be able to access this material 5-10 years from now. With CD-R's, if you want to protect your data we now know that you are best off with Tayio Yuden or Kodak. With DVD mediums though . . . no one has any clue what the real life on these discs are, especially since most are apparently using a different dye then CD-R's do (if you've never seen a DVD-R, on most the bottom is a light blood red).
#2. Cost. CD-R's are pretty much the cheapest backup medium now. DVD-R's are still fairly expensive, but the third option is what intrigues me. IDE drives are easily available now for $1/gig. A hot swappable IDE drive bay from Vantec runs you about $40 retail. I have seriously considered just buying IDE drives for backup, and using the hot swappable bay to change them. Much easier, much faster. What makes me nervous about this is the 'all your eggs in one basket' problem, but from my experience with hard drives, if they survive the initial part of their 'bathtub' failure cure, they are good for years.
DVD-R is neat. You probably want it. DVD technology is so cheap and getting cheaper. How do you justify buying one? That's hard because most IT employers don't seem to be hiring people in IT any more. Many people are wasting their time and money on higher IT education when a stable position will not be forthcoming. Therefore how do you pay for such a thing when the most important thing to do is find a job, any job, to keep a roof over your head, and to feed your family. Needless to mention the never ending debt that piles up when you are stuck looking for gainful employment and your nest egg turns out to be as fragile as an easter egg.
Maybe the next paycheck will purchase this DVD-R technology, but probably not because of the mortgage payments or the fact that you can easily spend and equal amount of money on gas for six months. Better win the lottery or cross your fingers if you want that new toy movie recorder.
Don't worry, this doesn't really apply to you at all! You probably got a job and can pay your bills. Cherrish what you have because it has been taken from so many.
Where is the pot of gold? The ninjas of plutocracy have stolen it away during the night and the daimyo is pleased.
Peace to all.
There are really three seperate categories you get into once you're considering moving data from primary storage. You seem to be asking about the first, but I'll cover all three for completeness.
Near-line (a.k.a secondary storage)
Primary storage almost always consists of the fastest hard drives directly attached to your data source (file server, SAN, workstation, whatever). Historically, near-line has been some medium where the end-user could access the data required in the same manner as primary storage, but at a slower rate. The old solution used to be either a different server using older/slower disks, or an RW optical jukebox. Near-line storage almost always is very high read-usage, but the occasional write isn't unlikely, so you generally want a media that can support writes.
Backups (a.k.a. save-your-ass storage)
Backups are a place to temporarily save data in case of an emergency. The criteria generally don't include re-writability, but do concern with ease-of-access in the case of a recovery. In addition, Backups expire - after a certain period of time, the data is no longer available. Tape has been the choice for this for a long time, with it's high storage capacity and low cost. Higher-end solutions have been the "on-line snapshot" capabilities of SAN and NAS devices (essentially to make a static mirror of data on extra storage space). CD-R and even floppies have been popular for the low-end. Whatever the choice is, the main concern is reliability, and the ability to backup the data within a set time window.
Archival (a.k.a save it for the history books)
This is a big one, and one frequently misunderstood. The two major criteria for Archival purposes are Survivability, and Retrievability. That is, the solution has to make sure it does NOT degrade with time (i.e. it doesn't introduce errors after sitting on the shelf for 20 years) and that you will realistically have a method to retrieve the data over it's lifetime (e.g. are they still going to have devices that can read your data media in 30 years?) Magnetic tape is a BAD THING for Archival purposes, despite its common usage. It fails on both tests. Mastered CDs (NOT CD-R) and Optical Disks are generally the preferred method here.
In the modern world, I would recommend a backup server using RAIDed IDE drives for Near-line these days. The relative cheapness of IDE drives, combined with the newer IDE RAID cards provides an unbeatable cost/storage/reliability ratio (far superior to CD, DVD, Tape, or Optical Disk), and it's by far the easiest to maintain and use, since it's simply another fileserver. Don't scrimp, however. A good one of these should probably run $3-$4k with 8-10 100GB drives, redundant power supply, and hardware RAID.
Backups are a bit more complex, and the variables make a one-size-fits-all recommendation unrealistic. And you didn't ask for that anyway, so I'm not going to make one. :-)
Archival really means you want to keep (or are required to keep) the data around, but don't need access to it much. If you don't intend to keep the data for more than 15-20 years, you can probably get away with CD-R. Otherwise, look into having your data pressed onto CD (i.e. real mastered CDs). They last a good 100 years or so, and it's relatively cheap. In either case, you want multiple copies of each disc, and the good-old CD-jukebox is your friend.
As you imply (and other posters have noted), DVD-R/RAM/RW/+RW isn't quite stabilized yet. Despite their larger capacity, I wouldn't change the above recommendations, other than replacing CDs with DVD when it settles down - DVD mastering isn't anywhere as cheap as CD mastering is (and if you do master DVDs, make sure that you specify UNENCRYPTED DVD so you don't get CSS put on accidentally).
As a side note: there's a whole industry built around Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) which deals with automatically moving data between the various storage levels, and recovering it as need be. It's a bit beyond what you describe you're looking for, but look at one of the big UNIX storage players' (Sun, HP, IBM, EMC) site for a whitepaper on it. They're a good read for concepts which you can apply, even if you're not using their multi-million-dollar hardware/software packages.
Best of luck.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Hard drives on the other hand are very cost effective:
Under 1TB $1000-$1500
1-10 TB $4,500-$45,000 10+ TB $45,000+ Since you are looking at optical you are probably looking for a system in the 1 TB range. For this I would recommend a single UltraTrak. The purchase price will be a fraction of what a optical library would cost, the reliability will be better, and the maintenance will be cheaper. Maintenance of these things is very simple: when a drive fails the alarm goes off. Buy a new drive and put it in. That's it!Optical may not look that bad when you look at the purchase price and the idea of a robot is cool but you also have to look at the cost of maintaining a machine like that in terms of time and money. When you add it all up, hard drives win every time.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
DV-R is nice to keep stuff in archive off site, but even with the current price of about $5 for a blank, it will take you $75 of blanks (15 DV-Rs each having 4 gb each) to get the amount of storage that you would get on a 60 gb drive for the same price. Faster access, less time to create the media, etc. Put it in one of the cheap 3.5 inch firewire enclosures, and it will even take up less space than 15 DV-Rs.
Personally, the solution I have gone for is to put together a 1/2 terabyte server on my network. For the cost of $80 for a case, $80 for a motherboard, $80 for a cpu chip, $80 for memory, $640 for 8 60 gb disk drives (at $80 ea), and $80 bucks for 2 more ide controllers, you can get a ~1/2 terabyte server for $1040. Run a Linux and put up Samba and Appleshare for free. Super high performance, not. But enough to do storage of infrequently used files and backup space.
For data storage, this will be a godsend - and the prospect of a 1080i high-defintion movie on a single disk has me salivating.
The problem with the format, as I see it, is twofold:
- When can it be introduced? HD-DVDs for data can't be introduced soon enough - but the entertainment companies will logically want to wait until "standard" DVDs thoroughly saturate the market before introducing HD-DVD.
- Will the MPAA and its ilk keep their hands off it? With a good projector, screen and viewing environment 1080i will be within spitting distance of a true theatrical experience. Naturally, the MPAA will be terrified of this experience being compromised, and at the prospect of HD films being distributed on the web (on the other hand, the sheer file size of HD movie files might preclude that - I don't see cable companies increasing their user bandwidths anytime soon.)
When can it be expected? Most bets are on 2004 / 2005. Maybe they'll learn from the DVD-R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM fiasco to stick to a common read-write standard, tho I wouldn't put money on it. If they do decide to fight, it might be 2006 before the standard is settled - which is a real long wait, in computer terms.Anyway, my $0.01 (the Canadian exchange rate sucks)
"Don't critisize. Create a better alternative."
With the Pioneer A03 and A04, you can --
(1) make DVD's that play on your settop box
(2) burn 4450 megs of file onto a platter.
What more do you need? I love my A03.
Lastly, as to 20 year old harddrives being incompatible with today's, yes that is true. But you have no crystal ball, and you can't say that today's HDDs will be inaccessible in 20 years, nor can you be sure that CD and DVD will continue to be familiar formats. Besides, if the data is important enough to be kept around, chances are the hardware to access it will be too (or haven't you seen machine rooms that still use tape backups from X years ago?)
Unless you want to make video DVDs, don't buy one (at least not yet). Not only are the drives quite expensive, but the disks are also more expensive (per MB) than CD-Rs. Buy a good CDRW drive (DVD recorders are not very good at recording CDs).
And 4.3 GB really aren't a lot. It's not even enough to store one hour of DV video (13 GB).
In a few months or a year you will have a) much cheaper DVD-Rs and b) new optical discs, likely to be over 10 times bigger than DVD-Rs.
On the other hand, if you do want to make video DVDs, make sure you buy a drive that will record in a format compatible with most readers. Mine is a Pioneer (DVR-A03) and so far all discs have worked fine in all set-top players I have tried. From what I've heard, DVD-RW and DVD+RW have problems with a lot of players (especially old ones, but also some recent models). There is a nice list of formats and players here:
VCD Help DVD players compatibility list
Also, most "consumer" DVD authoring programs are crap. Be ready to pay at least an extra 1000 dollars / euros on software if you want to be able to do any interesting stuff like multiple audio tracks, animated menus, etc..
To do the MPEG-2 encoding, I use TMPGEnc (slow but has the best quality, IMO). I wrote a small guide that you can find here.
RMN
~~~
A couple of years ago, Apple started offering it as an option. At exactly the same time, a number of PC vendors did. One of my colleagues at work ordered a new PC and it just "came with" DVD-RAM. So, I figured it was going to be standard and I ordered it on my own Mac.
The media started out being very expensive--$40 for 2.6 gig. Now the price of the media is reasonable, but the format is all but orphaned.
I'm using DVD-RAM as my backup medium, but I have to wonder whether any future machine I buy will actually be able to read the things.
So, I jumped in too soon and I'm sorry.
Is it time for DVD-R, or DVD+R? Don't ask me. I thought it was time for DVD-RAM and I was wrong.
Oh, well, at least I bought a ZIP drive when a colleague was buying some kind of magneto-optical 135-megabyte device that was faster/cheaper/better/orphaned...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
A number of folks here are claiming DVD-R blanks are $5 each.
I've been buying them from esbuy.com, for about $1.20 each.
If you search pricewatch.com, you can find the DVR-104 (OEM version of DVR-A04) Pioneer drive for $260.
The burn speeds are decent (beats DVD-RAM!), and it's compatible with (nearly all) DVD Video players that are less than a year old.
For what you want, you'd be MUCH better off with a SAN and some sort of silo. DVD's have a tendency to grow feet. Security wise, I'd never do a DVD jukebox. It's too easy for stuff to go bye bye. The san can be backed up by a IBM silo running Tivoli or a StorageTek unit or something similar. For those who say that tape technology has not kept up, you can tell they are PC centric and never look beyond it. I have Magstar tapes that are 7 gigs uncompressed and a library that holds tons of them (around 100-200 at least...if not more). Also, I would rather not have 2 TB tapes. Too easy for you to loose something if it's only on one tape (of course you could backup multiple times, but your goig to do that anyway right?). The nice thing about the IBM/Tivoli units is when you run out of space, you can just get another silo, and more SAN. Your existing Tivoli server can still be used to back things up. Some say well, tapes have legs too....yeah, but it's MUCH harder for someone to swipe one if the door's locked and it's in a card accessed data center. I know the DVD jukes could be locked too, but it's much more tempting to try to steal something more commonly available. How easy is it to find a Magstar tape drive that a home user/hacker could afford?? DVD Juke's are not that great of a idea. I can't guarantee reliablity or data retrieval on a DVD. On a SAN I more readily can do this(and the SAN would be much faster to boot!). And if the data doesn't change, you can always have the users mount the drives in a read only status. Then they can't over write the files.
Gorkman
Ehh... about choice number 1 in your list; only if you're REAL lucky.
I originally had a Phillips DVD+RW drive, and quickly learned it wasn't compatible with anything but itself, and some of the DVD-ROM drives in computers out there. I returned it promptly.
Then, I read all the hype about the Pioneer A03 (and now A04) being the only sensible choice, since the write-once DVD-R media it burns is much more compatible with the average set-top DVD player.
I bought my A03, and while the drive seems to be great quality -- I haven't had any luck making a DVD movie that plays on anything other than a computer's DVD-ROM drive.
My Sony Playstation 2 makes a pretty valiant effort to play the DVD-R movies - but they seem to start getting read errors as you near the end of the disc. This is really frustrating when you're watching a 90 min. long or so movie, and right when it hits the action-packed climax - it stutters and quits playing with an "invalid media" message on the screen!
I also own a Samsung set-top DVD player (the model 812). It refuses to play anything on DVD-R discs I create. It seems to read the disc and recognize it as valid - but then it typically gets errors trying to bring up the initial menu screens. If you ignore that and press PLAY, it starts playing but skips large portions of the movie, freezes occasionally, and the sound stutters.
In my experience so far, the people tabulating lists of which DVD players are "compatible" are simply dropping DVD-R discs in the devices and seeing if it recognizes them as a movie. That's only the first part of the battle, folks. If it can't play the entire movie error-free, what's the use?
Leave it to someone to post a question like this after I've already made the decision to buy the technology in question. Although I won't get my Pioneer DVR-104 until later this week, I've already done my homework on the subject. I wanted a DVD-storage solution to backup lots and lots of TV shows that I have gathered/recorded over the past few months. Realizing that my 20GB+ of DivX videos was going to take a LOT of CD-R's, I decided that 4.7GB of storage per disc was the way to archive. That, and my set-top JVC player understands the DVD-R and DVD-RW if I want to make my own video disks (and yes, I meant to say -R and -RW, not +R/+RW, and I don't want to get into that discussion--I've already read up on that flame war).
Anyway, the Pioneer drive is supposedly the top of the line, consumer version of the A04 (for general use DVD-R disks)--and it also burns CD-R's at 8x, so you get a 2-in-1 drive if you don't already have a CD-R burner. I also looked at the prices of the media, which have drastically dropped in price, down to about $2 a disk. Now, is this all worth it? I don't know--if enough ppl ask, I may post a review with this comment after I get my drive this week. In the meantime, I will say that I ordered my drive for $275 using PriceWatch.com as my guide. I remember getting my SCSI Yamaha 4x CD-R burner for almost $400, and spending $2-3 for the media, which was only about 3-4 years ago. I know I've been an early adopter, but I think DVD is the way to go for a lot of people--just give it some thought as to whether it's for you or not.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
That's a valid point. As long as you leave the harddrive in place, that's true. But if you have it in a swap mount, things look different. The point is, a DVD is a plastic disc. A harddrive contains a lot of moving parts and sensitive electronics. The data on a DVD is burnt into a layer of dye. On a harddrive, the information is encoded as tiny magnetic fields, which decay over time.
[DVDs] Are also proprietary. Are you sure your DVD-R can read the DVD you burned on another company's DVD-R?
Almost every DVD drive or player you can buy right now can at least read DVD-Rs. Older ones probably too. I don't know about the other standards, but DVD-R seems to be the most agreed upon.
Data on a DVD-R can't be intentionally erased, or even modified. This isn't necessarily a good thing. Depends on how up-to-date you need your data to be, doesn't it?
Of course, depends on the type of data. To quote the original poster: "My company has a large file archive of documents and data that don't necessarily need to be stored on read/write media [...]"
Lastly, as to 20 year old harddrives being incompatible with today's, yes that is true. But you have no crystal ball, and you can't say that today's HDDs will be inaccessible in 20 years, nor can you be sure that CD and DVD will continue to be familiar formats.
There's very good reason to assume that. The DVD is not only a standard for computers, but also for consumer appliances, i.e. DVD players. As long as there are going to be DVD movies, there will be DVD-ROM drives. And probably even after that. Ever wondered why a DVD is the size of a CD? Because it allows the DVD drive to read CD-ROMs. I'd bet that 10 years from now you can still buy a drive that reads CD-ROMs. The same will be true for DVDs: drives will be backward compatible.
Besides, if the data is important enough to be kept around, chances are the hardware to access it will be too (or haven't you seen machine rooms that still use tape backups from X years ago?)
Well, tell that to the guys at the JPL: "For example, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is facing a crisis due to the huge libraries of data from space probes like Pioneer that are stored on aging seven-track tapes for which readers are no longer made."
(I believe there was a story about this on /., but I couldn't find it. The quote is from this article.
)
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Also, it can burn CDs at 12X. DVDs only burn at 2.4X
Actually, 2.4x DVD is faster than 12x CD. 12x CD transfers at 12 times 150 KB, or 1800 KB/s, while 2.4x DVD transfers at 2.4 times 1152 KB/s (I think) to make 2700 KB/s.
Will I retire or break 10K?
As other replies have stated, DVD isn't a mature technology yet. If you're into bleeding edge technology, feel free to experiment.
Tape is still the cheapest media and most widely used and will continue to get more dense and less expensive over the next 4-5 years. You can currently buy LTO1 and AIT3 tapes for less than $100 per 100GB tape in large quantities. Sony has a 500GB half-inch format (S-AIT) coming out within a year. The jukeboxes and libraries are still expensive compared to CD changers, but if you have alot of data to backup, their up-front cost is not as significant. If you have lots of small data sets (600MB) to archive, it might make sense to use something random-access like CDs or near-line disk. If you have large databases or filesystems to archive, it's alot easier to manage one 100GB tape rather than 153 CDs or 20 DVDs for the same data. How are you going to manage and inventory all of those CDs? If you need to store more than 1TB, consider disk or tape solutions instead.
ATA disk-based technology might seem inexpensive at first. I've seen FCAL/SCSI solutions lower that $20/GB. I've seen commercial ATA RAID5 subsystems as low as $10/GB. One can build-it-yourself using off-the-shelf cheap parts ($3/GB white box system?), but would you trust your data on the cheapest disk technology? What happens when a disk dies or when the filesystem becomes corrupted? Consider, also, how you might scale a disk-based solution beyond 1TB (if that's what you need to do). Think about power, cooling, managing failed drives, etc. Also, do you really need to keep disk drives actively spinning for data you might not access again for at least 6 months?
In short, if you have less than 2TB of data to backup and small data sets, CD is inexpensive, but building an ATA-based archive system could work better, especially for managing the data. If you need to archive more than 10TB, tape is still the best proven way to go. In between, it may be possible to mix and match technologies to be cost-effective and still provide good performance. For example, you might keep 3-6 months of data on disk and archive the rest to a tape library.
-ez
$500 US for 8 drives worth of IDE controller capacity? That seems pretty high; a pair of Promise UDMA133 controllers (2 ch = 4 drive ea.) would set me back 150$ US total at the local corporate-office mart. And consider also that motherboards typically have 4-6 drives of capacity to start with, which should take care of other IDE peripherals and then some; you may not need more than one additional controller.
Keep in mind that you need a computer system to connect the storage to either way; but interfacing would be really affordable with the model of jukebox you suggest, since it uses firewire (IEEE-1394). (I had sort of assumed that any high capacity changers would use FC or SCSI, requiring a significant chunk of cash for the interface, but apparently they don't.)
Also, any decent full tower case should be able to handle 8 3+1/2" standard height drives. (The fact that the majority of the world banishes themselves to bad mid or mini tower cases doesn't mean that everyone has to). My cheap-assed A/Open ATX full tower has 5 internal 3+1/2" bays (3 front, 2 rear), so I'd have to convert 3 of the 5+1/4" bays to hold the remaining hds, but there would still be 2 5+1/4"s and a 3+1/2" external left. Yes, this is quite a stretch, because my case isn't suited for the crapload of cooling you would need for all of those drives. Also the power supply would need to be fairly high capacity, as it might be difficult to stagger the drive spinups to avoid power problems without using SCSI. But it still shouldn't require especially rare/expensive casing, PS, or ATA controllerage.
I don't see why you're bringing RAID (especially hardware RAID -- very expensive and unnecessary when high throughput isn't crucial) into the equation. The jukebox wouldn't do mirrored reading in the RAID sense, because it only reads one disc at a time. And, although especially capabale bundled media jukebox software may prove me wrong, I doubt that it could automatically switch to an online backup disc when encountering a read error. So you would probably just keep the mirror set offline on the shelf to reclaim the jukebox capacity. The equivalent HD solution would have backup tapes on the shelf too. (the Jukebox may have less repair downtime, more than software RAID's none, but more cost competitive also.)
more later...
Depending on the application, jukeboxes can cause unacceptable latency. If the data is accessed via a web page, you'll lose a lot of customers who won't wait 30+ seconds for the page to start loading. And if a lot of people are using the data (200 disks & 1 drive), the delays will make the system completely unusable.
I purchased an HP DVD+RW about 6 months ago and I no longer use it. A couple of reasons:
:-)
1. I've already lost three disks full of information because HP's software cannot seem to handle system crashes. Windows crash = Lose all of your data. (remember I'm using DVD+RW).
2. A big hard disk with a firewire or USB2.0 enclosure is cheaper, faster, and more portable.
3. The lack of a standard has resulted in sketchy compatibility with home DVD players so burning video is a real problem.
4. The lack of a standard also affects PC DVD drives. Sometimes disks work and sometimes they don't. I have experienced complete BSOD's on Win2K when putting a DVD+RW in a friend's player (never seen one before).
If you are still set on buying a DVD writer, then I suggest the following:
1. If you want to burn video, look at your existing DVD player (and those of anyone you want to share with) and check this chart to see which style of drive to get (DVD-R or DVD+RW) http://www.vcdhelp.com/dvdplayers.php
2. If you want to do data backups, remember this when using DVD+RW:
Only backup or restore data after a cold boot. Even then you may lose everything if something untoward happens during the process.
3. Really think hard about the external hard disk.
$130 120 gig hard drive
$ 60 Firewire external enclosure
or
$350 DVD Writer
$216 24 DVD-R disks (@ 120 gig)
You can always buy the DVD Writer next year with the $350 you saved getting the hard disk and probably end up with better technology, faster write times, a better shot at compatibility, and a cool 120 gig hard drive with external firewire enclosure.
When people come up with these rules of thumb, I have to be honest and wonder what they're doing that I'm not. I recall reading several people saying that DVDs cannot stand being played more than 8 or 9 times. Tell that to my Criterion "Brazil" DVD which has been played more often than that, and spent time in my laptop and other such horrors. And I'm not even that careful with my discs - I'll try to hold them by the edges and I'll keep them, most of the time, in the cases (occasionally I'll just leave them in the player for a few days while I don't use the player) but, frankly, that's it. I'm not anally retentive about it, certainly not as much as most people I know. Oh yeah, and for the last four years I've lived in Florida, and before that in Britain, so these CDs have undergone some horrendous temperature/humidity abuses.
Scarily, even most floppies I have from ten years ago or so seem to have kept most of their data - and while you might be tempted to go "Aha! Most! Not all!", I'd point out that floppies have always been crap at storing all of their data, time doesn't seem to be a factor with them. They're either crap or... (and remember that magnetic storage is hardly new, and most sound media that's more than 15 years old has been stored on magnetic tracks. That means that 30 year old movie you have on DVD with the awesome sound actually has audio that was on tape for 25-29 years before it was transfered to a digital format.)
So where do these "facts" about how fragile the things are come from? The only thing I can think of is that CDs and DVDs aren't always perfect to begin with, and this gives them a reputation which leads people to automatically assume that they're going to get worse with age. In reference to the aforementioned Brazil DVD, it's actually "improved" with age (most likely there was a speck of dirt somewhere that's fallen off) in that there was a part of the disc that used to stutter and now it no longer does.
Keep your DVDs and CDs in a case when you're not using them, don't hold them by the flat sides, and don't scrub the surface with the label and they should last. Probably much more than ten years too. Honest.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Why? Because film is progressive, not interlaced. When they convert the film to NTSC video (using equipment/process called telecine), they have to convert it to interlaced format, using a process called 3:2 pulldown. This splits each frame into two interlaced fields, which raises the effective rate from 24 Hz to 48 Hz. Then they duplicate some of the fields, to get from 48 Hz to the video rate of 60 Hz. Actually the NTSC rate is 59.94 Hz, but usually they ignore that detail, and the running time of the resulting video is off by 0.1%.
This results in a big difference compared to the output of video cameras. With a video camera, the two interlaced fields that make up a frame are not captured simultaneously. Instead, the camera captures a separate field every 1/60 of a second. Thus if the camera or the scene is moving, you will not be able to merge two consecutive fields into a single coherent frame. When the video is played back at normal speed, this is not a problem; in fact, it makes the video "smoother". However, if you try to display a still frame, you will see the image oscillate between the two time-independent fields at 30 Hz, which is incredibly annoying.
With telecine output, however, consecutive fields come from the same film frame. And the MPEG-2 video stream takes advantage of this by avoiding encoding the duplicate fields that were inserted by the 3:2 pulldown. So the DVD actually contains 48 fields per second, with flags that tell the player which fields to duplicate for the pulldown. A progressive-scan DVD player simply uses those flags to reconstruct the original non-interlaced frames.
For DVDs from a video source, a progressive player does have to do some "magic" in order to get reasonable deinterlaced output. This is not an exact science; different players use various techniques to do this, so the resulting quality can vary quite a bit.
Note that for PAL and SECAM video, the field rate is 50 Hz, so 3:2 pulldown is not used. But it is still possible for the DVD player to do perfect deinterlace of DVDs mastered from film.
Some are quite inexpensive.