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How To Choose Archival CD/DVD Media
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)."
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/
Why not just get a NAS that has RAID? That would make more sense. When a disc dies, you can replace it, rebuild your array, and everything is fine. PLUS, you could expand your archive over time.
I think it's absolutely stupid to use a DVD jukebox. Really. Look into a NAS box with RAID.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
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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).
...if you store the content in formats that wouldn't be read after 50 years. Will I be able to look at the pics of my youth in 2076 if they were recorded in some propietary format?
I'd like to see some citation that any media is better then any other media in terms of longevity. I can find 100's of sites that claim Mitsui's are the best but I've yet to come across a single one that is not based on a very thin theory or just a "feeling" of why it is better. Yes, there are some chemical names thrown around but simply stating a specific chemical name is not proof it is better or worse. Everyone that jumps on the bandwagon assumes the others know. A truck load of people preaching the same thing can't possible be wrong, right?
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.
Up to this time, I had thought of my burned CD/DVDs as a "permanent" backup or record. This article has changed my thinking, and while I still like to buy "pressed" music CDs and DVD movies, and even download music from iTunes, I will now think of them as more permanent and acknowledge that MY burned discs will have to be re-burned from time to time. I am using LaCie CD/DVD burner and have had little problems with it and found it to be most reliable. As time goes along, storage space, via ethernet, is getting cheaper and cheaper and will provide more hard-drive space for direct storage of music and movies. I am preparing DVD storage of about 14,000 book titles from the Gutenberg Project and make them available to schools and libraries and compatible to Macs. Query: Should I learn how to make these discs "pressed" instead of burned? I am doing this under the guise of Scriptorium Library(TM) and will pay a 20% royalty to Gutenberg should the project get off the ground. So far, I have enough titles for about four DVD discs (about 4.5 gigabytes each). Cordially, Kris Kleeberg