How To Properly Archive Data On Disc Media

An anonymous reader writes "Patrick McFarland, the well-known Free Software Magazine author, goes into great detail on CD/DVD media over at the Ad Terras Per Aspera site. McFarland covers the history of the 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).'"

Comments

M*Farland?

[MDMurphy]

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that we have to articles posted by anonymous readers linking to "famous author" M*Farland, but it struck me as odd. Especially since he commented on the USB story. Could there little astroturfing going on?

It's not like we haven't seen that before ( Roland P* )

Why bother with optical?

[Anonymous Coward]

A 500GB hard drive is like $150 these days and 1TB drives are just around the corner. Drop one into a $10 USB enclosure and backup your stuff using rsync. To do it right, do this twice with 2 different drives and store them in 2 different physical locations. I don't care what fancy pants brand of DVD-R you use, a magnetic solution is still superior in both durability and simplicity (try backing up 100GB of data using a DVD writer and a hard drive, then tell me which one took longer).

Re:Why bother with optical?

[MMC Monster]

On topic: People should use something like par2 to create some fault tolerance so that when a few bytes go bad (or a scratch develops) the entire DVD+/-R is not toast.

I typically create data DVDs with 30% redundancy information (though smaller percentages are probably more than adequate) with par2create, and store those par2 files on the same DVD. That way I survive the little scratches and can recreate the data.

Use dvdistaster

[arose]

No matter what format you choose create error correction data.

DVD Writable sucks badly as archival technology.

[gweihir]

Sorry, but if you have to select media and burner based on some black magic, then the technology is entirely unfit to be used for any archiving. Archival media give you ensurances like 30 years data lifetime in any combination. You can already get that with MOD. MODs have >50 years data lifetime and drive makers will allways support the lasdt three media generations (currently they are supporting all, i.e. the last fife generations and that wor reading and writing). The only DVD technology that is somewhat comparable is DVD-RAM with cartridge. But that seems to have zero market share in the computer business.

My conclusion is that either people do not care about their archived data or that the number of, e.g., lost baby- and wedding-photographs is not high enough yet.