How to choose optical archival media

[feppe]

Stumbled upon this on Another Site:

http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/...archival-media/

I'll stick to HDDs, but definitely worthwhile information if you want to use CDs/DVDs.

[jani]

If the article didn't read as one big advertisement for one particular manufacturer and one particular reseller combined with anecdotal ... "evidence" for reliability, I'd be tempted to take the advice.

But it did answer two of my questions, which are:

Q: Why haven't I seen any indications of what dyes are used in DVDs today?
A: information apparently intentionally kept secret

Q: Why do some people claim that DVD+R is more reliable than DVD-R?
A: ... too long to summarize here.

[gorosh]

I didn't read the article, but it is true that Taiyo Yuden are best DVD's at the moment. Verbatim TY media is the way to go, definitely. Although I agree that HDD's are best for archiving (given that you do additional backups on either another HDD or optical media, or you have RAID1 setup, or even better to separate RAID1 setups on different controllers / machines).

[jani]

I didn't read the article, but it is true that Taiyo Yuden are best DVD's at the moment. Verbatim TY media is the way to go, definitely. Although I agree that HDD's are best for archiving (given that you do additional backups on either another HDD or optical media, or you have RAID1 setup, or even better to separate RAID1 setups on different controllers / machines).

HDDs are lousy for archival use in themselves, but as long as you keep redundant data and keep on migrating, you ought to be fine.

This has been discussed here earlier.

The reliability of HDDs (or rather, lack of it) is backed up by thorough research by Bianca Schroeder at Carnegie-Mellon and by Google.

Also, keep in mind that HDDs have designed lifetimes which are far shorter than that of "archival" rate optical media, by a factor of 10 to 30.