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Author Topic: CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues  (Read 6119 times)

Peter McLennan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« on: July 10, 2005, 12:29:17 pm »

Hard to do.  Optical, maybe.
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JJP

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2005, 01:09:36 pm »

Peter McLennan wrote:
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Hard to do.  Optical, maybe.
Assuming the current crop of mem. cards are made with EEPROM, why not have manufacturers make them with PROM, which is read/write one time memory.  Heck, mem. cards are getting smaller & smaller all the time with more & more capacity.  This would be no different than storing/archiving film negatives (back in the film days).
jules
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madmanchan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2005, 07:02:20 pm »

My belief is that the best backup policy is to diversify, diversify, diversify.  The underlying principle is that if one backup set breaks, the others likely won't be ... if they're diversified.  

What does this mean?  

Don't keep all your sets on the same type of media.  (What if it turns out the media you chose has some serious long-term issues that was only discovered yesterday?)

Don't keep all of your sets in the same geographic location.  (What if you keep them all in your home, but the unexpected happens?  Theft, fire, flood ...)

I think a hybrid hard disk + DVD backup strategy works well.

Eric
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Eric Chan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2005, 11:45:18 pm »

Am I the only person who almost never has any trouble reading CD/DVDs? I did come across a CD once that appeared to have some corrupted D60 RAW files which I couldn't retrieve even with recovery software (but cheap recovery software). However, I remember the occasion when I recorded this CD. I was in a hurry. I'd transferred a lot of data to a number of CDs. I'd also labelled a blank CD by mistake at the same time. It's quite likely I would have ignored any screen message that there was a problem with the recording.

I rarely verify the recording because that takes up too much time. The number of burned CDs I have are too numerous to count and the quality varies from Kodak Infoguard to nondescript el cheapos.

I don't know what all the fuss is about (touch wood  :D ). What are you guys doing? Are you applying printed labels with destructive adhesive? Do you live in smog filled areas with acid rain? It's a mystery to me.
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Peter McLennan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #4 on: July 13, 2005, 12:42:20 am »

I certainly can't recommend a backup strategy.  Mine failed me recently.  A drive died and I lost images.

Fortunately, the really valuable ones I'd printed.  A print is the ultimate "diversified" backup.  It's not really a photograph until it's printed.      It'll also be accessible long after our DVD's and CD's are unreadable by future equipment.
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sergio

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2005, 07:46:16 pm »

Old cds apparently were made with better technology than today's. My very old cds all reliably open, and some recently (2 yrs) burnt don't. HDs are not an option for me for my huge volume of images to archive. I would have drawers full of them and having them mirrored only makes it worse. I simply have to live with the DVD+copies till something better and more reliable comes around(perhaps Blue Ray?)
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JJP

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2005, 07:02:38 am »

This archiving bu!!$hit is really starting to drag me down.  I now have tonns of CDs, some of which are impossible to read ( even by the same burner that they were burnt on!).  And then there's the burning process itself....very very time consumming don't you think?  Then I just heard that my burner's manufacturer just went tits up.  I just purchased the darn thing less than 11 months ago.  Another 500 dollar gadget for the scrap yard.
And so, I've got an idea.  Why not kill two birds with one stone.  Here's what I propose:  Manufacturers make low cost cf cards(or whatever type your camera uses) that can only be written to once. Period.  Just imagine....you put one of these (use only once) cards in your camera, take your pictures, then your pictures are automatically archived....no need to purchase CDs, DVDs, extra large hardrives, tape drives....whatever.  There's a bonus....the images will be archived without any touch-ups.  The law people will just love that one.
jules
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JJ

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #7 on: July 10, 2005, 12:37:36 pm »

CDs and DVDs are simply inappropriate for archiving. They can't be trusted, even the best of them.

Outboard Firewire hard disks are now well under $1 / GB, almost as cheap as quality DVDs. 250GB drives can be had for under $200 - about 75 cents a Gigabyte.

My strategy is to have all my files online and available, and a second Firewire drive off line (powered down) with the online content backed up to them. I make DVDs of my most important files and bring them to another location as "disaster" insurance, but not as my only copy.
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jani

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« Reply #8 on: July 11, 2005, 08:35:20 am »

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CDs and DVDs are simply inappropriate for archiving. They can't be trusted, even the best of them.

Outboard Firewire hard disks are now well under $1 / GB, almost as cheap as quality DVDs. 250GB drives can be had for under $200 - about 75 cents a Gigabyte.
I'd just like to point out that hard disks are at least as unreliable as CDs and DVDs, and allows you to lose that much more data in one go.

They're not very tolerant of temperatures above 30 degreees C. Temperature changes are even worse, not just because there's metal inside, but also the condensation risk. It's fairly common for disks to fail if the temperature fluctuates too much, and if the drive operates for too long outside its operating parameters, it can perform erratically, leaving files in a corrupted state.

CDs and DVDs handle this better (but see my remarks below), and are also easier to store in places where you can avoid this kind of stress.

Quote
My strategy is to have all my files online and available, and a second Firewire drive off line (powered down) with the online content backed up to them. I make DVDs of my most important files and bring them to another location as "disaster" insurance, but not as my only copy.
I also make DVDs in addition to keeping all my images online, but I make two verified copies, before archiving them in fire-resistant safes in different physical locations.

The verification procedure in the DVD burner helps me identify glitches in the burning process.

I still haven't come around to introducing my scheme of adding checksums of every file to the DVDs and to disk, though. This would help me discover possible corruption quickly.


One thing that worries me about CDs and DVDs, is the accountability of CD and DVD production processes. Which kind of dye are they using? Is there aluminum, silver, or gold in there somewhere? What kind of plastic are they using? How about metal, dye and plastic impurities? Is their clean room production facility really clean? These factors affect reliability and durability to a significant degree.

As for hard disks, there are companies such as IBAS (I'm not associated with this company) who can help with rescuing data even in cases where it's seemingly impossible. It's not anywhere near cheap, though.


On the plus side, working digitally does allow us to take all kinds of precautions with our data. There isn't only one set of negatives.
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Jan

Tim Gray

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2005, 08:00:48 pm »

I favour dual HD backups because my sense is that if trouble develops on one drive - I can deal with it expeditiously.

For anyone using CD/DVD media - how often do you check the disks to make sure you can still read the files?  Often?  Never?  Rarely?  Only when you need to recover one?
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jani

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #10 on: July 12, 2005, 03:46:30 am »

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I favour dual HD backups because my sense is that if trouble develops on one drive - I can deal with it expeditiously.
Is that dual backups, or just dual drives?

If you don't have dual backups, you might be in for a nasty surprise when one drive fails and then the other not too soon afterwards.

This is not quite as uncommon as one might think. If you're completely HD based, I'd recommend having your data on three drives, so that you still have a backup when one drive fails and time to substitute the failed drive.

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For anyone using CD/DVD media - how often do you check the disks to make sure you can still read the files?  Often?  Never?  Rarely?
In my case, the answer is "from time to time" and "it depends on the nature of the backup".

Many of my backups are of the same files I've backed up earlier. If no problem with files have developed since the last backup, I'm inclined to ignore the backup that's one or two generations old.
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madmanchan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #11 on: July 12, 2005, 07:00:16 pm »

Quote
For anyone using CD/DVD media - how often do you check the disks to make sure you can still read the files?  Often?  Never?  Rarely?  Only when you need to recover one?
I run a 'quick verify' on the disc immediately after it's been burned.  This is just a sanity check, not a thorough check, that the table of contents can be read properly.  After that, I look at the disc only when I need to recover data.  This means that I look at the disc only if (1) primary hard drive died, and (2) backup hard drive also died.  

Eric
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Eric Chan

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CD/DVD City Archiving Burning Blues
« Reply #12 on: July 13, 2005, 01:11:53 am »

I'm in the process of gradually transferring CD media to DVD media. I haven't yet come across any 8 year old, or more recent, CDs that are unreadable, apart from the one I mentioned which was almost certainly due to a recording problem.
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