Antony wrote:
> Evening all
>
> I would like to start archiving the 80gb of photos which are
> currently on my hard drive to Dvd, however i'm a little
> confused as i don't know which brand or dye to use.
Unfortunately, I'd say the answer is "None of them".
And this has nothing to do with Brand A vs B, etc. Its the DVD format
itself.
Check out Ken Rockwell's website. He states:
"...Even worse, DVDs were never designed with the error correction
levels of CDs and I've heard people who know warn against them for data
archiving. We designed the DVD for MPG video where we can loose
data..."
In other words, the DVD format does not have a robust data error
checking built into its encoding scheme on purpose. Even using the
"best" media can't eliminate this as a basic architectural limitation.
- - -
What was recommended to me was to get an external USB/Firewire drive
enclosure that uses standard 3.5" hard drives that each gets mounted on
a removable sled. Here's one example of one such product (no
endorsement implied):
http://www.firewiremax.com/fire-wire...remcaskit.html
The archiving plan is 3 copies, so you buy 1 enclosure + 3 sleds + 3
drives.
For the above example vendor, the enclosure + sleds runs $85 + 3*$14 =
$127, plus pricewatch is claiming that 250GB drives are currently
running just over $100 each, so for ~$500, you get 250GB of redundant
storage.
You can do the same thin with the 35GB Iomega REV drive, but you'll pay
roughly the same price, but only end up with 35GB of redundant storage.
The REV is a lousy product choice because of its comparatively high
cost per GB.
Antony wrote:
> Evening all
>
> I would like to start archiving the 80gb of photos which are
> currently on my hard drive to Dvd, however i'm a little
> confused as i don't know which brand or dye to use.
Unfortunately, I'd say the answer is "None of them".
And this has nothing to do with Brand A vs B, etc. Its the DVD format
itself.
Check out Ken Rockwell's website. He states:
"...Even worse, DVDs were never designed with the error correction
levels of CDs and I've heard people who know warn against them for data
archiving. We designed the DVD for MPG video where we can loose
data..."
In other words, the DVD format does not have a robust data error
checking built into its encoding scheme on purpose. Even using the
"best" media can't eliminate this as a basic architectural limitation.
- - -
What was recommended to me was to get an external USB/Firewire drive
enclosure that uses standard 3.5" hard drives that each gets mounted on
a removable sled. Here's one example of one such product (no
endorsement implied):
http://www.firewiremax.com/fire-wire...remcaskit.html
The archiving plan is 3 copies, so you buy 1 enclosure + 3 sleds + 3
drives.
For the above example vendor, the enclosure + sleds runs $85 + 3*$14 =
$127, plus pricewatch is claiming that 250GB drives are currently
running just over $100 each, so for ~$500, you get 250GB of redundant
storage.
You can do the same thin with the 35GB Iomega REV drive, but you'll pay
roughly the same price, but only end up with 35GB of redundant storage.
At ~7x higher cost per GB, the REV is a lousy product choice.
Antony wrote:
> Evening all
>
> I would like to start archiving the 80gb of photos which are
> currently on my hard drive to Dvd, however i'm a little
> confused as i don't know which brand or dye to use.
Unfortunately, I'd say the answer is "None of them".
And this has nothing to do with Brand A vs B, etc. Its the DVD format
itself.
Check out Ken Rockwell's website. He states:
"...Even worse, DVDs were never designed with the error correction
levels of CDs and I've heard people who know warn against them for data
archiving. We designed the DVD for MPG video where we can loose
data..."
In other words, the DVD format does not have a robust data error
checking built into its encoding scheme on purpose. Even using the
"best" media can't eliminate this as a basic architectural limitation.
- - -
What was recommended to me was to get an external USB/Firewire drive
enclosure that uses standard 3.5" hard drives that each gets mounted on
a removable sled. Here's one example of one such product (no
endorsement implied):
http://www.firewiremax.com/fire-wire...remcaskit.html
The archiving plan is 3 copies, so you buy 1 enclosure + 3 sleds + 3
drives.
For the above example vendor, the enclosure + sleds runs $85 + 3*$14 =
$127, plus pricewatch is claiming that 250GB drives are currently
running just over $100 each, so for ~$500, you get 250GB of redundant
storage.
You can do the same thin with the 35GB Iomega REV drive, but you'll pay
roughly the same price, but only end up with 35GB of redundant storage.
At ~7x higher cost per GB, the REV is a poor value.
FWIW, since you're only looking for 80GB of storage, you could back
down from 250GB drives to 160GB drives (only 2x the 80GB you currently
say you need) and these are currently ~$65 each, so the total cost
would come down to around $350.
-hh
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