Blu Ray Burner for backup storage or?

[Dice144]

Would you guys recommend a blu ray burner now that the prices are finally decent?

Have a lot of movies/tv shows I would like to move off the HD and or backup incase of failure. In the past lost 500 gb worth of movies due to a dead drive.

 

[Elixer]

You still would have the same problem.
Everything dies.
That is why you need multiple backups of everything.

I am not a fan of the burner, still too slow, and not enough data can be put on the media.

 

[JimKiler]

You still would have the same problem.
Everything dies.
That is why you need multiple backups of everything.

I am not a fan of the burner, still too slow, and not enough data can be put on the media.

Too slow? You can get 10x burners granted i think media is 6x but 6x is speedy for BD.

 

[KingFatty]

Maybe get a ballpark idea of what it would cost to backup the data you want on BD-R media, plus the cost of the Blu-ray burner.

I'm curious how that would compare to what you could buy in hard drive storage?

Then also consider that the ease of using hard drive storage is bound to be worth something, depending on how much you value your own time taken for flipping all those Blu-ray disks and waiting around for them to be recorded, plus time to organize them all and keep track of which files are stored where...

 

[exdeath]

Too slow? You can get 10x burners granted i think media is 6x but 6x is speedy for BD.

Until they have 150+ MB/sec BDR with < 10 ms seek time, they are slow.

Optical media annoys the hell out of me. I can dump 4 GB to USB3 SSD faster than it takes an optical disk to spin up, let alone burn a lead in track and start burning data.

Shuffling discs, mounting 5 discs because you don't remember what is where because you are too lazy to update the labels after some time, reburning them every few years, watching thumbnail pop up one per day, god forbid you have to full text search one. Better of with an external HDD/SSD.

If you want individual media get 32 and 64 GB SD cards or thumb drives instead of BluRay. Just make sure to get class 10+ SD.

Should be able to get several for the cost of the BDR drive and discs.

 

[Elixer]

Besides what exdeath said, if your burner dies on you down the road, and assuming they still make them, then getting a replacement is also harder, and most likely another large investment in $$$ & time.

HDs still trump optical media (in pretty much every aspect), even if you have to have multiple HDs to make copies of everything. SDs aren't bad either, but the bottom line is, you need multiple backups of whatever media you pick.

 

[Tegeril]

Cost of a burner and media compared to a single 1TB HD that you backup to and unplug?

 

[Hblackheart]

the bdxl's by pioneer look nice. Think they are capable of burning 128 gigs to them or something like that. That is a fair chunk of storage. Thinking of this my self.

 

[FAUguy]

I have the Pioneer BDR-2208 for a month now and it works pretty good. It supports BDXL but those discs are pricy. Instead I got 3 packs of this RiData 25GB 50-pack for $35/each on sale. So thats only $.70 per disc. I've burned about 30 discs of out the first 50 pack, and all work just fine. Even though they say they are 6X, the burner supports up to 15X and can recoded on these discs at a max of 10X.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817132085

 

[Zunhs]

I like optical disks as backup because I trust them more than hard disk drives. I use the Panasonic BD-R 25GB Blu-Ray Printable, MEI-RA1/001.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Blu-ray burner: $80
1TB external usb3 hdd: $90
or even better: 3TB external usb3 hdd: $130

So no, I wouldn't use blu-ray as backup.

 

[Wyndru]

I like optical disks as backup because I trust them more than hard disk drives. I use the Panasonic BD-R 25GB Blu-Ray Printable, MEI-RA1/001.

I have hundreds of cdrs from the early days of burning, when CD burners were over $200, and less than half of them even work anymore. They were stored in spindles or binders, normal humidity and room temp...and majority of them were ridata. They all deteriorated over time, no scratches, just not readable. I don't know if the aluminium got oxidized over the years or what, or if the quality of optical discs are better now, but I definitely don't consider it a reliable backup medium anymore.

 

[randomrogue]

When a burner used to cost $20 and a disk 10 cents it made sense. The size was pretty big compared to hard drives and it was practical.

Today it makes no sense. Especially if you stocked up on $50 1TB drives and $70 2TB drives before the flood.

 

[randomrogue]

I have hundreds of cdrs from the early days of burning, when CD burners were over $200, and less than half of them even work anymore. They were stored in spindles or binders, normal humidity and room temp...and majority of them were ridata. They all deteriorated over time, no scratches, just not readable. I don't know if the aluminium got oxidized over the years or what, or if the quality of optical discs are better now, but I definitely don't consider it a reliable backup medium anymore.

I lost quite a bit of data as well. A couple years ago I got to the point where I took all my CD's and DVD's and just put them on a hard drive as images. I'd say about 10% were bad. Maybe 15%. I can't remember anymore.

 

[Anteaus]

One copy of anything is not a backup, regardless of where it is. Even if you put something on a blu-ray disc, you'd still need another copy somewhere to consider it backed up. If you had an actual backup in the first place, you would never have lost those 500GB worth of movies the first time.

My suggestion is to spend a little money and get a pair of decent sized hard drives then use them purely for long term storage/backup. In other words, use one of them for storing all of your files and then mirror it onto the other one as a pure backup.

My personal solution was a 3TB internal drive that is mirrored to a 3TB external drive.

This solution has a higher up front cost than other methods, but from my point of view my software is far more valuable than hardware when I consider the time and effort it took to acquire it all. I keep my external backups in a box near the door in case of a fire. Assuming I can grab it in an emergency, it makes me feel better knowing that at least I won't lose all the important files I've gathered over the past 15 years.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

Do it like google and triplicate everything

 

[corkyg]

The backups for my movies are the original DVDs.

 

[Zunhs]

I have hundreds of cdrs from the early days of burning, when CD burners were over $200, and less than half of them even work anymore. They were stored in spindles or binders, normal humidity and room temp...and majority of them were ridata. They all deteriorated over time, no scratches, just not readable. I don't know if the aluminium got oxidized over the years or what, or if the quality of optical discs are better now, but I definitely don't consider it a reliable backup medium anymore.

Yes it's wise to do quality scans to see when it's time to burn them to new media. The deterioration also means that you should strive to make as good burns as possible to make the disks be good enough for as long as possible. With quality scan I mean measuring the error correction and not just verifying the disk after burning.

 

[Dadofamunky]

The backups for my movies are the original DVDs.

Right - exactly.

I think opticals are not a good option because the capacity simply isn't there. For the same reason you never see TAPE drives anymore.

I simply got a 3TB Seagate external drive and backed up my RAID array to it and then put it away. I think that's sufficient. You can't take it with you when you die.

 

[Tsavo]

Right - exactly.

I think opticals are not a good option because the capacity simply isn't there. For the same reason you never see TAPE drives anymore.

I simply got a 3TB Seagate external drive and backed up my RAID array to it and then put it away. I think that's sufficient. You can't take it with you when you die.

Capacity is one thing, longevity of media is another. The vast majority of DVD recordable media are simply junk and should be considered a temporary medium to transport data you don't care about.

I can't speak for BD recordable media since I don't see Taiyo Yuden making discs for that format, so I assume the rest is junk...just like DVD R media.

Data that you care about should go on many multiples of hard drives, ideally with several off-site copies of each.