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Is it cheaper to backup HiDef movies on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD or hard drive?

A

Arkitech

Diamond Member
I have a growing library of HiDef movies and TV Shows that I currently keep on about 8 hard drives and a few hundred DVDs, I've been really excited about finally moving everything over to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

But the question is, is it cheaper to buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD writer along with the media or are hard drives the more cost effective option at this point?

Anyone aware of any price drops on writers in the near future?
 
It's a year too soon for either format, IMHO.

Prices right now only make sense for graphic artists, service bureaus and others that need temporary storage and easy transfer of massive amounts of data.

Based on CD and DVD history, burners and discs will also be much more reliable given another generation of drives and media.
 
If you really have that much content... eight hard drives.... many spindles of discs... look to the future. seriously buy an Areca HBA and build an RAID5/6 array
 
100 DVDs = 4.5 TB of data = ~$35

Hard drives are, of course, more cost-effective. You'll drag your hair out when newegg will sell high def optical drives for under $100.
 
Dare I ask what format these files are in?

If you're ripping tons of MPEG2 TS streams off your DVR and storing them raw, that's probably your problem right there. Anyone storing lots of video and who cares about quality really has no choice but to move to H.264 or VC-1. Or, there's the poor man's choice of DivX, I guess. 🙂
 
Even DVD-9 capacity is too low for HD. At least two are required per movie so that splitting and writing are very time consuming and then inconvenient for playback too.

BD (or HD-DVD) is more convenient in both respects but still pales compared to HDD. In some cases single discs can still lack sufficient capacity and in all cases some will be unutilized, effectively raising the cost per GB even higher and it is already about 40 versus 25 cents. Worse, unless opting for slightly more costly rewritable, then once the disc is written that expense cannot be recovered or averaged down in any way by re-using for different movies or even selling the storage. There is always the possibility that writing to a write-once disc can fail also in which case it is a total write-off (chortle).

The benefits of optical storage are of course device independence and isolating risk. Whereas if a HDD goes belly up then perhaps thirty movies are lost and even if technically recoverable it is not cost-effective to do so. However, simply duplicating the HDD's for security only makes the cost equivalent to discs, even before considering the high cost of writers. So, HDD's remain the most practical in every way.
 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
It's a year too soon for either format, IMHO.

Prices right now only make sense for graphic artists, service bureaus and others that need temporary storage and easy transfer of massive amounts of data.

Based on CD and DVD history, burners and discs will also be much more reliable given another generation of drives and media.
Click to expand...

yeah, I kinda figured as much but I thought I would ask anyway. I guess the best option is still hard drives, although I can't wait til TB sizes are more commonplace.
 
Originally posted by: ribbon13
If you really have that much content... eight hard drives.... many spindles of discs... look to the future. seriously buy an Areca HBA and build an RAID5/6 array
Click to expand...

hmm sounds interesting, I never heard of that before (Areca HBA). Does it provide data redundancy? I'm a little nervous right now because I don't have any backups of my data, I've been waiting for a good sale on hard drives.
 
Originally posted by: Arkitech
I'm a little nervous right now because I don't have any backups of my data, I've been waiting for a good sale on hard drives.
Click to expand...

I feel a painful experience coming your way 😀

With 500GB drives at $120 and below I'm not sure what you're waiting for.
 
Originally posted by: Pabster
Originally posted by: Arkitech
I'm a little nervous right now because I don't have any backups of my data, I've been waiting for a good sale on hard drives.
Click to expand...

I feel a painful experience coming your way 😀

With 500GB drives at $120 and below I'm not sure what you're waiting for.
Click to expand...

maybe he's waiting for 500GB drives for Under $100, or 1TB drives for $100 ...
or maybe something else.

I'm personally waiting for 500GB drives to ship for Under $100 each, then I'm adding 2 more .... until then, I'll have to suffer with only about 3.5TB of storage across my whole network ...



EDIT: as far as actual real advice goes ... H.264 is probably your best bet ... though you will lose some element of quality.
 
Originally posted by: BurnItDwn

EDIT: as far as actual real advice goes ... H.264 is probably your best bet ... though you will lose some element of quality.
Click to expand...

Recoding olde timey MPEG-2 could save space but then takes more personal time and could reduce the quality if not careful so may not necessarily be worth it. Decent content is increasingly already in AVC or VC-1 anyway. If actually recording a lot of broadcast content yourself then certainly doing so in AVC to begin with makes sense regardless of whether the source is actually MPEG-2 as is common in North America. However, hardware options are only now becoming more widely available.
 
Originally posted by: Arkitech
I'm a little nervous right now because I don't have any backups of my data, I've been waiting for a good sale on hard drives.
Click to expand...
Storage and backup of Terabyte quantities of data are a big expense, unfortunately.

Personally, I wouldn't trust ANY "valuable" data to a single piece of media, be it CD, DVD, BD, tape, or hard drive. If you can't afford to lose it, then you really need a backup media of some sort. I DON'T trust any of the burned optical media for my only copy of anything. I've seen too many burned optical disks fail over the past ten years.
 
Originally posted by: Auric
Even DVD-9 capacity is too low for HD. At least two are required per movie so that splitting and writing are very time consuming and then inconvenient for playback too.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that one. My backup of shawshank at pull 1080P looks fine on a dvd-9 encoded with x264 and multiple pass and whatnot...took forever but works like a charm on my media box
 
See previous post regarding time consuming recodes. 😉

If going from a 10GB MP2 to 8GB AVC then the source wasn't great to begin with so the perceived loss is minimal. If the source is already AVC then significant quality will be lost with any size reduction.
 
Originally posted by: Arkitech
Originally posted by: ribbon13
If you really have that much content... eight hard drives.... many spindles of discs... look to the future. seriously buy an Areca HBA and build an RAID5/6 array
Click to expand...

hmm sounds interesting, I never heard of that before (Areca HBA). Does it provide data redundancy? I'm a little nervous right now because I don't have any backups of my data, I've been waiting for a good sale on hard drives.
Click to expand...

yes that's eactly what it oes. RAID6 == two hard drives can fail.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/314

Areca ARC-1231ML is the way to go
 
Fine if the goal is simply uptime (combined with appropriate power generator system) but useless for data safety since still prone to user err, virus, theft, vandalism, earthquake, fire, flood, wild animals, sippy cup toting toddlers... Ergo, unless in a secure bunker then duplicating to other HDD's stored remotely is preferred.
 
I think we finally have a use for the new Hitachi 1 TB drive. 🙂

1TB

Actually, the cheapest and best solution may simply be to buy a second copy.
 
Well its been over a year since I initially posted this thread. Just thought I would bump it to see what the current trends are.
 
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