Pressed vs burned DVD for best longevity & error-rate

[chane]

I have some precious home movies which I have backed up as identical MPEG files on a pair of eternal hard drives.



But I would like to also copy them to DVD. Then I recalled a claim someone made that movies issued on commercial DVDs have longer life spans because DVD studios "press" the DVDs rather than use computer DVD 'burner" drives.



Is this true? If so, than assuming one uses reasonably reliable (Verbatim? Sony?) blank dual-layered DL +/- blank media and burns the disk at a slow (more error free?) speed, what DVD lifespan and error-rate could one expect, compared to a pressed copy?

 

[shortylickens]

Commercial DVD's are generally better than home made.
BUT, if you really wanna keep something forever, then dump the optical disc. Those things are accidents waiting to happen. Use a fat external drive as your permanent backup and DVD's as a way of watching on your television, nothing more.

 

[boomhower]

Can you press a DVD? If not, then why does it matter? Back them up on a couple drives with at least one at an off site location and call it a day.

 

[chane]

To be sure, I'm archiving my files on multiple hard drives; just wanted to have them on DVD to view on my home theatre. But it still sucks that pressed DVDs are better than burned ones. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[fatpat268]

Commercial DVD's are generally better than home made.
BUT, if you really wanna keep something forever, then dump the optical disc. Those things are accidents waiting to happen. Use a fat external drive as your permanent backup and DVD's as a way of watching on your television, nothing more.

I wouldn't trust important data to an external drive.

Fact is, there's no method that's "safe" for long term storage yet. The best you can do is to make multiple copies of your data and spread it throughout different types of storage.

DVDs, provided that you properly store them, will give you the best bang for your buck when backing up data.

 

[chane]

....multiple, external drives. I have a pair of brand new 500GB Seagate ST3500514NS enterprise drives, which I use almost exclusively for archiving-not for playback. That way, they get minimal use, thus maximizing their lifespans.

For playback of my audio/video files, my two Dell desktops each have a storage-only drive, besides their systems drives. If those drives crash, and if data recovery is too expensive or impossible, my youthful externals will have all my data to reload onto the new internal drives.

 

[corkyg]

Basically true. Home burner lasers that"burn" a layer of lacquer that coats the recorded side of the disk. Commercial disks are mass recorded, call it pressed, into the disk surface and then coated with a thin layer of mylar. That protects the recorded pits and peaks.

The home media lacquer is more fragile and more easily damaged than commercial pressings.

Media lifespan depends greatly on storage environment. Commercial disks less so.

 

[alpineranger]

Not pressed as in minting a coin... Those disks require making an injection molding form with a pattern on one side that corresponds to the pits and valleys. Think a molded plastic piece. then that is coated with metal and a protective layer.

Most recordable media is a unpatterned disk with an unprotected dye layer on one surface. Even if the dye layer doesn't degrade (which it does), the layer has very little physical protection.

Go with rendundant copies on hard disks.

 

[galacticninja]

If you decide to back up to a DVD+R/DVD-R, make sure you put them in a container that won't expose them to air. I have ones (cheap) that lasted almost 8 years now, with no problems. DVD+R is known to be a better format than DVD-R (less susceptible to interference and error; more accurate burning). Most, if not, all modern DVD drives can now read it.

When burning a new batch of DVD+Rs and if they are of the same brand and type, make sure you run a verify when doing your first burn in that batch, to check if the brand/batch you bought is of acceptable quality. If it fails a verify, the DVD+R is most likely of low quality. Ergo, do not buy it again. If the place when your bought it allows a return, return the merchandise and have it exchanged to another brand.

Backing up to a hard disk is much easier though, as you only need to copy-paste (no need to burn) and they are much easier to access (no need to find the DVD+R, and insert it to a DVD player).

I recommend backing up to a DVD+R (cheaper than hard disk, price/megabyte ratio) those files that you will rarely access, and backup frequently accessed files to a hard disk.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Some low quality media will literally fall apart in a few years (like some of my burned CDs whose shiny surface started cracking and disintegrating). Good media should be better, and often burning at a lower speed will help (like 4x).

Might be placebo but I also find the earlier generation drives to be much more reliable for burning and reading. My first CD-RW drive was $250 (2001) and my first DVD-RW was $350 (2002-3) and both operate well while I have ruined a number of drives costing under $100.

 

[C1]

DvD RAM is supposed to be a much more hardy media for long term storage.

 

[0roo0roo]

Dye is just harder to trust.
That being said as said already..never trust a single copy regardless.