Archival DVDs - what brand?

[John Beale]

Error rate estimation only tells you about the current
condition of your media and does not give any indication as to
stability over time (I notice none of the media on your web-page is
more than 3 years old). Phtalocyanine gives you lower burn quality
but still is the better shot for long-term data survival. I would
not trust any cyanine including Taiyo Yuden with any archive material.

Which type of DVD, if any, do you use for archiving? I have some MAM-A "archival gold" CDs but it's very slow to back up huge archives that way.

I agree my error rate data doesn't say anything for certain about longevity. I didn't start using Taiyo Yuden DVDs until mid-2003, but (for example) a TYG01 disc I recorded in May 2003 has one of the lowest error rates now in Sept. 2005, so that disc has stayed good for two years at least. By contrast, my RITEKG05 discs from this year are barely readable.

My numbers are the avg. and max. readback errors reported when that disc is read in that drive. On sucessive reads of the same disc in the same drive the numbers are similar, though not identical. In another drive they could be quite different.

I haven't seen any published data on DVD error rates measured over a period of years. Do you know of any? I'd be very interested to see it.

 

[canonballs]

Error rate estimation only tells you about the current
condition of your media and does not give any indication as to
stability over time (I notice none of the media on your web-page is
more than 3 years old). Phtalocyanine gives you lower burn quality
but still is the better shot for long-term data survival. I would
not trust any cyanine including Taiyo Yuden with any archive material.

Which type of DVD, if any, do you use for archiving? I have some
MAM-A "archival gold" CDs but it's very slow to back up huge
archives that way.

I've just started transferring archive material to Delkin Gold DVD-R (also manufactured by MAM-A). I remember MAM-A also sell their own brand of gold/phtalocyanine DVD. The one area where they don't make any particular claims is the polycarbonate, so I'd expect their media is as prone to scratching as anything else.

My numbers are the avg. and max. readback errors reported when that
disc is read in that drive. On sucessive reads of the same disc in
the same drive the numbers are similar, though not identical. In
another drive they could be quite different.

Yes, performance depends on the burner - it's not just that there are good and bad burners, you can also have nice and poor burner/media matches.

I haven't seen any published data on DVD error rates measured over
a period of years. Do you know of any? I'd be very interested to
see it.

So would I - there is I think a graph on MAM-A's site, but they are not exactly an independent tester. At the very least they are known to have actually conducted accelerated ageing tests.

--
canonballs

 

[RJ 05]

You may find this site very interesting

http://www.best-dvd-burning-software-reviews.com/best-blank-dvd-media.asp#blanks
--
RICK

 

[BMA]

Because the cost for bare hard drives has fallen so much, I've
started buying bare drives, putting them in an external drive case,
backing up to it, and then putting it in a fire safe. I've worked
with 30 year old hard drives with all the data still intact. I've
had CDs that were tested just fine but are unreadable three years
later even after being stored in normal indoor environementa
conditions in a file cabinet.

For fires the only data media option is off site backups. A fire safe won't protect a hard drive. Most fire safes use water or some chemical to draw heat off to protect their contents from burning up. Their inside temperaturs con goe up to 350F durring a fire yet the paper contens will survive because they have been kept below the burning point of paper, 451F. Your average hard disk, CD or DVD can't handle that environment. Even teh "media" safes let the temperature inside go to high 150F.

On CDs and DVDs. A study I read on them seamed to indicate that writing on the surface in the area where data is stored with nearly any type of marker decreased the data retension life even if sue care was taken not to press down to hard. Personal experience and some testing of my older disks seams to bear this out. I now don't make any marks on the CD or DVD, but instead put the label on the protective sleve I place the disk into. I also place a text file on the DVD describing the contents and it also has the text of that sleve label in it. I'm currently investigating creating checksum/error recovery disks for each data set.

--
Bryan - click, click, click, click, moo, click, click.

 

[mpeltier]

I always buy two sets of different name brand media and back up the whole catalog about once a year and keep each set in a different place. I do this mainly because I have lost about 1yr of photos in a computer crash once. I currently keep the images waiting to be burned on 3 separate hard drives.

At some point I think I am going to have to go back over the photos and delete again to reduce the number of DVD's needed

--
http://www.dfdems.com
http://dfdems.smugmug.com/

 

[RecalcitrantRon]

here:

http://www.cddimensions.com/

I have used them several times without any problems.

--
Just my nickels worth.
Happy Snappin'!



Ron
----------------------------------------------------
http://www.pbase.com/recalcitrantron
FCAS Member No. 68
pbase supporter
D Seventy