Backup CDs & DVDs?

[jb_va2001]

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

 

[jerrymeola]

I have had several images on CDs become currupted. Two copies of important images is certainly safer. I find that professionally prepared music CDs are begining to currupt after about 7 years.

I find that I often reorganize my best images to make themn easier to locate and when I back up this version I now have two copies or more.

CDs are very cheap. Not everything would be a disaster to lose but for those images that are important make several copies.

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have
backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or
damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

--
jerry

 

[bryan davies]

Hi,
I agree.

I burnt a whole load of images to disk a couple of years ago and marked them with a "felt pen " on the back of the disk.

Well !!!! I lost some images, therefore I copied every darn disc and cleaned off the marker with meths.
It was my own fault tho' because I did not know the perils of markers on CDs.

The outcome of this sad story is for whatever reason copy your important disks and store them sererate from the originals.
Bryan

I find that I often reorganize my best images to make themn easier
to locate and when I back up this version I now have two copies or
more.

CDs are very cheap. Not everything would be a disaster to lose but
for those images that are important make several copies.

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have
backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or
damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

--
jerry

 

[Neophyte1200]

I decided about a year ago that the price of hard drives is so low it makes them a VERY attractive alternative to CDs or DVDs. I had a few old drives lying around anyway (I don't like selling them - it is too easy for dishonest people to extract personal information, even efter you THINK you've deleted it). For the very reason I don't like selling them, IMHO they are the most stable media for long-term storage. I do not leave them plugged in, I fill them with valuable files, then take them out of the computer case, so they aren't running. I'm strongly considering putting them in a safe-deposit box.

Just a little food for thought...

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have
backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or
damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

 

[Sarajean]

IMHO they are the most stable
media for long-term storage. I do not leave them plugged in, I
fill them with valuable files, then take them out of the computer
case, so they aren't running. I'm strongly considering putting
them in a safe-deposit box.

Just a little food for thought...

This is actually a very well accepted theory and its being practiced by many large legal firms and photography studios for archiving their data these days. And here is why:

Harddrives are designed with strong casings and shock protection that prevent "the elements" from troubling them. The only thing that damages them are prolonged "use" and of course heat from such use. Since the platters and head "dont" get use and or spin/heat when being stored, their protection value is quite amazing. The trick is to make sure the drive gets fill and "used" as little as possible to reduce the risk of corruption. But even then, data recovery on a harddrive is vastly easier then that of a damaged CD/DVDrom.

The only other suggestion I make is to get your photos "factory pressed" rather then "burned" at home. Many online companies offer such services for as low as $5 a DVD. Pressed DVDs/CDs like those that are store bought using $25,000+ machines have longer life then "burned" discs.

 

[jerrymeola]

laptop hard disks have a safe life of 2-3 years and desk top hard disks 8-10 years. external hard disks usually can be expected to last 5-6 years. this is the physical expectations. I have crashed many hard disks over the 25 years I have owned computers (crashed my first 10MB disk in 1980 which cost me $10,000.00)

Software changes also may make many disks unreadable in 5-10 years. CDs and DVDs will probably have software changes in less than 5 years. Can anyone read a 5 1/4 inch floppy anymore (and I have 8 inch and 12 inch floppies if you want to really go back.)

Multiple copies on several mediums is certainly safer and you have to stay abreast of the technology and be prepared to recopy everything to the next archieve medium when it arrives.

 

[Neophyte1200]

All good thoughts - cannot disagree. Just a point of clarification: I'm talking about leaving the hard drives on a shelf, not connected or powered up. Under those conditions, the useful life of the hardware would be just about unlimited. Those drives certainly will not break down from normal wear and tear. No matter how we store our valuable data, we are going to have to keep it in a format that is compatible with existing technology. In my mind, when it comes time to transfer all this data to another (not yet invented) media, I'd much rather have it all on a hard drive than to have to switch out a bunch of DVDs or even more CDs.

Happy Data Storage to All.

laptop hard disks have a safe life of 2-3 years and desk top hard
disks 8-10 years. external hard disks usually can be expected to
last 5-6 years. this is the physical expectations. I have crashed
many hard disks over the 25 years I have owned computers (crashed
my first 10MB disk in 1980 which cost me $10,000.00)

Software changes also may make many disks unreadable in 5-10 years.
CDs and DVDs will probably have software changes in less than 5
years. Can anyone read a 5 1/4 inch floppy anymore (and I have 8
inch and 12 inch floppies if you want to really go back.)

Multiple copies on several mediums is certainly safer and you have
to stay abreast of the technology and be prepared to recopy
everything to the next archieve medium when it arrives.

 

[Jarle Aasland]

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have
backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or
damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

 

[Vernon D Rainwater]

For those of you storing your images on CDs or DVDs, do you have
backups or two copies of the disk? The risk of loss (corrupted or
damaged disk) seems low, but...

----
JB

I have read all replies and did not see any reference to the type of Media that should be better than others such as CD-R vs CD-RW and DVD- +R vs DVD- +RW media.

Also, there appears to be different quality CD and DVD media which may need to be considered. Meaning, are the ultra-cheap Media as good as the Professional Grade.

I have no proof (just what I have read from those that supposedly know) that the R media (for both CD and DVD) is better than the RW media for longevity and quality for archival storage.

Regarding future technology should not be something that "slips up" on us since we have the opportunity to test our previous media with the newer equipment as well as software so we should NOT overlook this.

The one poster that has the older disks from some 20+ years ago. Do you happen to have any of the Disk Platters that we used on the IBM 1401 and 1460 Computers back in the 1950's and early 1960's [Grin]....
--
Vernon...
http://www.pbase.com/vrain

 

[B0b]

yup i make 2 copies of all my work - 1 is stored in the office and the other i store off site

 

[jerrymeola]

it is still a coating on a metal plate and coatings flake off even from none use. Actually lack of use may shorten the life of a disk from moisture and mold attacking the plates. Using the disks heats them and prevents mold growth.

if the flaking is in the address register everything on the disk is lost. Nothing is really safe of itself

Happy Data Storage to All.

laptop hard disks have a safe life of 2-3 years and desk top hard
disks 8-10 years. external hard disks usually can be expected to
last 5-6 years. this is the physical expectations. I have crashed
many hard disks over the 25 years I have owned computers (crashed
my first 10MB disk in 1980 which cost me $10,000.00)

Software changes also may make many disks unreadable in 5-10 years.
CDs and DVDs will probably have software changes in less than 5
years. Can anyone read a 5 1/4 inch floppy anymore (and I have 8
inch and 12 inch floppies if you want to really go back.)

Multiple copies on several mediums is certainly safer and you have
to stay abreast of the technology and be prepared to recopy
everything to the next archieve medium when it arrives.

--
jerry

 

[jerrymeola]

but I have some crashed platters from a data general of the same age.

but for some of the real issues you raised

I have read all replies and did not see any reference to the type
of Media that should be better than others such as CD-R vs CD-RW
and DVD- +R vs DVD- +RW media.

Never use RW meterial for achcieving. 3-6 months at most.

Also, there appears to be different quality CD and DVD media which
may need to be considered. Meaning, are the ultra-cheap Media as
good as the Professional Grade.

ultra cheap CDs may be bad when you use them. Very few people go back and look at every image on a backup to see if each recorded perfectly.

Construction of CDs use three different types of recording medium and the cost grows rapidly with reliabillity. Gold is the only truely inert meterial and gold based CDs cost several dollars a piece but shoud last 20-30 years or more, even if the readers may not exist that long.

I have no proof (just what I have read from those that supposedly
know) that the R media (for both CD and DVD) is better than the RW
media for longevity and quality for archival storage.

There are a lot of test results on the internet showing how really bad RW meterial is for backups of longer than a few months

Regarding future technology should not be something that "slips up"
on us since we have the opportunity to test our previous media with
the newer equipment as well as software so we should NOT overlook
this.

It never slips up on us but we put it off until we realise we are too late and in trouble. Things we never though we would use again seem to return and are needed.

The one poster that has the older disks from some 20+ years ago.
Do you happen to have any of the Disk Platters that we used on the
IBM 1401 and 1460 Computers back in the 1950's and early 1960's
[Grin]....
--

I did not own the 1401 I used in collage or I might have kept a piece.

Vernon...
http://www.pbase.com/vrain

--
jerry

 

[jerrymeola]

Bob makes a good point we have ignored. A fire in your home will destroy all originals and backups at once. A copy should be stored somewhere else.

yup i make 2 copies of all my work - 1 is stored in the office and
the other i store off site

--
jerry

 

[Bartman01]

I would bet most "corrupt" discs never recorded properly in the first place. Even with name brand CD's I occasionally have one that doesnt burn properly but shows as sucessful.

Nero has a verify option, so I use it almost exclusively. With Roxio (with important data), I always copy the CD back to the HD to verify that I can at least read it properly.

 

[Dewdrop1]

Neophyte1200 wrote:
(I don't like selling them -

it is too easy for dishonest people to extract personal
information, even efter you THINK you've deleted it). For the very
reason I don't like selling them,

If you are concerned about personal information left on a hard drive, all you need to do is use a program which writes over the files or entire disk several times when you truly want it cleaned of data. I used to work for a company that did work for the military. We had hard drives with Secret information stored on them If the disk was needed for unclassified work, it could be "cleaned" and reused. This was usually done with SCSI drives. The document control people would only approve IDE drive if one could show that no additional sectors had gone bad since the disk was put into service. The concern here was that the built-in controller would mark a sector as bad it it failed a write operation 3 time (or some such number). There was a possibility that classified data could remain on the bad sector and the cleaning software would not be allowed to overwrite that sector. I always felt that was being a little too paranoid. It would require some specialized equipment to read those bad sectors, so I wouldn't worry too much about a buyer of that disk being able to read the data let alone make anything out of it.

Norton sells a utility for doing what I have been describing. The operation is known as a "government wipe." By the way, even if you aren't selling an old drive, there are other reasons for erasing files so others can never retrieve them. You can figure out what those reasons might be. The point is that it can be done. It just takes a little longer to permanently erase a file.

Dewdrop

 

[Mike_V]

I've got a 15 year old Kodak Photo CD gold coloured disc that reads fine.

I've got some 5 year old super cheap CD-R discs that are dodgy. Most of them you can see the silver coloured metal flaking or discoloured.

The disc quality makes a huge difference.

 

[Neophyte1200]

I am familiar with the "Government Wipe", or "DOD Wipe", and various other wiping strategies, but I also know that the NSA does not trust the reliability/completeness of those methods - when they want to discard a drive, they literalliy disassemble the drives, shred each platter, and smelt the resulting metal heap.

Now THAT is what I call paranoid!

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to sound like an expert on any of this - I'm just a computer hobbyist and I read a lot.

By the way - you don't have to pay Norton - there are numerous free utilities to do shredding/wiping...

Cheers,
Eric

it is too easy for dishonest people to extract personal
information, even efter you THINK you've deleted it). For the very
reason I don't like selling them,

If you are concerned about personal information left on a hard
drive, all you need to do is use a program which writes over the
files or entire disk several times when you truly want it cleaned
of data. I used to work for a company that did work for the
military. We had hard drives with Secret information stored on
them If the disk was needed for unclassified work, it could be
"cleaned" and reused. This was usually done with SCSI drives. The
document control people would only approve IDE drive if one could
show that no additional sectors had gone bad since the disk was put
into service. The concern here was that the built-in controller
would mark a sector as bad it it failed a write operation 3 time
(or some such number). There was a possibility that classified
data could remain on the bad sector and the cleaning software would
not be allowed to overwrite that sector. I always felt that was
being a little too paranoid. It would require some specialized
equipment to read those bad sectors, so I wouldn't worry too much
about a buyer of that disk being able to read the data let alone
make anything out of it.

Norton sells a utility for doing what I have been describing. The
operation is known as a "government wipe." By the way, even if you
aren't selling an old drive, there are other reasons for erasing
files so others can never retrieve them. You can figure out what
those reasons might be. The point is that it can be done. It just
takes a little longer to permanently erase a file.

Dewdrop

 

[David Hughes124436]

Hi,

Hard discs crash and cost a fortune to get the data back. CD-RW's fail too often in my experience but CD-R's are cheap, I use TDK and they cost pennies.

So I have all my pictures on the HDD but copy them over to CD-R's and then later on make another copy a bit out of step with the first set of copies. So one set of discs may have pictures 1000 to 2000, then 2000 to 3000 etc on it and the copy set will have them from 1500 to 2500, 2500 to 3500 so you get two bites at the cherry because they are out of step.

Then put the CD-R in another computer (I use an elderly laptop) and go through it looking at all the pictures to be safe). I ought to throw away the failures but, so far, I've saved them in a box as a reserve, just in case...

Lastly, scribble the title on the blank bit around the hole for the spindle.

Regards, David

PS Someone once told me that the place for important documents is a plastic bag in the freezer! It seems that whatever's in the freezer usually survives the fire (but I've not tested this yet).