Keep that DVR, DVD's won't last 5 years

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Thanks Ken, but that guy is smoking crack.
 
well, I have a CD I burned in 96 (at 1x speeds I believe) on memorex media that still plays just fine. So, that guy can head back down to Amsterdam and get some more backup tapes with his hash.

Edit:

Sorry, it was 1997, just looked again at the date.
 
No media lasts forever. The guy is definitely on crack about magnetic tapes though. If you're lucky and the drive doesn't EAT the tape, you might be able to read it in a few years. Digital tapes might be better but analog tapes degrade over just a few years. I have many VHS tapes in my collection that were important that have only been used a few times but because of age are almost unwatchable.

I don't know anything about the problems with the dye that the guy was describing, but the reflective layer (the top/label side) on many CDR discs is extremely easy to damage and both sides are very susceptible to scratches.

It is always a good idea to have multiple copies on different brands of media, stored in different locations. And if you're really worried, you can just buy new media occasionally and make more copies before they wear out.
 
The thing is that cd's burned 10 years ago were burned slow (4x or so...), and those don't compare to a 48x cd burned just 2-3 years ago IMO. The 48x cd has a much smaller groove burned into it and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't last as long as it should.

The slower the burn, the deeper the groove...
 
I think that he quality of the blank media has likely go down hill in those past eight years though. Remember how much a blank CD used to cost vs what you pay today. Those saving do come at a quality cost.

This is why I make sure to print out all of my favorite digital pictures at a normal photo developer. I know that one day, my original jpeg files could somehow get deleted/inaccessible.

PS. I'm reading a Network+ study guide right now, and I'm in a "fault tolerance" chapter. The paragraph that I'm starts with the sentence "A hard disk is a temporary storage device, and every hard drive will eventually fail". Therefore, be sure to make fresh backups of your backups on a periodic basis.
 
When I first saw this my jaw dropped open. I have about 300 movies that I have burned over the past 3-4 years. I have had a slew of DVD's go bad in the last year but they are all from the same batch of low cost DVD's that I think were bad. I sure hope you guys are right about him being on crack.
 
I use RAID-1 (mirroring) on my server for a "live" backup of my 10,000+ photograph database. I also backup weekly to DDS150 (20 GB native) tape and recycle the tapes monthly. I have many CDs from the late 90s that are no longer readable, and some that are. They're all of various brands and even the good brands (i.e. Verbatim) aren't infallible. Most of those unreadable disks were burned at 1x, 4x, or 6x.

I tell my clients all the time that CDR/DVDR is not reliable for long-term archive and they should make duplicates of those disks at least once per year if they're hell-bent on keeping the data. I've proposed to many to either do RAID-1 mirroring, or purchase a second hard disk for manual/automatic backups (in addition to keeping the original data on their primary hard disk or backing up to optical media).

Personally I'd do RAID-6 plus LTO2 mag tape if I could afford it..
 
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That's why I only recommend Hitachi hard disk drives for consumer (non-SCSI) models. In my 12 years of building computers they're by far the most reliable disks made. I have had to replace two Hitachi drives out of several hundred I have sold.

For SCSI I would also recommend Hitachi as well as Seagate. Western Digital made some very nice SCSI drives that were very reasonably priced, but they got out of the SCSI market years ago. It's a shame, too, since their regular drives have gone waaaaay down in quality since their switch to fluid ball-bearings (c. 1999). (It's not the liquid ball-bearings that caused it, but other corner-cutting at the same time.)

I know everyone seems ape-wild about Maxtor and WDC, but honestly, there's nothing to be excited about unless you like replacing your drives and potentially losing a lot of data. Almost every failed hard disk I replace in computers I haven't built has been a Maxtor (most likely) or WDC...
 
A couple years ago, when DVD recorders came out, burned a bunch of DVDs from old home video VHS tapes - some over 20 yrs. old!! Of course the quality of those tapes at the time (made w. a 6 lb. camera and a 13 lb. "portable" deck) - weren't much to begin with. Still looked pretty much the same.
I hope the DVDs hold up as long. I put them on DVDs thinking they would last much longer.

...mike
 
Well you've done the work, they're in digital now, but you have to remember that every time a new format emerges, you need to upgrade to it. Expecting DVD's to last for 20 years is like expecting those tapes to last for 20 years. They may do it but not with the results you'll want. When prices for blu-ray/HD-DVD come down, be sure to convert them to that format...
 

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