Question Is this a tough choice - - - Blu-rays or external HDDs ?

[Perene]

I don't understand the point of this thread. You seem to already have your mind made up. I also don't know why you bring up the cloud, when I never mentioned it once. I personally am also anti-cloud.

The price per GB of hard drives vs Blu-Ray is not the same. Blu-Ray is about 3x as expensive. Three hard drives give you massively less chance of data loss, compared to one set of Blu-Rays. The likelihood of all three hard drives dying simultaneously is very low (excluding external causes).

Hard drives absolutely are not "for sure going to die within a few years or all of a sudden without a warning." Hard drives can last decades, especially when left mostly unused. They also have fairly decent data recovery prospects. In many cases, they show signs before catastrophic failure, it's literally the point of SMART. I've recovered varying amounts of data from countless hard drives. If your earlier assertion were true, I really need to start playing the lottery!

I'm not sure the point of your link. Most of the issues it brings up are not particularly applicable to the situation we're discussing. Also, I have serious issues with that article, especially since it suggests formatting a drive you want to recover data from. You should also keep in mind that it's written by a company selling data recovery software.

You say you don't like to spend money on things that will need to be replaced so soon, yet you're arguing for spending more than three times as much (for both Blu-Ray media and drive) for only one additional copy of your data. You are right that several corrupt Blu-Ray discs won't result in losing all your data (depending on how you store it). However, having three copies of your data on hard drives makes it far less likely that you'll lose any data. That doesn't even get into how inconvenient it is to burn 150+ discs (assuming single-layer). Also, as I mentioned before, you still have to worry about finding a working Blu-Ray drive. The discs lasting centuries is of little value if there's nothing to read them.

Your original post brought up the fact that it's possible to find bad reviews for any hard drive. Of course it is. You can find bad reviews for anything, including Blu-Rays. I feel like you started with a conclusion and are working backwards, trying to justify it.

I tend to agree with these videos:

I Still Burn CDs, DVDs and Blu Ray (And You Should Too!):

Cold Storage using Blu-rays

- Skip to 3m40s (for the point I'll make below).

For cold storage, which is what I am aiming (the other "hot" copy I was thinking of buying HDD and SSD), even if your Hard Drive manage to survive for many years, if you put so much data in one location, you'll risk too much if any of those "Murphy laws" apply:

- If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

While this one I think it's more suitable for optical media:

- If anything can't go wrong on its own, someone will make it go wrong.

I am not saying discs are perfect, it's just that unless many of the same batch are defective and they start corrupting years after you checked them, and found to be OK, chances are the contents you saved in those dozens of discs will still be there many years later, if you store them properly.

I don't like the idea of having corrupt and very likely unrecoverable data all of sudden, and even worse, all of it at the same time. This is the downside I see (and had experienced) with Hard Drives (and SSDs don't deviate much from it, despite not being so garbage as HDDs, which should be banned). There's too much at stake.

The problem with the idea of buying two or more (in case one gets bad) is that in the end you are investing a lot of money, if the ammount of data does not allow such luxury. I can say the same about tapes, it doesn't matter if one can hold 30 TB, if the drives are 10 times more expensive.

What if you manage to buy 2 or 3 Hard Drives, and in the rare event 2 of them die? Perhaps not at the same time, but for sure within a decade? Will you keep replacing them?

I had issues with discs due to scratches, improperly handling them, but I don't think they are the worst option, considering all others The prices are not much expensive, per GB, unless you are only opting for the top best out there.

All these modern tech used by most to preserve their data always strike me as very fragile, with some hidden flaw that will manifest itself in the worst way possible.

I can't defend them for cold storage, after readings reviews like these:

**************
-Started making a clicking noise when moving files after a couple weeks of use
-Useless!

-Overall worst HDD Ive ever owned do to clicking and freezing. I expected a lot more from WD. I only used the drive a few times in the past couple weeks before it started with the issue. newegg wont replace do to 30 day money back guarantee, im at 35 today. This is ridiculous, money thrown out.
**************

Horribly cheap components, it died within the first year. It just makes a noise like it's trying to load and craps out, can't get it to be recognized on any machine.
**************

Imagine if you just saved a bunch of contents in one of those, and left it untouched. And when you do need them, they die in the 4th time you used it. And it's not just due to using cheap components, you may have a very good drive, and it will be killed anyway, of that list of worst reasons for them to fail, I know about this one very well:

ELECTRONIC FAILURE OR POWER SURGE

If this happens, anything can be fried, including your expensive GPU.

Even if a lightning struck your computer, only one disk at a time would be affected, the others would remain intact.

The statement that is a piece of cake to recover such data is a lie. Let's not be naive about that.

You'll spend a great deal of money and time trying to recover anything, and will fail most of the time. It's like trying to read files that were deleted for good.

You will not recover anything useful, I bet, in 80% of cases.

USB flash drives are also unreliable, any tiny thing not behaving as it should in your PC, will make them erratic.

Of course Murphy laws apply to everything, even Blu-ray discs.

But I gotta ask (for real) if ditching them for any use at all, if abandoning these drives, was a good idea. Just like ditching physical media and rental stores, and only investing in streaming.

Whatever you do, don't rely on cloud storage for anything, this is in the end BS, your data is and at the same time isn't safe AT ALL, you don't really own physically anything that's there, and with the click of a button all of it could be gone and/or your account locked. You are not the "captain" of that boat.

Not to mention the fact that if you don't want 2 but 5 TB, while this is a 150% increase in disk space, Google will charge you 400% more for that plan.

 

[MWink64]

I tend to agree with these videos:

I Still Burn CDs, DVDs and Blu Ray (And You Should Too!):

Cold Storage using Blu-rays

- Skip to 3m40s (for the point I'll make below).

For cold storage, which is what I am aiming (the other "hot" copy I was thinking of buying HDD and SSD), even if your Hard Drive manage to survive for many years, if you put so much data in one location, you'll risk too much if any of those "Murphy laws" apply:

- If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

While this one I think it's more suitable for optical media:

- If anything can't go wrong on its own, someone will make it go wrong.

I am not saying discs are perfect, it's just that unless many of the same batch are defective and they start corrupting years after you checked them, and found to be OK, chances are the contents you saved in those dozens of discs will still be there many years later, if you store them properly.

I don't like the idea of having corrupt and very likely unrecoverable data all of sudden, and even worse, all of it at the same time. This is the downside I see (and had experienced) with Hard Drives (and SSDs don't deviate much from it, despite not being so garbage as HDDs, which should be banned). There's too much at stake.

The problem with the idea of buying two or more (in case one gets bad) is that in the end you are investing a lot of money, if the ammount of data does not allow such luxury. I can say the same about tapes, it doesn't matter if one can hold 30 TB, if the drives are 10 times more expensive.

What if you manage to buy 2 or 3 Hard Drives, and in the rare event 2 of them die? Perhaps not at the same time, but for sure within a decade? Will you keep replacing them?

I had issues with discs due to scratches, improperly handling them, but I don't think they are the worst option, considering all others The prices are not much expensive, per GB, unless you are only opting for the top best out there.

All these modern tech used by most to preserve their data always strike me as very fragile, with some hidden flaw that will manifest itself in the worst way possible.

I can't defend them for cold storage, after readings reviews like these:

**************
-Started making a clicking noise when moving files after a couple weeks of use
-Useless!

-Overall worst HDD Ive ever owned do to clicking and freezing. I expected a lot more from WD. I only used the drive a few times in the past couple weeks before it started with the issue. newegg wont replace do to 30 day money back guarantee, im at 35 today. This is ridiculous, money thrown out.
**************

Horribly cheap components, it died within the first year. It just makes a noise like it's trying to load and craps out, can't get it to be recognized on any machine.
**************

Imagine if you just saved a bunch of contents in one of those, and left it untouched. And when you do need them, they die in the 4th time you used it. And it's not just due to using cheap components, you may have a very good drive, and it will be killed anyway, of that list of worst reasons for them to fail, I know about this one very well:

ELECTRONIC FAILURE OR POWER SURGE

If this happens, anything can be fried, including your expensive GPU.

Even if a lightning struck your computer, only one disk at a time would be affected, the others would remain intact.

The statement that is a piece of cake to recover such data is a lie. Let's not be naive about that.

You'll spend a great deal of money and time trying to recover anything, and will fail most of the time. It's like trying to read files that were deleted for good.

You will not recover anything useful, I bet, in 80% of cases.

USB flash drives are also unreliable, any tiny thing not behaving as it should in your PC, will make them erratic.

Of course Murphy laws apply to everything, even Blu-ray discs.

But I gotta ask (for real) if ditching them for any use at all, if abandoning these drives, was a good idea, after all. Just like ditching physical media and rental stores, and only investing in streaming.

Whatever you do, don't rely on cloud storage for anything, this is in the end BS, your data is and at the same time isn't safe AT ALL, you don't really own physically anything that's there, and with the click of a button all of it could be gone and/or your account locked. You are not the "captain" of that boat.

Not to mention the fact that if you don't want 2 but 5 TB, while this is a 150% increase in disk space, Google will charge you 400% more for that plan.

You clearly already have your mind made up. Your cherry picked sources are anything but authoritative. The one YouTube video you rely on is made by someone who admits he's never even used a Blu-Ray before. The other is obviously not well versed in storage technologies. He repeatedly states incorrect opinions as fact.

I've been doing this a long time and I know hard drives can last decades. I was recently pulling data from 20+ year old hard drives, without issue. Can hard drives fail? Absolutely. So can any other type of drive/media. I've already pointed out the many reasons hard drives are a logical choice for this purpose. You choose to ignore reality and twist things around to justify your choice. I'm not expecting you to change your mind. The only reason I've continued to respond to this thread is to potentially help others who may come across it.

 

[Perene]

Hard Drives USED to last.

I can say the same about many other products.

This isn't true anymore. So you are correct, and wrong at the same time.

I had a Samsung Hard Drive that if were left alone in my former computer, would still be here, probably. 6-7 years later, it was still kicking.

Problem is, Samsung stopped making Hard Drives (a wise decision...), and Seagate stopped being the best in the market, when probably 15 years ago started with their saga of releasing crap after crap, after buying awful smaller companies and hiring bad people.

Ever since this, their Hard Drives never last the same as all other competitors, and others like WD are not reliable despite being better. They would be, if you could complain about ALL models, within 5 years.

I remember very clearly the first doomed ones from Seagate were the 1.5 TB models (released probably around 2005-2010), and many condemned them since then as the worst. Which explains why their drives are the cheapest.

What you forgot to add into this discussion is the fact that planned obsolescence is not a conspiracy theory. Things are poorly made nowadays. And even if Blu-ray discs are the best for cold storage, we are talking about a very specific use.

You can argue burned discs aren't good and tapes are better than everything else, but why mention them, if only rich people or big business can own these drives?

Cloud storage is better for preservation (I rather trust Google servers than my own setup...), but will also not work if someone trigger happy deletes your content on a whim / locks your account. Or if the company over night decides to discontinue the service / gets closed down.

It's no use to explain this last point because most people are dumb. They only want the quickest and most convenient gadget that is trending. And that's why we continue making the mistake of trusting these tech to preserve our data.

I looked this week into discs from 2010 and older. If the media is still fine and the content is still there, it's all that matters to me.

 

[MWink64]

Hard Drives USED to last.

I can say the same about many other products.

This isn't true anymore. So you are correct, and wrong at the same time.

What data do you have to back up that claim? I believe there was some BackBlaze data showing that hard drives are becoming more reliable. Of course, I'm sure you can find some random YouTuber who will contradict that claim.

I don't understand where planned obsolescence comes into this discussion. Also, if everything is poorly made now, wouldn't the same apply to Blu-Ray media and drives?

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

I'm happy with both... a blu ray writer and a HDD. Unwatching this thread now... not much else to see.

 

[Misgar]

I still say give tape a chance. Back in 2019 I bought a second-hand LTO4 SAS stand-alone Quantum tape drive from a small company. The logs showed very little use and I collected it in person from their office. At $100/£85 the barely used drive was a bargain compared with the price of the drive when new.

I then found a source of cheap second-hand tapes at $2/£1.50 each and bought over 200. Having worked in large server rooms I know the significant risks of buying second-hand, but I checked the tapes and many of them had only been used one time.

Since the native format of LTO4 is only 800GB, it means I can't store 30TB on a single (expensive) tape as mentioned earlier in this thread. At only $2 per tape I can afford to make multiple copies of the same data, so less eggs in one basket.

Since 2019, I've purchased a second external SAS tape drive for $120/£100 plus a full height internal drive for only $30/£25. All the three drives will read back tapes written on the other two drives. LSI SAS controller cards suitable for LTO4 are less than $30/£25 on eBay and can be used in most versions of Windows. I prefer not to use SCSI tape drives.

I have used BluRay single-layer in the past, but at just under 25GB per disc, decent Verbatim media's cost per GB is much higher than a single second-hand 800GB LTO4 tape. I also keep copies of important files on three TrueNAS Core RAID-Z2 servers, plus more copies on three separate working computers, plus further copies on USB hard drives. Spread the risk.

Large companies back up to tape and so can home users. Of course brand new LTO7, 8 and 9 drives retail for eye-watering prices, but older technology is more affordable. These days I'd recommend LTO5 because it supports LTFS Read/Write (LTO4 doesn't).

 

[Perene]

What data do you have to back up that claim? I believe there was some BackBlaze data showing that hard drives are becoming more reliable. Of course, I'm sure you can find some random YouTuber who will contradict that claim.

I don't understand where planned obsolescence comes into this discussion. Also, if everything is poorly made now, wouldn't the same apply to Blu-Ray media and drives?

A good take on this:

*************
Q:
That's still $ X more, if you have to split in X GB chunks. Is this better than a written-once, powered-off hard drive ?

A:
Durability.

Go ask any HDD manufacturer what the cold storage life of one of their HDDs is, they're response is 'We don't manufacture products for cold storage'.

A hard drive is still a mechanical device and it can fail, the cost of data recovery on a HDD is extremely high. Any defect in the drive and you're either SOL or paying thousands on recovery if you don't have other backups.

The drive could be damaged by it's host system, a PSU goes bad in the wrong way and your cold storage drive's motor and PCBs could be dead.

Your drive is also a writable device. An infected host machine could infect it or encrypt files, turning your backups into nothing. Or the user could make a mistake, let's not pretend no one ever 'formats the wrong drive, oh <Mod Edit>, what do I do???'.

A BluRay Recordable, unlike CDR and DVDR which used an organic dye data layer, uses a shelf stable metal alloy, that changes phase when hit with the laser. It'll last for decades.

It's also WORM media, Write Once-Read Many, no user or malicious infection can manipulate the data on the disc once written.

A drive failure doesn't harm the disc so long as the drive doesn't outright catch fire with the disc inside. Just manually eject the disc, put it in a new drive, continue reading.

Finally, while tape is also a good option and far more data dense than BluRay, tape has narrow limitations on it's environmental conditions for storage and relies on an expensive and uncommon drive for reading. BDRE drives on the other hand are common consumer PC components and replacements are easy to source. I own *four* BDRE drives.

A hard drive for cold storage has the advantage of being cheap, dense (In terms of square inches per GB) and fast to write and read. But those are the only advantages. For everything else, namely durability and being WORM, BluRay wins.

It's really down to how important the data is, how much you have to store, and how much you're willing to pay.
**************

This thread made me realize something I never thought about all these years, and while I firmly believed optical media was best forgotten: if stored and handled properly, and if you are lucky (we can never be sure all discs will be OK even if preserved as they should), most of your data will survive after many years, since it's split into a good number os discs.

It's the fact the contents are spread, that matters.

If you are not so lucky, your huge HDD or SSD / flash drive/whatever... will a) die after a few uses (and the last one may happen in 2030, after you decided not to touch it again...); b) after much sooner, or c) it was supposed to last more than these Blu-ray discs, but your computer damaged the drive and now you are screwed because you can't recover that backup.

Putting all eggs in the same basket is idiotic. For cold storage.

If you want all this data readily accessible, that's another story.

Even the idea of buying two drives instead of using discs may be equally flawed, they can both fail, and quickly. It's not a question of if, is WHEN. And that moment is always sooner than we think.

I had an incident with a pendrive once, and some of the data (not all) was corrupted (not a problem due to another backup elsewhere), after, guess what? My USB port (from a new computer...) was used to check a fake one with the wrong capacity.

Somehow the PC was stressed after this event, and forgot to tell me this would harm anything used there.

I will never trust USB ports again.

 

[Karadjgne]

Unlike magnetic or electric data retention, bluerays are physical. They are called 'burners' for a reason. That super thin foil gets a hole burned through it by the laser, it's a physical thing. If you only ever burn once on a BR, you are generally good. Most BR will allow 5-6 burns. The problems occur at the 2nd burn.

As the data is burned, it's staggered, so there is limited space that gets smaller with each successive burn (o.....o.....o..... etc). If a single hole is burned incorrectly, off by the tinyest fraction, overlaps a prior hole, doesn't burn through because dust got in the way etc, that data will read as corrupted, and there's no fixing it, only additional burning.

 

[Perene]

Unlike magnetic or electric data retention, bluerays are physical. They are called 'burners' for a reason. That super thin foil gets a hole burned through it by the laser, it's a physical thing. If you only ever burn once on a BR, you are generally good. Most BR will allow 5-6 burns. The problems occur at the 2nd burn.

As the data is burned, it's staggered, so there is limited space that gets smaller with each successive burn (o.....o.....o..... etc). If a single hole is burned incorrectly, off by the tinyest fraction, overlaps a prior hole, doesn't burn through because dust got in the way etc, that data will read as corrupted, and there's no fixing it, only additional burning.

No one said discs can't rot or present errors/corrupt data over time and for the tiniest of reasons.

The problem is (to use a trending topic...) this: when a Hard Drive (and as far as I know, SSDs) fail (I mentioned the scenarios), it's like an iceberg hitting the Titanic, and only later you find out there are very few lifeboats. The chances of saving anything useful from them are the same as you winning the lottery.

On the other hand, the odds of a tragedy of epic proportions are way higher. And even if that wasn't the case, it's not worth spending $$$$$$$$$$$ to try to recover them and hope for a miracle.

When 1 or 2 discs fail on you, if you actually put a lot of data scattered over dozens of them, I guess your chances improve a little... will the 50, 100, 200 break at the same time?

 

[MWink64]

A good take on this:

*************
Q:
That's still $ X more, if you have to split in X GB chunks. Is this better than a written-once, powered-off hard drive ?

A:
Durability.

Go ask any HDD manufacturer what the cold storage life of one of their HDDs is, they're response is 'We don't manufacture products for cold storage'.

Funny, this would seem to contradict that:

Seagate Archive HDD

Best-Fit Applications
• Big Data cold storage

I've already addressed most of your other misleading or erroneous claims and see no point in rehashing that.

Unlike magnetic or electric data retention, bluerays are physical. They are called 'burners' for a reason. That super thin foil gets a hole burned through it by the laser, it's a physical thing. If you only ever burn once on a BR, you are generally good. Most BR will allow 5-6 burns. The problems occur at the 2nd burn.

As the data is burned, it's staggered, so there is limited space that gets smaller with each successive burn (o.....o.....o..... etc). If a single hole is burned incorrectly, off by the tinyest fraction, overlaps a prior hole, doesn't burn through because dust got in the way etc, that data will read as corrupted, and there's no fixing it, only additional burning.

I do not believe this is correct. Additionally, I assume this discussion is focused on BD-R, which cannot be rewritten. I would never recommend rewritable optical media for any archival purpose.

 

[Misgar]

I have three BD writers. I also have three LTO-4 tape drives. Two of the second-hand tape drives (with a low number of read/write hours) were similar in price to a new BD-R drive. The third tape drive was much cheaper.

800GB LTO-4 tapes cost me $2 each second hand, roughly the same price as two blank 25GB BD-R discs. It takes far less time to copy 600GB of photos from a holiday to tape than to BD-R and I can make multiple copies to different tapes without breaking the bank. Contrast this with the time taken to copy 600GB of files to several batches of BD-R for redundancy.

As for problems writing data to media via USB ports, I soon discovered that long (3ft/1m) poorly made leads caused dropped connections and data corruption. I now use short (1ft/0.3m) high quality USB cables. The errors have gone.

To guard against fake memory cards, I use h2testw.exe to check all Compact Flash and Secure Digital cards. This program fills the card with 1GB files, then verifies the files and checks the reported capacity is correct.

When copying photos from CF and SD cards to portable SSD or laptop, I use a program called FreeFileSync to test for corruption during USB transfer. After copying files, I perform a byte-by-byte comparison of all files on CF/SD with the copies on SSD or laptop using FreeFileSync. I then make two more backups exactly the same way before wiping the memory cards. It takes ages but it's much safer.

If you don't verify your media is genuine and run byte-by-byte comparisons after transferring files over USB, you've only got yourself to blame. I also verify my LTO-4 and BD-R transfers with byte-by-byte comparisons.

 

[Perene]

Tapes shouldn't even be mentioned here, it's pathetic how expensive these drives are. Imagine if one of them break, what would you do? At least Blu-ray drives cost 100-200 USD...

The problem isn't how much it takes to burn each disc, it's the fact you are concentrating all data into a single egg of that basket, so, if the egg breaks, all of it will be gone.

Last week I was looking into Hard drive reviews and there were people complaining their noise was making their crazy, due to sitting so close. This garbage technology is older than all these discs and why it still sells, is beyond me...

 

[Misgar]

Not all tape drives are prohibitively expensive. Although LTO-7, LTO-8 and LTO-9 drives cost thousands of dollars, they are normally used by large companies, not individuals wishing to store 4TB of data at home.

Older technology LTO-4 and LTO-5 tape drives are much cheaper. Second hand LTO-4 drive prices are similar to or cheaper than BluRay writers.

My first external Quantum LTO-4 SAS drive cost me roughly $100 second hand. It had been very lightly used and was in pristine condition. I bought a second identical tape drive for $120 and a full height internal drive for $30. All three drives work fine and read tapes from the other drives. If one of my LTO-4 drives dies, I can replace for the same price as a Blu-ray drive.

My LTO-4 tapes were cheap at $2 each second hand. Brand new LTO-4 tapes are only $20 to $30 and at 800GB native capacity, are equivalent to 32 single-layer BD-R discs.

If you're not paranoid about buying second hand, tape drives can be just as affordable as BluRay. Even if you prefer brand new, LTO-4 tape drives are within the reach of many home users.

My first CD Writer was SCSI (pre SATA) and cost over $250 back in the mid nineties. It needed a $100 Adaptec SCSI card to work in NT4 Workstation. A stack of 10 blank 650MB CD-R discs cost $25. These days blank CD-Rs cost a few tens of cents.

When new standards are released, e.g. CD-R, BD-R, LTO-4, the associated drives and media are expensive. As time goes by they get cheaper and become more affordable.

 

[Karadjgne]

Scuzzi for the win! Lol. Best bet, no matter what your media of choice is, back up or reset the archival files once a year.

 

[Misgar]

My old builds (pre-2010) invariably contained a Scuzzy card for use with proprietary scanners, CDROM drives, tape drives, RAID arrays, etc. Adaptec controllers often came with lots of pretty LEDs (red, yellow and green).

Life became much easier when SATA, SAS and USB became the norm. It might be fun to see if any of my Sony SDX1-35C 35GB backup tapes are still readable after more than 10 years. Ditto with my backups on Verbatim single layer BD-R. These days I use multiple LTO-4 tapes for archives.

I used to have trouble with blank DVD media until I switched to Verbatim. I hardly ever use DVDs now. Windows boot images are often too big to fit on single layer DVDs.

 

[Perene]

I received a batch of BD-RE (23 GB) this week. 50 units.

To fill one of them, it takes exactly 1 hour and 20 minutes in my old drive (at 2x, and the discs do not allow any other speed). No, it doesn't take 2 minutes less, 1 minute more - exactly 80 minutes (at least the last 12 I burned...), since I always check "verify data after burning" with CDBurnerXP.

The best app to create a catalog is this one, I don't think any other comes close: https://www.wincatalog.com/

It can also check video contents and list their internal tracks, something I wanted but was unable to do with multiple at the same time (using MediaINFO).

Also, for storing I followed the tips mentioned in this link: https://www.digital-scrapbooking-storage.com/best-jewel-case-for-storing-cds-and-dvds.html

A standard CD jewel cases, 10.4mm thick, is what I put ALL discs. I checked the alternatives and they ALL suck. Amaray Keep Cases are good, but waste too much space, so not an option.

 

[Misgar]

@Perene (at 2x, and the discs do not allow any other speed)

What media are you using that only support x2? I wasn't aware such slow media still exists, but it's been some time since I purchased blank BD-R.

I have an unopened pack of 50 Verbatim BD-R single layer 25GB discs and they're marked 6x.

After reading various forums I know these discs should unofficially support writing up to 12x, but although my three internal Blu-ray drives work at 6x and possibly 8x or higher, I normally write to BD-R at 4x.

When I replaced an old DVR/RW drive I was annoyed to find the new drive would not write CDs at less than 16x in Nero. I prefer writing audio CDs for the car at 8x, a compromise between speed and quality. I doubt I could detect "jitter" whilst concentrating on driving.

I still have a couple of Ricoh MP6200 50-pin Narrow SCSI CD/RW drives if I want to burn CDs at 1x or 2x.

 

[Perene]

@Perene (at 2x, and the discs do not allow any other speed)

What media are you using that only support x2? I wasn't aware such slow media still exists, but it's been some time since I purchased blank BD-R.

I always had an old LG drive, even bought a new PC case with support for it, yet I think I only burned 1 or 2 Blu-ray discs all these years... I am currently trying this one:

https://i.postimg.cc/PqVnnm3y/BD.jpg

I am planning on buying a new drive, the PIONEER BDR-S13UBK

 

[MWink64]

Why would you use BD-RE for an archival project??? I've never had good luck with re-writable optical disks. I know a business that suffered serious data loss because they exclusively used CD-RWs for backups.

 

[Perene]

Why would you use BD-RE for an archival project??? I've never had good luck with re-writable optical disks. I know a business that suffered serious data loss because they exclusively used CD-RWs for backups.

For the more valuable/sensitive data I will use something better and most likely more than one backup for cold storage, what I am archiving here will not be a problem if it's lost for the most part (the reason for doing it is because it takes a long time to find it again, or to organize it, even if it's out there, such as videos and their internal tracks, or ripping again the DVDs/BDs/etc.). The issue here is that there are terabytes of data, and I can't afford buying the best discs for the job.

I also have to spend almost the same $ for these cheap discs, buying CD cases.

 

[MWink64]

I can't be the only one that finds this thread utter insanity.

Let me see if I have this right. You want to store 4TB of data, making sure that you won't lose it. You make the potentially incorrect assumption that Blu-Rays will outlast external hard drives and that you'll still be able to access the data on them far in the future. You feel cheated if you spend money on things that won't last.

So... You buy potentially mediocre BD-REs for presumably 3-6X the cost per TB of an external HD. Then, you spend almost as much on jewel cases for them. You're going to spend over 200 hours burning all of them, assuming only one set. And, some of this data could have been re-ripped from the original discs.

By my calculations, you could have bought 6-12 external hard drives for the same price and saved yourself over 100 hours of work, not to mention the headache of dealing with so many discs. Now, you'll end up with ONE backup, at least some of which is likely on mediocre BD-REs. I just can't fathom the logic to this.

 

[Perene]

The cost to me is +- USD 28 per TB if I buy these blanks. Not including their cases. Depending where you live, certain itens are more expensive than others or most of them imported with heavy taxes...

If I wanted to buy an internal 1 TB Hard Drive, like the WD10EURX, it would cost me USD 39. I am not mentioning external, since they cost more, probably 2-3x what I am spending on a cheap BD-RE, per GB.

Also, do not compare the reliability of CDs/DVDs with Blu-rays. The first two are trash and proven to not last, anyway.

The thing is, I am already predicting some data loss (not that all of them will be dead soon), and you need to ask what is worse: 1, 2, 3 TB or more going out the window or not even 100 GB, if you are lucky?

I think, too, discs suck. But the idea is using for COLD STORAGE. I checked some discs (not Blu-rays) decades-old that were stored here, and the data was still there, preserved. What are the odds most Hard Drives and SSDs being used on this entire forum are going to last that much? Not high.

 

[MWink64]

$28 USD per TB is pretty low but still almost twice the cost of a HD (at least, here). Also, you need to add the cost of the jewel cases or else it's not a fair comparison. I wouldn't be looking at 1TB hard drives. If you have 4TB of data, that's the smallest size I'd be looking for (simply because larger drives tend to have lower cost per TB).

Interesting that you say CDs and DVDs are trash and proven not to last. I just came across This. It shows certain CD-Rs as having the greatest longevity. I'm actually a bit surprised by the results.

As for your predictions of data loss, you're simply making assumptions. A bad batch of disks could result in far more than 100GB of data loss. As you said, we're talking about a cold storage scenario. An unpowered, disconnected hard drive, stored in reasonable conditions, is quite likely to last several decades. I've seen very few drives die while just sitting on a shelf. Let's go with a more conservative estimate of being able to buy 3 hard drives for the cost of one set of Blu-Rays and jewel cases. My money would be on the three (different) hard drives resulting in less data loss than the one set of Blu-Rays.

 

[Perene]

Even if that drive is unpowered, as I explained to you before, it's not just a matter of bad design, bad manufacturer (like the <Mod Edit> Seagate)...

If that drive can fail for any reason, it will without in many cases warning you, even if you argue they could have lasted 2, 3 decades if not used and stored/handled properly, I could refute you by saying that you risk losing everything by simply using them in your PC.

Even the best drive ever made faces that risk if I plug it here.

And not for every single day, during years. It only needs to be accessed a few times.

That, and a possible hidden defect you know NOTHING about. That flaw may manifest itself in the 10th time using. Who knows?

There are multiple scenarios that can cause them to fail (or perhaps during shipping, were damaged somehow?), one of them is the worst, which is a power surge (and to protect you from that, you'll also need to spend a good $$$$$).

That kind of event will not affect discs that are sitting on your closet, if these were meant to last as much as these drives.

All I am explaining here is that all this data scattered over dozens of discs has a better chance of surviving.

We spend a lot of $ building the ideal PC. But it takes a random event like a bad PSU to put if not all this hardware, some at risk.

Or some idiot technician that does not do his job so well, when moving old hardware parts into a new case.

These things are very fragile, you know... Discs, too.

When a drive fails, you are not going to recover most of it, if anything at all. That's the downside of having lots of space for less $$$$$$$.

Not to mention how much a company that specializes in the recovery, is going to charge you, and probably achieve nothing in the end.

If you are talking about HOT storage, of course it makes sense to discuss Hard Drives and SSDs...

 

[USAFRet]

Reading this thread is becoming tedious.

BluRay, HDD, cloud, magical space aliens....
There is no One True Way.

But....kudos to ALL of you who actually practice and test some sort of data backup.