What is easiest way to backup 50GB of photos to DL DVD?

[Perzdogg]

Here's the problem: I want to backup up my new photos once a month. So far in 2006, I took 50GB of photos (2 kids and an itchy camera trigger finger).

Obviously, I can manually split up the data between two DVDs. But using Nero to manually figure out which folders (organized on my computer by year/month/day) to add or delete so that I'm utilizing as much of the 8.5GB per DVD as possible is way too time consuming and painful. I'm thinking there's got to be a program that does all the "dividing" for you and all you have to do is tell it what folders to backup and the program just tells you "You'll need 7 DVDs to backup these 50GB of files... Insert Disc 1" and after burning the first says "Disc one complete, Insert disc 2... etc"

Hopefully I'm making sense. Help, anyone? Buehler? Buehler?

 

[4Ryan6]

For that much data pick up an External HDD USB2.0 at least a minimum size of 120gb and just Copy and Paste the Folder of the Pictures, 50gb will transfer to the External HDD in about 10 minutes, then you can still access the HDD to edit, add more, delete, the pictures if you need to.

For what you'll save in the long run not having to purchase the Dual Layer Media $$$$$ and the time involved preparing and burning each disk, you can probably buy the External HDD and come out ahead.

 

[Perzdogg]

That's a great reminder--thanks! I do have several unused hard drives that could do the trick. I'm remembering that I tried that about a year ago--but unfortunately, I kept getting "Delayed Write Failure" when writing to large amounts to the external drives (mostly home video files from the DV camera). I'll give that another shot with my pix backup.

However, I'd still like to find a solution for my first question, too--burning large amounts of files spanned over several DVD's. I'd like to do a quick backup of pictures every two weeks or so. I have a stack of single layer DVD+R's and would love an easy way to do an ongoing backup--If I could easily burn to multiple DVD's, I could then easily bring those DVD's to an off-site location for backup (in case of fire, etc).

Any thoughts on that?

 

[4Ryan6]

That's a great reminder--thanks! I do have several unused hard drives that could do the trick. I'm remembering that I tried that about a year ago--but unfortunately, I kept getting "Delayed Write Failure" when writing to large amounts to the external drives (mostly home video files from the DV camera). I'll give that another shot with my pix backup.

However, I'd still like to find a solution for my first question, too--burning large amounts of files spanned over several DVD's. I'd like to do a quick backup of pictures every two weeks or so. I have a stack of single layer DVD+R's and would love an easy way to do an ongoing backup--If I could easily burn to multiple DVD's, I could then easily bring those DVD's to an off-site location for backup (in case of fire, etc).

Any thoughts on that?

A lot of External HDD come formatted with the FAT32 format, running WinXP all versions, and Win2k the EXT HDD would need to be formatted with the NTFS file system, which pretty much eliminates delayed write failure.


The fastest Picture to DVD whether 4.7[which actually holds 4.3 of actual data] or DVD 9.0[which actually holds 8.5 of actual data] reason being some of the disk has to have access to, and escape from linkage or you couldn't access your data, its kinda like a road to your house in simple explanation.

The way I backup to DVD is to organize my folders to contain the DATA that I know the DVD Media I'm going to burn it on will hold, without going into overburns which in some cases can leave the data unretrievable.

Backup programs suck! They take too long to backup and too long to uncompress the data so if I were you and wanted to utilize the 4.7 you already have, I would organize my pictures into 4.2gb folders + or - 50mb[using WinXP just mousing over the folders will tell you their volume, and with pictures you can easily add or remove from one folder to the other by using the drag and drop with the folders open to get the folders the size you want them].

Then simply use a burning program like Nero, or whatever you use to burn the folders to disk, and theres your backup.

An effort in the beginning because you have 50gb of pictures but after those are backed up you'll only have to do a folder at the time, what I just told you compared to a backup program can be done in about one tenth of the time, and reaccessing the individual folders in about one fiftieth of the time.

The last time I used Nero Backup it took almost 40min to uncompress and be ready for me to access what it had backed up, I said forget this!!!, and haven't used it since.

I hope I've helped you in some way. Ryan

 

[maury73]

That's an orrible solution: internal HDD are the most unsafe storage devices and external one are even worse!
A write error, a failing bearing, a hurt a little stronger than the device can manage and you'll loose all your data.
Yes, an HDD would be cheaper, but very very unreliable for storing data you want them last for years.

 

[mesarectifier]

If you're just backing up then you could buy a cheap tape drive off eBay. I use my DDS2 to back up large amounts of video files. Obviously DDS2 isn't sufficient here, but I'm sure there's something you can find. They're really reliable, so that's not gonna be a problem like a hard drive, and they're probably cheaper than a whole bunch of DVDs.

 

[440bx]

Here is a possibility you may want to consider,

WinRAR is an archiver similar to WinZip that can split a volume in equally sized parts. In your case you could tell WinRAR to create an archive split in chunks of approx. 8.5GB which would fit in a DVD DL.

If you decide to use this method, I recommend you do _not_ create the archive as "solid" and tell WinRAR to create a "recovery record". This will give you some protection in case any area of the DVD becomes unreadable. If your files are all jpegs, I would probably chose the compression method as "store" since jpegs are already compressed and attempting to compress them will yield poor results and significantly slow down the archiving process.

The downside of this method is that you have to have 50GB of free space to hold the resulting archives for subsequent burning.

Personally, I would not use DVD DL because they are so expensive (about $3 per DVD last time I checked). Staples, BestBuy, Circuit City and the like very often have packs of 50 DVDs on sale for as little as $10.

Also, you mentioned that on some of your drives you were getting the message "Delayed Write Failed" from Windows. This message is usually caused by a hardware problem. I've seen it a lot due to bad IDE cables but it can also be caused by Windows attempting to write to a bad sector. These are only two of the possible reasons, there are many. I suggest you thoroughly test the drives that cause this error after replacing the IDE cables to ensure that is not the source of the problem.

Forgot to mention: When using Nero to burn the files, tell it to "verify written data". This could spare you a really bad surprise should you ever need the DVDs in the future.

Good Luck.

 

[ramfarmer]

Try LargeBackup to DVD. It may be your EXACT solution.