OT: CD versus DVD durability?

Uphill, downhill or both?

Then there were the binaural records, two interleafed mono tracks, separate needles for each...called "two-needle binaural reproducers" by Atlantic Records back in 1953.

Having checked what I have to back up, I've found that a lot of it is already on CD-Rs. But just one copy of each. So for simplicity, I'm thinking of copying the CD-Rs and sticking a copy in the workshop, just for protection against fire. Thing is, it's a bit damp out there. Are CD-Rs very sensitive to damp? I could get the Kodak Gold ones and stick them in a sandwich box with a rubber seal.

Chris

I save files on at least two hard drives, generally on a separate data partition or drive within the computer and also on one or more USB external drives that are normally powered off. One simple and fairly quick method is to make even / odd week (or some other schedule) full backups of the whole data drive or partition with a disk cloning program like Acronis, and delete the older ones. I only do incremental backups when the archive includes many older files not on the current computer.

These days the drive makers offer testing utilities or you can download third party ones like this:

I've bought a few old hard drives that slowly failed. On some the read slowed down or the bad sector count increased. I haven't seen a flat- out failure to spin up in a long time. (tap or rapidly twist to jump- start)

jsw

Rash:

Maybe because the bits on optical media don't fade away into blurry smudges the way they do on magnetic media?

The bigger drives sold today aren't going to retain data as long as smaller drives of the past will.

Craigslist is kewl, huh?

I have three 500 Gig Western Digital "My Book" USB drives for movies/

One failed (already).

Too much mechanism for any really long term security...

Which is why they'll fade to nothingness.

>>

No comments?

No disagreement?

You think capacity is the issue, you're comletely unaware of anything else.

I paid $94 for a WD 2T Elements during the Christmas sales. The Elements doesn't have the messy Backup Software for Dummies that's on the MyBook. Western Digital's drive test and backup tools:

S.M.A.R.T shows a count of reallocated spare sectors that replaced bad ones, a number worth watching. Otherwise it isn't too useful for predicting failures. jsw

Gunner Asch wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

The problem is that they are increasingly unreliable. If you go to Newegg.com, they have customer reviews on a lot of 1 TB hard drives. ALL of the major brands with statistically significant numbers of reviews have ~ 10% to 15% "one star" ratings, invariably from people who had them die on them. I won't use a high capacity drive by itself for anything. At a minimum, I use them in a mirrored RAID system.

Doug White

That's why I store my backups on two or three drives, sort of a manual RAID though the backup scheme varies with the type and importance of the file, trading ease of backup against ease of recovery. Primary backups may be sorted, secondary ones are bulk whole-disk or folder copies into a folder named with the source and date, and deleted when outdated.

If I have to restore I'll start with a disk copy and add in later files from smaller, more recent folder backups. This makes frequent backup simple, hopefully rare restore more tedious. Displaying a folder directory sorted by date helps a lot.

jsw

Did you notice the attitude of many of the bad reviews, like they forgot to take their Ritalin?

Replace keyboard actuator and try again, or as we repairmen wrote for Teletype complaints "Performed operator headspace adjustment".

jsw

Disks are an illusion. What the IT guys use is tape.

Joe Gwinn

Interesting question. I have a Seagate 40 MB drive from about 1989 which still works perfectly, and can retrieve all the data. Hasn't seen much use since 1998.

The best hard drives I've ever used have been Fujitsu SCSI drives. I've probably owned about a dozen over the years. Never had a problem with any of these drives, not even any grown defects, and most of them I bought used. The one in this machine is 10 years old, and still sees a lot of use. Outstanding drives.

I've made a decision. I'm going to back up on Kodak Gold DVD-Rs.

Best wishes,

Chris

I think you will do well, Chris. It is more mechanical issues determine whether the disk lives or dies. Scratches, flexing, temperature, etc.

Protect them from handling and they ought to last - well - until the end of the world? :)

My understanding is that a few seconds in the microwave will generate an interesting visual phenomenon and an interesting random pattern on the disc. I don't think the disc could ever be read again but can't say that authoritatively.

But it's a fun way to dispose of useless disks, such as Britney Spears CDs... :-)

-- Best -- Terry

Toss in a few reactivated silica gel packs, too.

--Winston

I think I'll put them in one of those ammo cans with a rubber seal.

Chris

As long as the ammo can isn't sitting in the window baking the contents... :)