The Lifetime of DVDs
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I currently favor UltraIso. I found it simple to use, but it won't work if your writer cannot write to an old DVD disc.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
To be fair, it was an external USB DVD writer as the laptop doesn't have a drive, so that could have been part of the problem as well as the cheap disc I used. I think I used ImgBurn (which used to work very well on W7. Also to note is that the installer may contain unwanted extras according to a post I saw).
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I am not sure, but I don't think that backing up to a NAS will protect you from Ransomware attacks. Ransomware will probably encrypt the NAS as well.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
True, but general hygiene practices (updated antivirus, a good firewall, common sense while browsing) have kept me safe from viruses and ransomware so far. Besides, I’m too small a fish to fry for a targeted attack. Offsite backup also helps.
Mircea
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There are a second kind of DVD (and blueray) disk called "M-Disk" where M stands for Millenium. They do require a specialized burner (which really burns them unlike the normal type). They can be read on any player. M-DISC - Wikipedia[^] I actually own such a burner - for archiving valuable photos, for example - but the problem falls back to the "ancient" problem of having any sort of suitable player down the line. I already have a problem with VHS tapes I want to digitize but have no working VHS player.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
FANTASTIC! Thanks for posting this. You reminded me that I had a small stack of M-discs bought some years ago, that I couldn't use with my old DVD drives. So I tried it in my newer Dell desktop bought a year ago and the regular DVD drive that Dell shipped with the machine, does write to M-discs no problem. Go Dell!:thumbsup:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked. From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old? I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc? By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum. I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. :sigh:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Yes, I also back up on an external hard drive, but what if that drive fails? I suppose I consider my backup dvds as a backup for my backups! :)
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Okay, I buy a LOT of USB devices. You can bulk buy them. If your storage needs are that small. It's easy. But simply get a MicroSD USB device. Buy the MicroSD cards you need. They take up NO SPACE. I have clients who keep a few of their encrypted backups in the trunk of their vehicles. They swap them out every friday. that is the "off-site" disaster recovery for a few dollars! With a little effort you could make a 12hr fire rated block of drywall "safe" to keep them in. They store nicely in the normal SD card holders, and are still small. And WAY faster the DVD. [I get data delivered via DVD every month, and WISH they went to SD cards, it's almost faster to DOWNLOAD than to access on the DVD, LOL]
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Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked. From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old? I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc? By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum. I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. :sigh:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
In my experience it's not the age of the discs so much as it is the age of the DVD writer. We back up our source control and all of our product builds, so we write 500-800 discs a year. Most writers are only good for 200-300 discs before you start getting increasing write failure rates like you describe. My practice now is to replace the writer if it fails more than 1 disc in 10.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
In my experience it's not the age of the discs so much as it is the age of the DVD writer. We back up our source control and all of our product builds, so we write 500-800 discs a year. Most writers are only good for 200-300 discs before you start getting increasing write failure rates like you describe. My practice now is to replace the writer if it fails more than 1 disc in 10.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked. From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old? I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc? By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum. I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. :sigh:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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My writer is in a year old machine and has just about never been used.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Yes, I also back up on an external hard drive, but what if that drive fails? I suppose I consider my backup dvds as a backup for my backups! :)
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
I disconnect the one backup drive when not in use. So. far, so good.
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There are a second kind of DVD (and blueray) disk called "M-Disk" where M stands for Millenium. They do require a specialized burner (which really burns them unlike the normal type). They can be read on any player. M-DISC - Wikipedia[^] I actually own such a burner - for archiving valuable photos, for example - but the problem falls back to the "ancient" problem of having any sort of suitable player down the line. I already have a problem with VHS tapes I want to digitize but have no working VHS player.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I am not sure, but I don't think that backing up to a NAS will protect you from Ransomware attacks. Ransomware will probably encrypt the NAS as well.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Cp-Coder wrote:
I don't think that backing up to a NAS will protect you from Ransomware attacks
If you can ensure that the credentials needed to access the NAS are different than the ones used for logging onto the potentially-infected machine(s), it shouldn't be a problem. Not that I don't still prefer a completely offline backup. And then an offsite backup to the backup.
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Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked. From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old? I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc? By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum. I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. :sigh:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Cp-Coder wrote:
In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked.
I'd be looking at that first. Back when burning speeds quickly went from 1x to 2x, 4x, 8x etc I started running into problems if I tried to burn anything at more than 4x. I've always stuck with 4x out of sheer habit and very rarely run into read or write issues. Of course I don't burn nearly as many discs today as I used to. But I still wouldn't even bother trying at anything higher than 4x. YMMV, of course, and as you've seen, it does.
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I’ve used NAS units for my backup for 10-15 years now. Disks are RAID-ed and when one dies I just plop in another. Every once in while I have to copy the whole lot when I upgrade my NAS. Currently using a Synology 418 and I love it. Offsite backup for really valuable stuff on an external hard drive in a bank safety deposit box. So far, I’ve lost only what I erased myself but there is no backup system that fully protects you from gits.
Mircea
Just curious if some of you ever considered cloud as offsite solution for critical data. What scares me about home solutions is that if the house/office gets damaged all data is lost forever 😱 Almost every cloud provider has a cheap price tier for archive (write once, access rarely). You benefit from top security, both physical (Geo redundant archives in data centers protected by military level security) and IT (encryption, best attack surveillance and best security experts in the world)
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Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked. From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old? I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc? By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum. I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. :sigh:
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Cp-Coder wrote:
From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old?
You sure about that? Given writable DVD's have only been around for around 20 years, it would be impossible to state how good they are as a long term archival medium. They take guesses on durability of media by calculating how long media take to break down inside a worst case scenario type environment and then extrapolating that figure out for a normal storage environment. But unless you're keeping your DVD's in an environment that maintains the correct temperature and humidity you may find that the data isn't as safe as you thought. Furthermore, do you test your original DVD backups from time to time and / or transfer them onto newer media? It's not uncommon for someone to think they are fine with their backups, to then go and restore them to find them in a less than perfect condition. But don't just take my word on it -> https://www.naa.gov.au/information-management/store-and-preserve-information/preserving-information/preserving-cds-and-dvds It states pretty bluntly that "CDs and DVDs are not suitable for long term archival use".
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Cp-Coder wrote:
From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old?
You sure about that? Given writable DVD's have only been around for around 20 years, it would be impossible to state how good they are as a long term archival medium. They take guesses on durability of media by calculating how long media take to break down inside a worst case scenario type environment and then extrapolating that figure out for a normal storage environment. But unless you're keeping your DVD's in an environment that maintains the correct temperature and humidity you may find that the data isn't as safe as you thought. Furthermore, do you test your original DVD backups from time to time and / or transfer them onto newer media? It's not uncommon for someone to think they are fine with their backups, to then go and restore them to find them in a less than perfect condition. But don't just take my word on it -> https://www.naa.gov.au/information-management/store-and-preserve-information/preserving-information/preserving-cds-and-dvds It states pretty bluntly that "CDs and DVDs are not suitable for long term archival use".
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Quote:
CDs and DVDs are not suitable for long term archival use
This statement is incorrect when you are talking about M-discs. Recently I started using only M-discs.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
Yes, the 1000 year disc, or so the manufacturer says. I would be skeptical on that sort of longevity outside of archival conditions. (I'm skeptical on that number even in archival conditions, especially as they invoked "trade secrets") Keep in mind that proper archives store things inside carefully temperature and humidity control rooms as well as been very rarely disturbed, things that people who throw disks into desk draws / filing cabinets are usually lacking. No doubt, the manufacturer will be quoting 1000 years based on perfect archival conditions. Personally I would be trusting an actual archive to tell me about long term storage than manufacturers claims when trying to sell consumer grade technology.
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Yes, the 1000 year disc, or so the manufacturer says. I would be skeptical on that sort of longevity outside of archival conditions. (I'm skeptical on that number even in archival conditions, especially as they invoked "trade secrets") Keep in mind that proper archives store things inside carefully temperature and humidity control rooms as well as been very rarely disturbed, things that people who throw disks into desk draws / filing cabinets are usually lacking. No doubt, the manufacturer will be quoting 1000 years based on perfect archival conditions. Personally I would be trusting an actual archive to tell me about long term storage than manufacturers claims when trying to sell consumer grade technology.