Cost of DVD as data storage versus HDD (UK)

In article ,=20
says...
I think you are correct HDD's are cheaper, also you excluded the cost of
of a CD burner so you can add another =A320 or more, much more
to the CD option.
=20
Then you have to consider the huge ammount of grief you will get from
CD's (burning problems, scratched disks, disks which won't work,
CD writers which wont work .....well read this group and you will
get the general idea).

It's been quite a while (at least a few months if not a=20
year) since I've had any problems burning DVD/CDs=20
(usually at least a disc per day if not more).

Scratches I take care of by adding parity data to the=20
disk with QuickPar.

Then there is the time cnsumed bburning your CDs, how would you
cost that? Several hundred pounds?

Yep, which is why I don't think that doing a daily=20
backup to optical media is the best solution. It's a=20
valid solution, but not great because of the manual=20
effort involved. (And since there's a decent amount of=20
manual attention that is required, the backup job will=20
often get postponed for days/months.)
=20
Then there is huge problem of storing, locateing, indexing of the
CDs.......

There are a few solutions here, but I agree that once=20
you have ~100 pieces of a particular media, it becomes=20
difficult to manage unless you're *really* organized. =20
One thing that helps is some sort of disk indexing=20
program combined with having dedicated locations for=20
each type of archive. Daily backups in this drawer,=20
long-term archives over yonder.

Printing the directory listing on the surface of the=20
disc also works well if you're just flipping through the=20
archives looking to see what's there.
=20
Oh I see I am talking about CD's not DVD's but the argurements are the
same except DVD burners are very expensive.
=20
All you get from burnable media is grief and coasters.
=20
You 300DVDs are 3 meters high and hardly portable!!
=20
I think burning media is a dying art, in 3 years time
a 200GB drive will be what? =A320?

Hopefully, Blu-Ray discs will be prevalent by then and=20
only cost a pound or two for the media. HD prices are=20
down around US$0.55/GB here, DVD-R prices are down to=20
around $0.15/GB. Assuming that DVD prices fall as fast=20
as CD-R prices do, they'll probably bottom out around=20
$0.05/GB. I think it will be a while before HD prices=20
hit the $0.05/GB mark.

Optical media has one big advantage over HDs, no power=20
required and extremely simple design. While you might=20
be able to put a HD on the shelf for 5 years, then plug=20
it back in and have it work... what happens if the motor=20
burned out? With optical media, you just move the media=20
into another drive, HDs are not that simple (while you=20
can move the platters, it requires a clean room).

One advantage of 300 DVDs is that if you drop and break=20
one, it's probably not a real big deal (assuming the=20
information is recoverable). Drop and break that HD=20
holding 300 DVDs worth of information, and you'll be on=20
the phone to a data recovery service.

Both solutions have advantages/disadvantages.

In article
,
says...
There are some legitimate reasons to keep stuff on a hard drive rather
than put it on DVD or CD, but these reasons don't cut it. Any kind of
simple database makes it far easier to find stuff then doing directory
searches on a hard drive. If you are putting things in reasonable folders,
a few simple scripts of one kind or another can read the directory structure
of a CD/DVD and spit out something you can import into a database
with very little effort.

Most likely I would still use the database even if I was keeping everything
on hard drives.

You don't generally have to do 300 DVDs at a time. I catalog each disk
right after I make it.

I use SuperCat to do the same task ('s okay, not the
best software). The other thing I've started doing
since I got the Epson R200 is printing either the
directory listing or some list of contents on the
surface of the disc. Much easier to flip through the
binder and look at the discs for some tasks.

The big key is that I don't keep my (quick count... 500
+) DVDs in a single binder. Instead, I have themed
binders. One is all of my NBC DVDs for the current
year, another is for DVDs that I've converted from old
VHS tapes that I own, another holds backup copies of my
CDs that I've ripped to FLAC. So when I want to find
disc X, I'm only (worst case) flipping through 100 DVDs
instead of 500 DVDs. And that's only if I can't
remember the filename in the search software.

(Within the binder, I just file things in chronological
order.)

In article ,
says...
Well quite a bit of effort really, I have tried myself and largely given up.
It requires buying software or making do with inadaquare freeware.
Then will the CD always be in the correct box? Not in my experience
it won't unless I make considerable extra effort to ensure this.

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

My hard drives have never failed and probably never will, not even one
bad sector. I would probably get some kind of warning anyway and the
data would still be 'there'

Not guaranteed. In fact, I'd say you're overdue for a
disc failure now that you've invoked Murphy's Law.

I find CD have a lifetime shorter than a prawn sandwich anyway.
to be absolutely sure I had a workinig backup would require
2 or 3 backups (at least!!).

Maybe DVD's are more practical now the prices have dropped
but I imagine they have the same scratch and dirt problems
that cds do, probably much worse given the higher data density,
am I correct?

DVDs have one big advantage in their physical
construction. CDs are made of roughly 1mm worth of
plastic, and the data layer / reflective layer is about
0.1mm away from the label side. (Scratches on the label
side very often damage data as a result.)

For DVD media, the reflective / dye layers are in the
middle of the disc with roughly 0.5mm of plastic on both
sides.

They also bumped up the amount of error-correction on
DVDs (not enough, but better then CDs). Audio CDs still
have one big advantage over data CDs/DVDs. If there's a
glitch on an audio CD, the player can just interpolate
over the missing samples. The listener may not even
notice the blip. Digital data, of course, is not as
forgiving.

Even with those improvements I still add parity data to
my discs with QuickPar and sometimes burn duplicates of
key discs.

Optical media is great for seldom-used snapshot data,
HDs are great for more frequently used backup data. I
have both in my safe deposit box on the far side of
town. HDs are too expensive to dedicate to a "Jan 15
2001" snapshot, much cheaper to just burn that snapshot
onto optical media along with some parity data. (Even
if a particular snapshot goes bad beyond the ability to
be repaired, I can pull the previous/next month's disc
set.)

In article shTed.148877$BI5.143221
@fe2.news.blueyonder.co.uk, says...
Andy Ball wrote:
So pretty ancient as you say! I thought 300Mhz was the
bare minimum for MP3?

My 170 MHz SPARCstation happily plays (and encodes) MP3
files. I daresay a 200 MHz Pentium could also work.

Any pentium will do, even a 486/66 (just about) manages to play
MP3s....

IIRC (it's been a while), the 486/66 had trouble playing
MP3 bitrates over 128kbps (or thereabouts). Combined
with the disc sizes of the day (4GB HD was big), most
folks decided that 128kbps was "good enough" (most
everyone agreed that it wasn't CD quality, it was the
marketing folks that sold 128kbps as "CD quality").

Now I rip to FLAC and then convert to whatever codec is
required by the portable device which is usually 160-
256kbps MP3.

Toshi1873 wrote:

In article ,
says...
I think you are correct HDD's are cheaper, also you excluded the cost of
of a CD burner so you can add another £20 or more, much more
to the CD option.

Then you have to consider the huge ammount of grief you will get from
CD's (burning problems, scratched disks, disks which won't work,
CD writers which wont work .....well read this group and you will
get the general idea).

It's been quite a while (at least a few months if not a
year) since I've had any problems burning DVD/CDs
(usually at least a disc per day if not more).

Scratches I take care of by adding parity data to the
disk with QuickPar.

Then there is the time cnsumed bburning your CDs, how would you
cost that? Several hundred pounds?

Yep, which is why I don't think that doing a daily
backup to optical media is the best solution. It's a
valid solution, but not great because of the manual
effort involved. (And since there's a decent amount of
manual attention that is required, the backup job will
often get postponed for days/months.)

Then there is huge problem of storing, locateing, indexing of the
CDs.......

There are a few solutions here, but I agree that once
you have ~100 pieces of a particular media, it becomes
difficult to manage unless you're *really* organized.
One thing that helps is some sort of disk indexing
program combined with having dedicated locations for
each type of archive. Daily backups in this drawer,
long-term archives over yonder.

Printing the directory listing on the surface of the
disc also works well if you're just flipping through the
archives looking to see what's there.

Oh I see I am talking about CD's not DVD's but the argurements are the
same except DVD burners are very expensive.

All you get from burnable media is grief and coasters.

You 300DVDs are 3 meters high and hardly portable!!

I think burning media is a dying art, in 3 years time
a 200GB drive will be what? £20?

Hopefully, Blu-Ray discs will be prevalent by then and
only cost a pound or two for the media. HD prices are
down around US$0.55/GB here, DVD-R prices are down to
around $0.15/GB. Assuming that DVD prices fall as fast
as CD-R prices do, they'll probably bottom out around
$0.05/GB. I think it will be a while before HD prices
hit the $0.05/GB mark.

Optical media has one big advantage over HDs, no power
required and extremely simple design.

Uh, hard disks don't need power if they're not being read or written.

While you might
be able to put a HD on the shelf for 5 years, then plug
it back in and have it work... what happens if the motor
burned out?

Why would it burn out if the disk is sitting on the shelf?

With optical media, you just move the media
into another drive, HDs are not that simple (while you
can move the platters, it requires a clean room).

Regardless of any of this, archival storage and backup are different.
Backups don't have to sit on the shelf for 5 years, but rewriteability of
the media is necessary if the costs are not to become unreasonable.

And you don't put all your eggs in one basket with archival storage, no
matter what the media. In other words you don't use one hard disk, you use
two, you don't use one DVD, you use two, etc.

One advantage of 300 DVDs is that if you drop and break
one, it's probably not a real big deal (assuming the
information is recoverable). Drop and break that HD
holding 300 DVDs worth of information, and you'll be on
the phone to a data recovery service.

No, you'll get out your _other_ hard disk with that same 300 DVDs worth of
information. If you run them in mirrored pairs when you store data to
them, that doesn't even involve much additional effort. In any case,
modern hard disks are not as fragile as you seem to believe. Put one in a
removable tray and it will generally survive a pretty good fall without
problems.

Both solutions have advantages/disadvantages.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"Toshi1873" wrote in message
. ..
In article ,
says...
Well quite a bit of effort really, I have tried myself and largely given
up.
It requires buying software or making do with inadaquare freeware.
Then will the CD always be in the correct box? Not in my experience
it won't unless I make considerable extra effort to ensure this.

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

True I am considering that option as you can get a dvd
writer for about £40 now, little more than a cd writer and
a dvdrw will write cds anyway.
I think I will get a brand new PC with a writer on it as my current PC
is ancient, however having said that I dont think new harddrives will be any
faster
than mine ( speeds are basically the same 5400 or 7200 ) so I cant see them
writing any faster. Prehaps someone can explain how the magis works?

My hard drives have never failed and probably never will, not even one
bad sector. I would probably get some kind of warning anyway and the
data would still be 'there'

Not guaranteed. In fact, I'd say you're overdue for a
disc failure now that you've invoked Murphy's Law.

Maybe, maybe not, I recently looked at the mean time between
failures of a drive on ebay (fairly common drive) and it worked out
at about 50 years, (probably better than a human body).
Also most failures are very early, once you get past this the life
expectance is very
long so my drive may well last 100 years.
Bit better than a CD DVD or their respectrive drives, of which the MTBF
appears in my experience to be 2 weeks!!!


I find CD have a lifetime shorter than a prawn sandwich anyway.
to be absolutely sure I had a workinig backup would require
2 or 3 backups (at least!!).

Maybe DVD's are more practical now the prices have dropped
but I imagine they have the same scratch and dirt problems
that cds do, probably much worse given the higher data density,
am I correct?

DVDs have one big advantage in their physical
construction. CDs are made of roughly 1mm worth of
plastic, and the data layer / reflective layer is about
0.1mm away from the label side. (Scratches on the label
side very often damage data as a result.)

Yes I believe some of my probs have came from scratches on
the 'safe' side of a CD ( think i can see a hole!!!!).(which
is not repairable , as opposed to a scratch which theoretically
is, but I have never repaired a scratched disk (just made it worse!))

For DVD media, the reflective / dye layers are in the
middle of the disc with roughly 0.5mm of plastic on both
sides.

Yes maybe, but I still anticipate many problems with DVDs too.


They also bumped up the amount of error-correction on
DVDs (not enough, but better then CDs). Audio CDs still
have one big advantage over data CDs/DVDs. If there's a
glitch on an audio CD, the player can just interpolate
over the missing samples. The listener may not even
notice the blip. Digital data, of course, is not as
forgiving.

Even with those improvements I still add parity data to
my discs with QuickPar and sometimes burn duplicates of
key discs.

Optical media is great for seldom-used snapshot data,
HDs are great for more frequently used backup data. I
have both in my safe deposit box on the far side of
town. HDs are too expensive to dedicate to a "Jan 15
2001" snapshot, much cheaper to just burn that snapshot
onto optical media along with some parity data. (Even
if a particular snapshot goes bad beyond the ability to
be repaired, I can pull the previous/next month's disc
set.)

I backed up some mp3 on cd recently (two backups as they
were my favourites) anyway I tried to put some more mp3s
on one of the backup and it refused to write to the cd anymore.
(talk about a short life span, I had used the disk twice).

PRetty worrying but I have all the mp3,s on my hdd anyway.

"guv" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:56:21 +0100, "half_pint"
wrote:

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

True I am considering that option as you can get a dvd
writer for about £40 now, little more than a cd writer and
a dvdrw will write cds anyway.
I think I will get a brand new PC with a writer on it as my current PC
is ancient, however having said that I dont think new harddrives will be
any
faster
than mine ( speeds are basically the same 5400 or 7200 ) so I cant see
them
writing any faster. Prehaps someone can explain how the magis works?

It definately would write and read faster than your current 3 gig
drive. The motherboard in a new system, would also ensure faster
access times and faster throughput.

However such factors are not relevant as the drive speeds are basically the
same
and I would imagine electronic factors, bus speeds, are much faster than
mechanical ones such as data transfer rates to a hard drive.


My hard drives have never failed and probably never will, not even
one
bad sector. I would probably get some kind of warning anyway and the
data would still be 'there'

Not guaranteed. In fact, I'd say you're overdue for a
disc failure now that you've invoked Murphy's Law.

Maybe, maybe not, I recently looked at the mean time between
failures of a drive on ebay (fairly common drive) and it worked out
at about 50 years, (probably better than a human body).

How did you come to that conclusion? Has ebay been going 50 years?

Fair point as the drives are not yet 50 years old, you can make estimates
of course which may be wrong, but the manufacture would be in deep
**** 50 years down the line when all the company directors are dead, and
liable to prosecution :OP


Also most failures are very early, once you get past this the life
expectance is very
long so my drive may well last 100 years.

Nonsense. You should be grateful it has last you the 7 years it has.
Expecting 100 years is virtually inconceivable.


Reply in 100 years time.
It worked well for 6-7 years so what mechanism would cause it to fail now?
It is a sealed tin can, and food sealed in tin cans has been edible 50-100
years
down the line.
Thats my reasoning.


Bit better than a CD DVD or their respectrive drives, of which the MTBF
appears in my experience to be 2 weeks!!!

You seem to have a great deal of bad luck with CD drives. That in
itself is not normal.

That may well be true, maybe then I should stick to hard drives, which
have been considerably more 'lucky' for me?
A fair assumption?




I find CD have a lifetime shorter than a prawn sandwich anyway.
to be absolutely sure I had a workinig backup would require
2 or 3 backups (at least!!).

Maybe DVD's are more practical now the prices have dropped
but I imagine they have the same scratch and dirt problems
that cds do, probably much worse given the higher data density,
am I correct?

DVDs have one big advantage in their physical
construction. CDs are made of roughly 1mm worth of
plastic, and the data layer / reflective layer is about
0.1mm away from the label side. (Scratches on the label
side very often damage data as a result.)

Yes I believe some of my probs have came from scratches on
the 'safe' side of a CD ( think i can see a hole!!!!).(which
is not repairable , as opposed to a scratch which theoretically
is, but I have never repaired a scratched disk (just made it worse!))

There is a hole on the disc? (apart from the obvious one?) Is it any
wonder it doesnt work?


Not really but there are no holes in my HDD apart from the obvious one.


For DVD media, the reflective / dye layers are in the
middle of the disc with roughly 0.5mm of plastic on both
sides.

Yes maybe, but I still anticipate many problems with DVDs too.

Perhaps DVD Ram is a better option for yourself?

What is that?


They also bumped up the amount of error-correction on
DVDs (not enough, but better then CDs). Audio CDs still
have one big advantage over data CDs/DVDs. If there's a
glitch on an audio CD, the player can just interpolate
over the missing samples. The listener may not even
notice the blip. Digital data, of course, is not as
forgiving.

Even with those improvements I still add parity data to
my discs with QuickPar and sometimes burn duplicates of
key discs.

Optical media is great for seldom-used snapshot data,
HDs are great for more frequently used backup data. I
have both in my safe deposit box on the far side of
town. HDs are too expensive to dedicate to a "Jan 15
2001" snapshot, much cheaper to just burn that snapshot
onto optical media along with some parity data. (Even
if a particular snapshot goes bad beyond the ability to
be repaired, I can pull the previous/next month's disc
set.)

I backed up some mp3 on cd recently (two backups as they
were my favourites) anyway I tried to put some more mp3s
on one of the backup and it refused to write to the cd anymore.
(talk about a short life span, I had used the disk twice).

Are you sure its the discs fault? Are you sure you didnt close the
disc and make further recordings impossible?

I dont think so I can only eject the disk via using the software which
burns the disk, which asks me if I want to close the disk, I have not
done this.
However I can also eject by rebooting, but this would not 'close' the
disk (an active process) and I may have done this but i dont think
I did and i am sure I have probably rebooted other disks and written
to them again.


This "cannot write to disk" has become a fairly common problem lately.


PRetty worrying but I have all the mp3,s on my hdd anyway.

You seem convinced you have nothing to fear with your 100 year life
expentantcy for your HD. Why bother?

Well if I live 100 years I think I will need a touch more than
5 gig drive space to store all my downloads :O)







--
www.senaction.com

hp Mine is Cyrix MII 300 also called a Cyrix 6x86MX(tm)
Cyrix MII 300 runs at 233MHz (the 66 x 3.5 version)
I need to write this down here cos I keep forgetting!!

Nice little chip that, I ran one for years. I ran mine at
225 MHz though, 3x 75 MHz. 'P' ratings are bunk. Those
machines that I used the chip in were clearly marked 225 MHz
and if it happened to out-perform an Intel chip at the same
clock speed, so much the better.

- Andy Ball

guv You are talking about "true" backing up of data
files?

Yes.

guv Whilst I agree tape is a decent medium for that
purpose, it has many flaws as well. It will enable
you to restore files, granted (or even a full HD
backup if thats what you did), but not in realtime.
Its just too slow and linear for my liking

It works for me. Bear in mind that the files live on hard
disks, and are accessed from there. Aside from testing,
restore operations are few and far between. Although tape may
be slow when compared with something like DVD-RAM, the extra
capacity of most tape drives makes unattended backups
practical and that increases the likelihood of those backups
being done. Similarly, I don't have to grep through multiple
disks looking for the folder that contained the data. Tape
drives are standard equipment on most file servers that I
work on.

- Andy Ball.

guv wrote:

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 06:50:29 GMT, Andy Ball wrote:

guv You are talking about "true" backing up of data
files?

Yes.

guv Whilst I agree tape is a decent medium for that
purpose, it has many flaws as well. It will enable
you to restore files, granted (or even a full HD
backup if thats what you did), but not in realtime.
Its just too slow and linear for my liking

It works for me. Bear in mind that the files live on hard
disks, and are accessed from there. Aside from testing,
restore operations are few and far between. Although tape may
be slow when compared with something like DVD-RAM, the extra
capacity of most tape drives makes unattended backups
practical and that increases the likelihood of those backups
being done. Similarly, I don't have to grep through multiple
disks looking for the folder that contained the data. Tape
drives are standard equipment on most file servers that I
work on.


No argument on the value of methods you are using. Personally if I had
to back up an a daily/weekly basis, I would likely use tape. But here,
generally the talk is STORAGE.

Uh, tape _is_ storage. At one time it was pretty much the only high-volume
storage--look up "TOS" in the history of IBM mainframes. Disk is
random-access online storage normally. Tape is sequential-access and is
usually near-line or offline storage on contemporary systems, but it's
still storage.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)