Do you guys actually burn CD/DVD/BDs nowadays?

[Metlcub]

I write music, I play guitar, and use drum synthesizers to make drum beats. I'm constantly writing to DVD-rw to keep back ups. I'm probably filling a dvd about every 3 days. But 1 DVD is mostly 1 song, just different stages of recording/mixing

 

[cyberfish]

I write music, I play guitar, and use drum synthesizers to make drum beats. I'm constantly writing to DVD-rw to keep back ups. I'm probably filling a dvd about every 3 days. But 1 DVD is mostly 1 song, just different stages of recording/mixing

May be safer (and slightly cheaper) to backup to harddrives instead, since the average life time of DVD is much shorter than harddrives.

 

[Pinky]

May be safer (and slightly cheaper) to backup to harddrives instead, since the average life time of DVD is much shorter than harddrives.

Um, absolutely NOT. Hard drives that see regular use fail within a number of years. This is a known statistical fact, and guarantee. Not only do hard drives suffer hardware failure (mechanical degradation through use), they are also very sensitive to shock. Drop a hard drive from 4 feet up and see how reliable they are compared to a burned DVD in a storage case/sleeve.

Burned DVDs and CDs last DECADES. While scientifically you will read a lot of doom and gloom about the chemical composition of discs breaking down over time, it's a very long time table until they become so degraded you can't get the data from them. The trick is to re-copy them every 10 years or so.

As a musician and IT professional I archive to CD/DVD/BR in much the same way. Burn, then into a fire proof safe.


To answer the original post - for personal use I probably burn a couple DVDs and CDs a month. At work I'm constantly burning various media as backups for clients or making bootable OS/utility discs.

 

[jazon1]

other then a few 3d bluray movie backups i haven't burned a non bootable disc in ages.
as far as backup i prefer HDDs and agree they last longer then disc's assuming there being stored the same way you would the dvds and not have it running all the time.
rewritable dvds are horrible in my experience and have never lasted me more then a couple years.
i did buy this M-DISC drive that is supposed to burn discs that last forever but damn hard to find blanks for it.

 

[cyberfish]

Um, absolutely NOT. Hard drives that see regular use fail within a number of years. This is a known statistical fact, and guarantee. Not only do hard drives suffer hardware failure (mechanical degradation through use), they are also very sensitive to shock. Drop a hard drive from 4 feet up and see how reliable they are compared to a burned DVD in a storage case/sleeve.

Burned DVDs and CDs last DECADES. While scientifically you will read a lot of doom and gloom about the chemical composition of discs breaking down over time, it's a very long time table until they become so degraded you can't get the data from them. The trick is to re-copy them every 10 years or so.

Well if you drop your archive harddrives from 4 feet... you are not taking very good care of them .

I have personally seen CD-Rs (DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs should be even worse due to higher density) fail in about 6 months in hot humid weather in Taiwan.

For very important data, I would store on 3 harddrives of 3 different brands (with checksums), and move them to 3 new harddrives every 5 years (checksum allows detection if any drive went bad). Cost of that is about $300/5 years, and you get bigger and bigger drives.

 

[ihrsetrdr]

What has been the last time you've used a burner for something that wasn't a bootable disc (firmware update, Linux, etc...)?

For my purposes-it's been several years, but I think I may have burned some[alot] of .jpgs to disc, for distribution via mail to my wife's web 1.0 family members.

 

[hafa]

Burned DVDs and CDs last DECADES. While scientifically you will read a lot of doom and gloom about the chemical composition of discs breaking down over time, it's a very long time table until they become so degraded you can't get the data from them. The trick is to re-copy them every 10 years or so.

Not really. It depends on your climate, storage, and the composition of the CD. Take a look at this image of a 4-year old driver disc (backlit for your viewing pleasure) from a major manufacturer. It was kept in a dry, dark storage area in a commercial CD binder:



The squiggly lines and spots on the disk are from foil-eating microorganisms. They thrive in tropical climes, reducing even the best optical discs to useless mini-frisbees in short order. Lifespans for optical discs here is typically:

Generics < 1year
OEM driver/program discs 2-3 years
TDK/Maxell/major mfg discs 5 years

Some discs have lasted more than 5 years; it just depends on the dyes and foil used and their ability to prevent critters from eating them up. I've had commercial DVDs that have been consumed in < 6 months; we'll see how bluerays hold up. For my data backups, I use multiple external hard drives, swapped out and synched daily. Software handles file versioning so that I have a historical record of changes to all files.

As far as burning discs for non-bootable use goes, I still use them quite a bit, as I can just leave them with the customer. Converted/retrieved files account for the lions share and 20 cents is still cheaper than the USB drive that they will invariably forget to return.

 

[Pinky]

Sucks for those living in hot/humid climates. I'll count my blessing then that I can backup to burnable media as my only/primary. I'll also still not recommend solely using hard drives for archiving for all the reasons (and more) previously explained. Magnetic archiving is one of the most flawed and foolish of all IT practices. I keep a master data drive and back this up to an external, but those drives get cycled through as my archive grows and drives fail over time. This is for convenience. For long term retention I don't count on these drives.

 

[hafa]

I'll also still not recommend solely using hard drives for archiving for all the reasons (and more) previously explained. Magnetic archiving is one of the most flawed and foolish of all IT practices.

It's really circumstantial. In our environment, tapes and optical discs have a very short shelf life unless they're kept in a (very expensive) controlled environment. For most small organizations who back up daily, two backup (hard) drives with versioning is a much more economical, practical and reliable alternative. The failure of a single backup drive is of little consequence, as it's a duplicate and thus easily replaced. Since one drive is kept "off-site" (usually in a safe), it provides protection against catastrophic events.

For mission-critical backup, we use multiple RAID-1 NAS units. This provides additional protection against single drive failure. It's still far cheaper, more reliable and easier to use than tape or optical disk, the speed and capacity of which is insufficient, especially for organizations that require terrabytes of space.

Backups made to hard drives also provide the additional benefit of providing immediate in-place replacement should the original archive fail, since no compression or its attendant software (another cost factor) is required.

 

[squads]

That is really neat...I had never heard of foil-eating microorganisms.

 

[Toptrumps2]

Erm.... Feel pretty old school now but. Atleast 5 (music) CD's in the last month and over 15 DVD's. Keeping back-ups of games and what not when moving house. Just incase my HDD got knocked about

 

[montaillou]

I really think these are starting to lose their place in computers with flash drives of ridiculous sizes at ridiculous prices (I think I saw a 64GB Transcend drive for about EUR 30 (USD 35) at Amazon.es).

I suppose you could get by without a burner. I could get by without a lot of things, but I still burn music cd's. As well, when I want to give someone a program or data, a dvd is still more disposable (and safer) to give away than a stick.

I wouldn't say they're becoming obsolete, I would just say you have other choices these days.

 

[Pinky]

It's really circumstantial... especially for organizations that require terrabytes of space... Backups made to hard drives also provide the additional benefit of providing immediate in-place replacement should the original archive fail, since no compression or its attendant software (another cost factor) is required.

I agree that in larger environments trying to manage optical backups could be very cumbersome. Raid1, 5, etc arrays are definitely the 'best' solution.

However, for smaller setups like 99% of this forum's membership, optical is plenty of storage capacity, reliable, and relatively cheap. Considering I keep my ear to the ground as a professional in this field and this is the first time I've ever heard of those micro organisms, I doubt they're epidemic enough to negate the use and recommended use of optical media for longer duration storage. In the USA, I'm guessing maybe 5% of our population lives in a climate conducive to having those little buggers eating at our foil.

May be safer (and slightly cheaper) to backup to harddrives instead, since the average life time of DVD is much shorter than harddrives.

My original reply to the above post addresses the vast majority situation for our membership. I was not speaking entirely in absolutes.

 

[Pinky]

Some food for thought:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/media/longevity.htm

 

[Richierichdolla]

I never knew that could happen to a disc