DVD Burning And Hard Drive Backing up..

[Mastablastacious]

I was wondering what programs and settings i should use professionaly to split and backup huge archives of files I have with most succcess and the least amount of coasters created by bad burning.. Recently I have had bad burns and lost data it is very frustrating so I would appreciate some tips to alleviate this I got nice good burners and nero and everything and decent media but still happnes on occasion not that bad though just looking for some tips really .. also..

I am newer to this but what do you guys think is the best way to back up your files? Ghosting your windows what do you use? And for backing up stuff you downlaoded you like just do segment rar files and 4.7 and put them on DVD's? or you prefer some sort of software back up??

Are there any good programs that make sure everything saves properly before windows shuts down?

[guns1inger]

Honestly, you are better off backing up to a large external HDD or getting a tape unit. DVD media simply isn't reliable enough for large data archives, and splitting across multiple discs is just asking for devastation.

Buy two external drives, and back up to both for redundancy.

[Poppa_Meth]

I use Acronis True image in conjunction with an external drive. It's always worked well. I've also used it with DVD media a few times and I've never had a problem there either.

[Krispy Kritter]

I agree, with the cost of new HDD's as low as they are now, it is much easier and less hassle to just use HDD's for backup. Two HDD's would be ideal, but even only using one will give you a backup of your data.

[Mastablastacious]

but what about when blue ray burners go cheap in like 5 years wont those be a good solution? and isnt there anything more stable then a hd cuz i heard hd's go out after like 7 years...

[guns1inger]

but what about when blue ray burners go cheap in like 5 years wont those be a good solution? and isnt there anything more stable then a hd cuz i heard hd's go out after like 7 years...

I have also been told, be earnest people, that DVDs last less than two years, and that there is a monster on Loch Ness. I have seen proof of neither, and much to the contrary.

If you are talking about data back up of precious memories, then you should be reading, testing and reburning the data every few years, regardless of the medium.

If you are talking about talking an OS image, you don't need it to last seven years anyway. Again, you should be refreshing the image on a regular basis as it evolves.

You need security, and you need redundancy.

I would put my trust in a good pair of HDDs over a handful of relatively fragile DVDs.

As for BluRay burners - the cost of blanks discs is far higher (and will remain so for some time yet) than a HDD

[Mastablastacious]

My best plan is to have like 4 terabytes of data usage, and then another 4 tb to back it up, and then back it all up on dvd's too,.. that would be a ddream for me.. and no i dont ever need to change my hd's because they last forever my pc will last forever I am addicted to and love windows xp and refuse to use any other operating system.. I have so much knowledge and programs for it already that do not work on any other os..

[guns1inger]

My best plan is to have like 4 terabytes of data usage, and then another 4 tb to back it up, and then back it all up on dvd's too,.. that would be a ddream for me.. and no i dont ever need to change my hd's because they last forever my pc will last forever I am addicted to and love windows xp and refuse to use any other operating system.. I have so much knowledge and programs for it already that do not work on any other os..

And completely insane, from the looks of it

[Lucifers_Ghost]

My best plan is to have like 4 terabytes of data usage, and then another 4 tb to back it up, and then back it all up on dvd's too,.. that would be a ddream for me.. and no i dont ever need to change my hd's because they last forever my pc will last forever I am addicted to and love windows xp and refuse to use any other operating system.. I have so much knowledge and programs for it already that do not work on any other os..

Uhhhhh .. what?

Contrary to what you may think, your hd's or your pc will NOT last forever.

Its cool that you want to have 4 terabytes of data usage and then another 4 tb for back up. Gonna be expensive but its doable I suppose. But have you thought about the cost and time involved in backing up 4 terabytes? If my math is correct, backing up 4 terabytes to regular 4.7gb disks will require 870 disks. Even if you go dual layer, thats 435 or so. Even with a 20x dvd burner and putting one burn of 4.7gb at 5 minutes, thats about 70 hours of time to back up your stuff. And you plan on doing this more than once?

Like gunslinger said, this is pretty insane.

[oldandinthe way]

You had better lay in duplicate hardware systems to run your backups if you proceed with this plan of yours. Because its highly unlikely any machine you buy 5 years from now will run ALL of your XP based programs. I would specifically expect there to be no XP compatible video drivers beyond VGA for machines in the future.

I definitely would trust HDDs more than DVDs for backup. But 4TB of anything is frightening. I strongly recommend analyzing the data to be backed up and organizing it in a meaningful way, so portions can be backed up on smaller devices. If you cannot do this you probably will also not be able to retrieve the data you have backed up.

[Mastablastacious]

Im saying down the road I have 2 terabytes of data right now, and another tb laying around on disks

[RabidDog]

When blu-ray are cheaper maybe flash drives will be competitive who knows?
If you really need to backup all 4tb of data you should be looking at SoHO or enterprise class devices and thats a lot of money. Cheapest option is simply to back up only what you need (not pawn dl, raw hi-def images) . Xp will be well and truly on its last legs in 5 years time. 500-750gb drives are best cost per megabyte at the moment
If you do back up to dvds it might be worth using PAR files which adds some redundancy and allows for errors.
How tall would a stack of 800+ dvds be??

[Mastablastacious]

how do you say xp wil lbe on its last legs in 5 years time if company dont make os that work wit hexisting xp software? I am never changing out of this operating system I have muc htoo good of developers software to ever quit this os!


and you may be right I read that they are going to make flash drives cpable of 20x there current space by rerouting ions in magnetic structures and its almost free of charge for companies to produce!

[Krispy Kritter]

Because when an OS is no longer officially supported, most (not everyone, there are still users here running Win98) users will move to a newer OS. And if you are a developer, you have to keep up with the majority market. Even the apps will be updated/upgraded several times by then and likely be running on the next new OS. There is no reason to develope/program software to work on an OS that the majority of users don't even use.

Regardless, your OS of choice has nothing to do with your problem of backing up 4TB of data. And if you do it using DVD, you will spend so much time backing up, that you won't have any time for developing anyway.

[oldandinthe way]

I am a late adopter of technology.

We still have systems running NT4.0, Win2000 and XP. We retired our last Windows for Workgroups system in 2007.

They continue to run those O/S unless we require an applications upgrade which requires a new O/S or they fail and we cannot purchase compatible hardware for the old O/S.

This creates panics from time to time, and a hunt for obsolete video adaptors, hard disks and other hardware. We still have units with ISA, PCI and AGP cards.

5 years from now you had better have a pile of spare hardware for your systems if you expect to run XP. I probably will. But I will also have applications running on Vista based systems.

[Mastablastacious]

so never ditch the pentium 4 systems.. heh