Backing up data from the computer hard disk to DVDs/CDs

[shashgo]

I have some pictures and music that I want to backup to disks, either CDs or DVDs, whichever works. The thing is I have around 10GB of pictures and 2GB of music. How do I back these onto disks? Im sure Ill need more than several disks, but how do I back up the data to more than one disk. Do I physically have to tell the computer to burn only 4.3GB or whatever the amount is that can be burnt to the disk, and then repeat the process with the next chunk of data until all the data has been burnt onto the disks, or is there an easier way?

[hech54]

http://hcidesign.com/dvdspan/

[ranchhand]

What you might consider doing is adding a slave hard drive to your computer; it is easy to do, and it makes backing up the amount of files that you have simple, just drag & drop them onto the backup drive. Done. The drive will be safe from virus attack since it has no operating system on it, only backup files. If you really are serious, you can get an external USB caddy to plug in so you can physically pop the drive in and out (like a thumb drive) and store it in a safe place until the next time you have some file to backup. Some folks are doubtful about this, "what happens if the drive fails?" Well, ok, that is a possibility, but in reality that rarely happens. What I did is to recycle two old 250gig IDE beater drives and drag & drop my files onto each one. So now I have two drives with my files on them. What are the odds of two failing at the same time? Almost nil. It's a real easy way of doing what you need. Oh, and if you are concerned about cost... the ongoing purchase of DVD disks will eventually cost you more than new drives, and you will have 100 DVD disks to catalog and worry about. And DVDs are delicate and can be damaged, one scratch on the surface and you have a big problem. They are not as robust as pressed disks.

[lacywest]

DVD Disks can either be used to burn a copy of a DVD Video or to burn your stuff on a DVD ... I use Nero Express. Just fire up Nero Express and open the window ... fairly large window and go to the folders you want to burn on to DVD disks ... just select them with your mouse and click "copy" ... go back to the window in Nero Express ... and click paste ... the progress bar at the bottom will tell you if you went past the limit.

If so ... create folders ... name them ... Folder to burn to Disk 1 ... Folder to burn to Disk 2 .... etc ... etc

And just put 4.3 Gigs in each folder and then burn with Nero Express or I use Cyberlink Power2go

[Hoser Rob]

I don't consider DVDs and CDs to be good archiving media.

They're not really all that reliable ... there are tons of forum entries here about failed writeable discs. There only seems to be one reliable brand and it's very expensive and hard to find. If I used optical media for archiving I'd probably be able to remember the name. I used to burn videos to DVD but the only dvd encoding/authoring program I found that worked reliably is still hacky and dumps unreasonable codecs on your system. To hell with that.

USB hard drives cost about the same, byte for byte, as the more common unreliable DVD-Rs and CD-Rs.

I strongly suspect you could get a 320 Gb USB hard drive for the same money as all those discs, maybe less. And much less aggravation.

[jman98]

I don't consider DVDs and CDs to be good archiving media.

They're not really all that reliable ... there are tons of forum entries here about failed writeable discs. There only seems to be one reliable brand and it's very expensive and hard to find.

I VERY STRONGLY disagree with the above. I have used DVDs and CDs for year for exactly this purpose and found them to be extremely reliable.

It's not that hard to do it right. You need to buy your media online from rima.com or supermediastore.com or a similar reliable seller to get the good stuff. Anything made by Taiyo Yuden is fine. Verbatim still makes excellent media, but only buy their DataLifePlus (not to be confused with their cheaper and inferior Life series) discs to be sure of getting their best media. The discs are not expensive whichever you get. I've been using burnable media for about a decade now for backups of various kinds and I've never found a failure yet. Just understand that RW discs should NOT be used for permanent backups no matter who makes them.

[yoda313]

Fyi I use both. I have a backup harddrive and norton restore 2.0. I haven't done an incremental update lately and I should (but in the last month or two I had done a full backup).

I do burn stuff to dvdrs as an extra backup. Things like photos and music. That way I don't have just my main computer or one harddrive as my only source.

Also if you have broadband internet you might look into getting cloud storage. though I'd carefully read the agreements of what your rights are to the data should the company go under or any policy changes they have. Your data should always be yours to access whenever you want. The cloud is not under your direct control so read the agreements carefully - particularly if its of a "personal" nature. That type of stuff you might want to keep locally anyway.....

But multiple backups are just a precaution. It depends on what the material is and how much you value it. Harddrives are worth an investment for this purpose. But doing SOME backup to disc isn't a bad idea either.

[hello_hello]

I agree with the multiple backups philosophy. I have an external USB hard drive I use for backing up data. I use a sync program to do it automatically at least once a week. I also burn important files to disc.

I wouldn't agree discs are unreliable if they're burned well, good quality discs are used, and they're stored correctly. I too used to think discs were an unreliable medium until I bought a new burner (Pioneer) and started using better quality discs. I'll only use Verbatim DVDs with the AZO dye, although as the number and size of files requiring backup increases endlessly, I recently bought a Bluray burner and now burn to Bluray discs instead.

The advantage of discs is the inability to accidentally delete files. Or deliberately delete them only to discover down the track you need them after-all. I've deleted files from my backup drive I thought I'd never need again, only to hunt out the appropriate backup disc a year later to retrieve them. I've even been careless and re-formatted the wrong hard drive once.

Years ago I only used a single hard drive for backing up. One day I decided to reformat the drive in the computer. That's the exact time my backup drive chose to die. Fortunately, I was able to retrieve all the files from it, but since then my philosophy has been to always backup important stuff to more than one location.

[Cornucopia]

Multiple backups = GOOD. The more important, the more copies. (And greeater variety of media types and storage locations)

Using BD/DVD/CD = GOOD (if you don't mind spanning).
I agree with jman98, optical media are perfectly fine as long as you use high quality media to begin with. I have done restore from 17 year old CDRs and 11 year old DVD-Rs with no problem, because I don't buy crap (or even MOR stuff).

Scott

[shashgo]

Thanks to all you people for your input. I did find the term dvd spanning to refer exacly to what I want, splitting up the data chunk automatically into chunks for each dvd. I didnt know whether dvd decrypter or imgburn had that capability, but anyway while doing a search online, I came across CDBurnerXP which is freeware. Anyway I installed it, and had it burn the dvds.

[yoda313]

You know another option might be memory sticks (all types not just the proprietary sony format).

At least for an instant access option. If you have stuff you want to have handy wihtout flipping through a dvd case that might be a quick option. I think you can get some in the 16gb range nowadays can't you?

I don't know though can you format a memory card to ntfs? If not you'd be limited to fat32 and you can't put a file larger than 4gbs on it without splitting said file. Probably not a concern for photos and music but certainly could be for video if its long or in high def.

Just another thing to consider.

But like a lot of us are mentioning spread your files around and don't rely on one format.

PLus something I've been trying to get to is to put some backup discs in a safe deposit box at the bank. I haven't been able to make the trip yet but there is another option to consider. If you have a big safe deposit box I suppose you could put a harddrive in there. though of course it wouldn't be able to be updated regularly but it would be one more piece of mind storage - an OFFSITE SOLUTION

[Cornucopia]

There are 32GB memory cards commonly in the stores, and even 64 GB is out there now.

This is still a comparatively expensive option, but if speed is important, you could use them.

Yes, there are ways to format them as NTFS, both 3rd party and direct Windows hacks.

Scott