CD & DVD storage?

[Paul Verizzo]

How do you store your software stored on CD and DVD?

What's a CD?

Seriously, have you ever seen a media type come and go so fast? Including DVD's, for the most part, and especially writable for archiving. I have drawers of blank discs of both types, two sizes, and hundreds of sleeves. I now burn a disc maybe twice a year. My first DVD burner was 2X and it cost $200!

The culprit for OP's programs question, etc, from my perspective? Cheap hard drives with inexpensive cloud backups. I also backup my data drive once a month to another HD that I keep in my car with a USB external drive. Backup, backup, backup. BTW, most of the cloud backups I've looked at, like Carbonite, do not keep a file more than 30 days after it's deleted from your hard drive.

Or, many programs continue to get updated, and you can download the most recent. Even if no longer updated, it's often easier to find online and download than paw through a pile of CD's.

But yes, I have an ancient zippered CD holder and it works fine. I do keep some particularly large or (probably no longer needed) programs that were once worth hanging on. I should probably chuck them.

 

[The Hat]

What's a CD?
Seriously, have you ever seen a media type come and go so fast? Including DVD's,

Speaking for yourself I presume, because I use CD’s for backup and will continue to use them, I find they are invaluable for long time storage, going back more than 20 years..

 

[Paul Verizzo]

Yes, I did speak for myself. Of course. As I said, my perspective.

I'm sure you know that re-writable discs sometimes suffer from failures like fungus in between the layers.

I have thousands of photographs from the late 19th century to the present. www.vphotoestate.com I trust them to two hard drives and the cloud. Heck, do two cloud services. One auto backup like Carbonite, and one like Onedrive or Google whatever.

Back in 1986 I had a fire in my detached garage. There was a box of photo prints that got somewhat smoke damaged and charred. It was a big lesson for me that I absorbed when computers came along. To this day I am paranoid about a house fire. But if my house burned down - or is it up? - and I was away, my backup HD in my car will have all my data safe and sound and ready immediately, to say nothing of slower to access Carbonite off in the cloud.

My CD's in my house would, of course, be toxic gas and char.

Mi dos centavos,

 

[stratman]

I use CD’s for backup and will continue to use them

Are you sure you are not confusing CD's with

 

[stratman]

Cheap hard drives with inexpensive cloud backups. I also backup my data drive once a month to another HD that I keep in my car

Multiple backups, with one stored off site, is the smart strategy. While offering convenience, I have concerns that storing a drive in your car, I doubt exposure the Florida heat, moisture, gases, ocean salt and dirt are not good for the drive. You can protect from some of these but not all unless you continuously store the car in a controlled environment.

How much is a local bank's safety deposit box?

 

[Ron350]

If Verbatim DVD+RW disc are no good what DVD should I be using?

 

[stratman]

Verbatim DVD+RW disc

Rewritable disks are good for temporary use but should not be used for permanent storage. Use a write once only disks for permanent storage.

Verbatims do, or at least did 5 years ago when I was into burning disks, make good media. Depending on the disk type, Verbatims from Japan, Taiwan and Singapore were very good to excellent performers. Anything made in Japan was generally preferred, Taiyo Yuden (bought out by JVC) being the top of the line, although you could find some exceptional disks made elsewhere, for instance, Falcon media made in the UAE.

Lots of discussion about how long data would remain readable without failures and what type of chemicals or processes in making the disk were best. The idea was to start out with the best media and optical burner to give the lowest error count (PIE) and the fewest PIF's plus the lowest Jitter reading possible when scanned by an application like KProbe or Nero's CD DVD Speed. Only a handful of optical drives had chipsets that allowed use of these apps, some only partial or poorly so. When I last looked at burners capable of performing these scans, only certain few Lite-Ons, Samsungs, Pioneers and maybe one or two others were available. I would bet the number is even less now, if at all in a low cost consumer drive.

I do not know what drives available nowadays capable of scanning for disk errors or the best disks on the market. This old reference about recordable disks may be old but it does jib with my experience. I used to get a lot of information from a web site called MYCE.com.

I did read about the latest in consumer drives and disks for prolonged data storage: M-DISC. You will need a compatible optical drive to burn them but then these disks can be read by conventional drives.

BTW, I recently burned a video onto a Memorex DVD-RW that is at least4-5 years old. I didn't bother to scan it for errors - it will look horrible. But it is readable by a DVD player hooked up to the TV and that was all I needed it to be.

 

[Ink stained Fingers]

There were a few companies offering DVD's for achival purposes - pretty expensive to start with, and only certified for use with a small list of drives. The DVD drive reads a type parameter from the DVD at the beginning and looks it up in the firmware for the best laser energy and speed settings. If that DVD is not listed in firmware it uses a standard setting which may not be optimal for that particular DVD. Years ago some DVD drive manufacturers were even making firmware updates available - with updates for these DVD type listings. To really get an understanding of the long term quality of a DVD you would need to run a read test for the amount of errors, and to rerun that test a few years later again to watch for an increase of those errors as discussed above with the mentioned software. DVD data is heavily encoded with error recovery capabilities, it's just that you can verify that the error rate is not above a particular limit at which multi-errors are not recoverable anymore.

 

[stratman]

DVD drive manufacturers were even making firmware updates available - with updates for these DVD type listings.

And there was hacked firmware to flash your drive to improve burn speeds and errors and to provide added functionality. Good times.