Question about DVD R/RW reliability

[Pickdlm]

My dad says he doesn't trust burning to DVD because too much gets lost. Is this because DVD burning is still unreliable? Or because burning 4.5 Gigs means there's more room for error?

The reason I ask is because I am a photographer and I shoot in RAW format, so if I was to burn my pictures to CDs I would go through CDs faster than Brittney Spears gets a divorce. DVDs are MUCH more cost effective for me.

Anyone have some advice or suggestions?

[Steve R Jones]

Did you ask your dad why?

Some dvd/cd players don't like many brands of media...

Some of the media will self destruct in a few years due to poor manufaturing etc...

[rraehal]

I archive to DVD's all the time. I typically keep 2 copies and use the verify data option when I make the discs. So far I have not lost data due to a bad disc because I keep 2 copies.

Make sure the disc has a long archive life such as a DICOM compliant medical archive CD / DVD from verbatim. That will eliminate data lose due to poor manufacturing but the discs are more expensive.

[Ol'Tunzafun]

Burning to DVD is fine as long as you don't delete them from your harddrive. At the current price of harddisks, you could store 250 RAW files for about 25 cents. How much are they worth?
The big problem with storing in raw format is that because the format is unique to each camera, the original software is required to convert it to something useful. Are we going to be able to do that 10 years from now? Even at this point, current Nikon software cannot read raw (nef) files from older Nikon cameras.

[Sterling_Aug]

If you want better reliability than CDs or DVDs, then buy hard drives and USB external drive enclosures.

$85 for a 320GB SATA hard drive isn't than much more expensive then 75 blank DVDs, so I would rather have the reliability and long term storage.

[kingofa]

If you want better reliability than CDs or DVDs, then buy hard drives and USB external drive enclosures.

$85 for a 320GB SATA hard drive isn't than much more expensive then 75 blank DVDs, so I would rather have the reliability and long term storage.

I would have to disagree with part of your post, considering you can get 100 blank DVD's for under $30 when they're on sale, a hard drive (especially external) is more costly....however, you are dead on when you say that hard drives are better for reliability.

So you have to ask yourself how important are the pictures you are taking, if they are something that you wouldn't care too much if you lost them, then buy DVD's, or buy an external HD to keep them extra safe.

[richard_cocks]

hard drives are not better for reliability, they wear out faster than DVDs if the DVDs are stored well.

Hard drives not only wear out all the time but you could find yourself without a way to read them in 10 years because interfaces change all the time. Whilst optical drives are made to be backwards compatible the same is not true for HDD interfaces.

right now motherboards only typically have 1 IDE slot, in 2-3 years this will go to zero.

Whilst the optical drives we have today can still read CDs produced in the 80s.

[Steve R Jones]

hard drives are not better for reliability, they wear out faster than DVDs if the DVDs are stored well.

Me thinks the "IF" part is of concern.

Many hard drives can last ten years...
Odds are you won't need a backup from tens years ago...
The interface has changed ONE Time in the past thirty years......

[Sterling_Aug]

And if you use an external drive enclosure, then the drives will last even longer since it would only be running a short time then be stored away again.

CDs/DVDs are easy to scratch and crack/shatter from use, plus it has been shown that the organic dye used on CDs/DVDs degrade over time and will become difficult to read after about 5 years.

Commercial CDs can last much longer because they are recorded on a different substrate media.

[lito pospos]

Always three copy using different brand of media and store in three different location .