Permanent Backup

This is an interesting question as 'permanent' isn't very well defined!

The problem being that storage media have a habit of becoming obsolete, or if not the actual media, then the format may change and means to read the media may become obsolete.

All those superb home movies I shot in Betamax... (just joking I didn't really)

(N.B This is not flippancy, this is a serious comment. Please don't shoot me.)

Del

This, indeed is serious, and as we invest hefty sums for neat gear, we usually forget, that the enclosed warranty is a bit of a joke, because even perfectly operational, the gear may be obsolete in a year or two, in relative terms of standard compatibility or operational capacity.

This is no laughing matter, it is a genuine problem of modern consumption.

You are right, but the user is himself the problem!

Every year the sales force come out and sell new products that a customer does not need, what does he do, he buys them anyway......

Stop buying because it is the latest thing!!!

It's "want less need" I guess...rather that "need less want" situation.

whats permanernt media?

are you using the high grade ereasable disc as your recorder in your pc?

so buy a cheap , orderary dvd recorder instead of your orighinal one.

is only $30--40 usd.

By permanent, I mean the recording on the physical media, not the survivability of the format. As i understand it, DVD's can lose the information in just a few years (if not months). I heard that the DVD's of movies (the originals) are made via a different (more permanent) process. So, I am wondering if such process maybe available to the regular consumer, who just wants a reliable backup of hos files :)

Do you intend to back-up your host files today and restore from that back-up one or more years from now?

It may be better to perform back-up weekly (daily might be an overkill, although depends on the need) and as long as you use a good quality (hard disk, flashdrive, CD/DVD, tape, etc.) media will suffice the purpose. Anyway it will be updated every now and then.

You can have a collection of CD/DVD or even tape back-ups but I'm sure you don't need all of them. You maybe just interested with the latest.

Storage media are ephemeral - I've taken to backing up files to a large free email service (cough *gmail*cough) with great success

The only quasi-permanent DVD recording that I know if is a 'positive displacement' type. This is where each DVD has its own master disc, which actually presses into and deforms a metal disc. Later that disc is sandwiched into protective polycarbonate layers. These babies are expensive, meant only for very high volume pressing apps, and require a very customized master each time. $ $ $ $

Since recordable CD's and DVD's depend on dyes whose reflectance changes upon exposure to elevated temperatures (viz. laser beam) they will all eventually become unreadable, even if they are properly cared for. Magnetic storage is more permanent than optical disks, and a RAID1 setup, which runs drives in a mirrored configuration, can store data a long time so long as the controller doesn't crash. Really permanent storage tends to be large, inelegant and expensive. Inscriptions on hard stone, like granite, come to mind. For the shorter term, say a hundred years or so, something like a digital phonograph record might work. There are audio recordings made in the early 20th century that have retained most of their original information, but it would take several of those to store a Megabyte!

I was not aware that DVDs lose the content after a period of time. My daughter has been involved in theater since three years old and as she grew she has been in major youth productions. I have all of her performances on DVD and would be very dissappointed if I lost this family history because the media is not permanent.

Please tell me that this is not true or give me some ideas on how to preserve all of this forever-- of course not including natural disasters. I HAD NO IDEA that I am being ripped off by folks who sell DVDs or CDs to record data or memorabilia. Not the same as old fashioned film --- Where is the benefit of modern technology --- Hope it isn't the same for bridges --- If this is true I quit.

I just googled "how long do DVDs last" and read a several of the hits. It seems the idea that DVDs last only a few years is not entirely true. Manufacturers even claim that they could last from 30 to 100 years!

Of course, they sell the things so they'd probably say that as a selling point. Still and all, a lot of other literature and people say that DVDs last long enough. I have a number of DVDs in the house and they are as much as 5 years old and still good.

Then again I'm a little more careful with my discs than some other people. That, I believe, will determine how long your discs last. Putting them in good containers that keep them flat (not those pouchlike things that warp them) and keeping them in vaults, safes or whatever just to keep them in pristine condition. Every two or three years you could make a new copy just to make sure that your data is saved.

Hi,

The process used to produce movie and/or information dvd's is not the same as a PC recorder uses and there is currently no 'end user' technology available (to my knowledge) to produce "permanent" dvd recordings on a small scale that is affordable to the masses.

The process is quite complicated.

However, if you have alot of really valuable information that you would like to have archived for as long as possible in a dvd format, I suggest you contact a dvd manufacturer and discuss it with them. It may not be as expensive as you might think to produce your discs.

Especially if you want multiple copies produced. The more the cheaper.

Just a suggestion.

There are CD and DVD discs available which the medical community and others use to archive their records on. They have a life expectancy of over 100 years. They cost money but you get what you pay for.

ABOUT MAGNETIC MEDIA...BIG MAGNETS MAKE BIG MESSES OUT OF THE DATA ON THEM! USE CD OR DVD AND STORE THEM IN FIREPROOF SAFES.

I've never heard of stamping CD's or DVD's. I have had manufactureres of disk burning machines tell me they mass produce disks by using auto loaders on machines with dozens and dozens of disk burners and burning them with lasers just like your home machine does. They just do it by the hundreds per hour.

Some of our techs used to tell me that you get a better burn by using a slower burn speed. Usually they were talking about music but I would assume it makes sense for all types of data.

And Gentlemen, Speculation and just not knowing is not the way to answer a good question.

"And Gentlemen, Speculation and just not knowing is not the way to answer a good question."
Please excuse me!

We may differ with our exposures/experiences to technology but we simply don't speculate to give an answer to a question (and not just for the heck of answering).

Look around you! Be professional and act as one!

I've never heard of stamping CD's or DVD's.

Just spent the last 20 years of my silly life in the manufacturing of music/info cd's and movie dvd's. Without divulging any proprietary systems or processes please allow me to "de-mystify" the disc manufacturing process.

Yes, discs are "stamped" but probably not in the sense you may be thinking of. The information is pressed onto the disc during the injection molding process via a "stamper" that is locked into a fairly fancy mold in a 25 - 50 ton injection molding machine. The stamper is a plated metal disc that has the mirror image of the data on its surface. It was produced in a multi-step process that started by laser burning the information stored on digital tape onto a glass master. The molding prosess takes about 3 seconds (about 1200/hour).

A 40 - 60 nm thick layer of aluminum (or gold) is then place on the information side of the disc using a plasma metal deposition (sputtering) process under vacuum for reflectivity. The aluminum is then uv lacquer coated and cured to protect the metal. These 2 processes take about 2 seconds each.

Dvd's are produced using the same processes (plus 2 more) except there are 2 pressed/metalized halves that are finally bonded together to form a 2 sided disc.

The reason I suggested looking into a manufacturer is the per disc cost. We would produce orders as low as 100 discs or by the millions. If I told you the total packaged cost of a disc of any kind you would either giggle with glee or curse in anger. It is Very cheap.

I have had manufactureres of disk burning machines tell me they mass produce disks by using auto loaders on machines with dozens and dozens of disk burners and burning them with lasers just like your home machine does. They just do it by the hundreds per hour.

This sounds like quite a sales pitch. Yes you can buy banks of burners that burn onto writable media discs but they aren't any different or better than a good PC burner and use the same media. The better the media, the better the burner, the better the integrity of the information.

Of course, all discs should be cared for as suggested by others here to help with the "permanency" of the data.

DVDs and CDs are not really permanent. Sunlight, heat, scratches (especially on the top!!!) will render the data useless....

Buy expensive, good quality and store in total darkness.....when not in use.

For safer storage:-

Using a proper computer industry Tape drive is the nearest and dearest and best, either with a SCSI or Fiber Channel interface, but very expensive......media too.....

Do not buy a Tape drive that uses helical scanning due to media wear problems, whatever the seller says.

Have at least two copies of all important data.

Store the two copies remotely from each other.....not on the same building plot....

You must have a fast PC for driving such tape drives.....buy the slowest drive that you can get, this will also save money, preferably one that runs at less than 10MB a second......some drives today need over 100MB sec without compression.

Ignore compression at all times, it will only cause problems and MPEG and similar are already compressed as are .jpeg and many others....

Andy,

I am sorry but I have to comment. Recently we lost a great deal of information on our server system here. We were using tape drive to back up only to find that the information was not usable. Cant find this out till you have a catastrophe.

The newest and most convenient way of backing up information is to use usb pluggable hard drives. Simply download to the drive and have it stored off-site. you have 2 drives and swap them out weekly. This way you can constantly update the information and have a steady backup that is stable and much faster to renew.

Hind site being 20/20 like it is, this is where we are headed here.

I have sent you a private email on this subject, but one of my points was that almost all errors whether its a car crash or a data crash are human made.

Its not the car that is at fault or the tape drive, excepting for a few tape drives that use helical scan, then I reserve the right to agree that the tape drive could be at fault, but the human operator(s) should have caught it before it was one, if they knew their job FULLY. Almost none do....its not their fault either, to know what you don't know needs more than a crystal Ball!!

On that assesment I could not agree more had our "IT" manager been more on top of things then we would not have gotten into this predicament.

There is no such thing as permanent, only Long Term.

Unless you want to try Laser Etched Titanium.

Sadly, laser-etched titanium only extends the concept to mean Longer Term. What we really need is media made from Unobtainium. (I'll call one of Piersons's Puppeteers right after lunch). Or, better yet (to borrow an idea from Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars), what we really need are Eternity Circuits.

These nifty circuits not only maintain data in perfect condition, but maintain the media itself in perfect condition. Permanently. Atoms, electrons, quarks - you name it - that wear off any object maintained by an Eternity Circuit are immediately replaced. Pronto. Eternity Circuits maintain a complete description of an object, down to the subatomic level, including energy states, in some form of crystalline memory. Objects thus maintained can be replaced - and replicated, as necessary - in their entirety. Such objects include Human Beings, by the way, along with their memories and personality. Imagine replicating your endearing mother-in-law.

S/N 500: "Harcourt?!? Have you been drinking again??!..."

Burnable media are mostly made of a photo-sensitive dye emulsion, either organic or synthetic. Those photo-sensitive emulsions are written in the visible range and are usually erasable in the UV range, which is why burned media is recommended to be kept in dark-storage enclosures, to ensure data integrity for years to come.

Either PROM (regular or multisession burns) or RAM (formattable rewritable) media are sensitive to external photonic radiation which can erase them, regardless of the write-session type.

1. Correctly define the write-session type on the right type of medium

2. keep the medium stored in a dark enclosure, and never leave it exposed to UV source such as Neon or PL for prolonged periods in the range of hours

- I have perfectly readable media written in 1996, only stored in dark compartments.

Old-timers tip:

The slower the write-speed, the longer-lasting and more readable the data, on drives other than yours.

Besides that, nothing is permanent. Even the Pyramids are crumbling.

Problem is not in the burner, its in the media. Make new copy before the media fail.

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