Blu-Ray for Data Backup

[River-Runner]

I want to use my Blu-Ray burner to backup my PC data. I have a 3 TB data HDD and I want to use 100 GB discs to make hard copy backups for offsite - I also do an external HDD..

Does anyone have a blu-ray backup program that you can dump say 2 TB of data into the hopper and the program will chew through 100 GB discs, one after the other - automatically - until a complete backup is complete. I used to do this with Roxio on CD's, sometime more than 20 CD's - but I understand Roxio isn't the same - one site said it is full of bloatware.

Please recommend a program that will provide for automatic blu-ray backups.

Thanks -

[naturist]

I've seen several references here to 100 GB discs being "insanely expensive" and $40 to $50 each. I'm here to say that that is not so.

I just bought two different brands of them, 10 disc spindles, for $6 to $10 a disc off Amazon. (I'll let y'all know how well they work.)

I have been using 25 GB BluRay discs to archive image files (I'm a photographer) for some time now. And yes, BD-R discs are more expensive than hard drives. But they are also expected to safely hold data longer, too. I am worried about the possibility the drives needed to read them won't be around forever, but that is an issue with any media you choose. You have to be prepared to copy all that data to the next-great-thing at some point.

As to the OP's question, Roxio Toast will span disks. As long as you keep swapping discs in/out of the burner, It'll keep burning. But I'm a Mac guy, so I dunno what to use on a Windows machine.

While we're on the topic, a tip for my fellow Mac users who find pulling data off deteriorating CDs to be frustrating due to the Finder giving up part way through the job instead of scavenging all the data possible whenever it hits an error, I've found Chronosync to work well, as it doesn't just give up, but keeps digging past fatal file errors.

[ctilsie242]

Wow... necro thread. Back in 2014, using 25-50 GB disks was a possibility. Now, I'd definitely look at something else.

Sony has optical disk archive drives that store 3.3 TB (ODC-3300R media). Each cartridge is about $200. I'd look at going this route.

[MrWizard]

Everybody has their own way of doing things
But I'll go buy another external hdd and image the existing drive
Before I sit there and swap 30 Blu Ray discs to create a backup
I know the drive is not full, and it won't take 30
Maybe only 15 or 20, but what are you going to do in a few months when you have added more data, you can't make incremental backups using bd discs
You start all over again
Imo another external hard drive is a much better way of doing this

[Tom_M1]

If you are set on burning Blu-ray disks check M-DISK media. It supposedly lasts much longer than standard disks. You need a drive capable of burning M-DISK but disks are readable in standard drives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

Edit: Corrected bad URL

[mxffiles]

River-Runner wrote:
I want to use my Blu-Ray burner to backup my PC data. I have a 3 TB data HDD and I want to use 100 GB discs to make hard copy backups for offsite - I also do an external HDD..

Does anyone have a blu-ray backup program that you can dump say 2 TB of data into the hopper and the program will chew through 100 GB discs, one after the other - automatically - until a complete backup is complete. I used to do this with Roxio on CD's, sometime more than 20 CD's - but I understand Roxio isn't the same - one site said it is full of bloatware.

Please recommend a program that will provide for automatic blu-ray backups.

Thanks -

Have you tried Blu-ray Creator from http://www.convertmxffiles.com/how-to-burn-mxf-video-to-dvd.htm ? I have used it for years to burn movies and create a dvd disc.

[TheBearAK]

Who can really predict what the future holds.

Ethernet has been changing so I wouldn't say it is the oldest. Early ethernet was ran over coax cable.

BluRay just barely beat out HD. Who knows what will be next and if it will be backward compatible.

Also, most computers are not coming with optical drives anymore. Heck, a lot of laptops are not even coming with wired Ethernet.

My concern with BluRay, specially 100 GB, is the time it will take to write to that disc. 100 GB from SATA to SATA hard drive takes about an hour. I would guess that to BluRay it would be more like 3 hours.


For those who used to like Retrospect, there is some good news ahead, a few of the original programmers took Retrospect back over from EMC2 and have started to improve it again. EMC2 basically had no incentive to keep Retrospect up and running as they wanted to push people over to their enterprise stuff. Retrospect saw a few updates to keep the install base happy, but it fell behind in many ways. It *should* get better again.

[joebedford]

I use Norton Ghost (but I don't have bluray)

[mlts22]

I've been in IT for ages... hard disks are not archival media. In fact, I have a file cabinet with tapes from 1998, burned CD-Rs from 1998, HDDs from 1998, and MO-s from that time period. The old IDE hard disks are almost impossible to read since IDE PCIe controllers are becoming tougher and tougher to find. Even with older hardware, some of them suffer from stiction, or just sit there clicking away, trying to find the servo marks. The tape drive (Quantum DLT IV) is hard to find, as well as a controller card that works with the old LVD SCSI of its day. Of course, once the tape drive is working, it will be trying to find the right backup utility. Was it tar, taper, NetBackup, Backup Exec, Retrospect, or some other oddball utility that has disappeared into the mists of time?

The CD-R? I open my Blu-Ray player, plop it in, and the data is ready to go.

The reason why Blu-Ray isn't going anywhere is the fact that US Internet bandwidth is not expanding, other than fees going up. With that in mind, I can burn data to ten 25 GB Blu-Ray disks for about $5. Storing that to the cloud would get me $40 in bandwidth overage costs on my home internet connection, and thousands if I tried that over a 4G link.

Of course, as stated above, no media is 100%, so I recommend to make multiple copies, perhaps on different media types (Blu-Ray and DVD for example.)

[1492]

wintersun wrote:

The safest backup is a dual hard drive case with two hard drives that are setup for RAID1.

You still need to back these up. You're only covered for single drive mechanical failures. What if the RAID gets corrupted? Then, you're basically screwed without a backup. This is why I never rely on a RAID as a backup system.

Redundant Raids are used in virtually all cinemas in the U.S. in DCP servers for digital movies. For the most part, they're designed to recover from a single drive failure. But I've seen more than one server class HD fail in these, requiring reloading the OS and all content.

[wintersun]

Blu-Ray is not a good idea for backing up data. It will cost more. It will be a lot slower. It will only be useable with a computer later that has a Blu-Ray player. And it is not likely to be around in the future.

I have seen 4 floppy disks and drives become obsolete as well as 5 different tape drive formats. Even IDE drives are no longer usable in a computer you buy today.

The safest backup is a dual hard drive case with two hard drives that are setup for RAID1. These you can buy pre-done and ready to run. With these when one drive fails you have everything backed up to the second on the second drive.

For general data that is less than 1GB that you don't mind sharing with the federal government and their 2 million contractors can be put on Google.

For archival information we backup data once a year on to a small USB hard drive and then have it stashed offsite. In the event of a fire we still have the offsite drive to start again. As we gain more data to archive we go to a new and larger capacity hard drive.

[Hallwacker]

River-Runner wrote:
I want to use my Blu-Ray burner to backup my PC data. I have a 3 TB data HDD and I want to use 100 GB discs to make hard copy backups for offsite - I also do an external HDD..

Does anyone have a blu-ray backup program that you can dump say 2 TB of data into the hopper and the program will chew through 100 GB discs, one after the other - automatically - until a complete backup is complete. I used to do this with Roxio on CD's, sometime more than 20 CD's - but I understand Roxio isn't the same - one site said it is full of bloatware.

Please recommend a program that will provide for automatic blu-ray backups.

Thanks -

Have you tried Blu-ray Creator from AppGeeker Software?

I have used it for years to burn movies and create a BD disc. It just accepts everything.

[GordonThree]

2oldman wrote:
Is this amount of data normal for you guys?

Absolutely. Every document I've ever created, every photo, every video. The amount of data really ballooned in the last few years when I upgraded from consumer to prosumer level gear. Every short trip I take generates 10-20GB of media, vacations are 30-60GB. Then I have digital masters of home movies from my parent's various digital video cameras, my own HD video, and the list goes on.

It's no different than drawers full of paper photo albums, plastic motion picture films, and even analog video tape.

[GordonThree]

I keep about 4TB in the cloud, via Crashplan, and 4TB on two different machines at home (more or less a mirror). My main machine is upgraded every two-years, so the data gets copied onto the upgrade and then the retired machine replaces the oldest.

I don't have any use for archives or low density dye-based recording medium. If my data were more valuable, I'd buy an LTO tape drive and use high density tapes (terabytes per tape)... but it's just not that valuable.

[2oldman]

Is this amount of data normal for you guys?