Bluray for Data Backup

OspreyO

OspreyO

OspreyO

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Anyone using Bluray for long term backup?

I keep my long term backups (Family Photos & Video/Work Projects) are on DVDR about 2TB of data.
My short term back up is multiple external drives. I don't want to use the Cloud.

But it looks like Bluray-R is no longer expensive, and it would a lot handier.
Anyone else doing this, and what are you using.
I'd be thinking a 5.25 drive to get the best speeds.

Also what do you use to split the data into disc sized chunks.
 
Used to use Bluray to backup our data daily at work, however the speed was the main limitation - waiting an hour to write a full 50GB disk ended up being impractical - we moved to USB3.0 64GB and 128GB flash drives as prices fell, but more recently have moved to RDX cartridges (available up to 5TB) with a USB3.0 drive.

Big advantage of moving away from Bluray to removable drives is that you can do incremental/differencing backups e.g. only update anything that has changed (whereas you are always writing a whole bluray).
 
bloodiedathame said:
Wow. I last backed up to DVD in about 2005.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I had stopped but started again after a hard drive corruption managed to get into one disk then copied to all my other discs. I was saved by a read only copy on a DVDR, and that I noticed before It went through too much data.
Another occasion I was using compression, and a corruption played havoc with that.
I currently use encryption, and got some corruption from flash drive. So I had to restore that data. Which reminded me its a few years since I did a DVDR backup.

With backups you should test them periodically. See if they are ok. Never mind taking a backup, how many test them.
 
Armageus said:
Used to use Bluray to backup our data daily at work, however the speed was the main limitation - waiting an hour to write a full 50GB disk ended up being impractical - we moved to USB3.0 64GB and 128GB flash drives as prices fell, but more recently have moved to RDX cartridges (available up to 5TB) with a USB3.0 drive.

Big advantage of moving away from Bluray to removable drives is that you can do incremental/differencing backups e.g. only update anything that has changed (whereas you are always writing a whole bluray).
Click to expand...

I have flash and hard drives for faster more frequent backups, daily, weekly etc. The DVDR is only once every one or two years. How long to burn isn't an issue. But splitting up the data and organising it takes ages.
I used to use tapes years ago. Not sure if I want to go back to it. I have software to only copy differences to my drives. Not the same, but good enough for me. I don't really want to go down the route of restores etc. I check out RDX though.
 
I use Blu-ray as my secondary, after hard drives. I don't back up that much and its very much for storage, so the slow access doesn't bother me.

I use the Verbatim Datalife discs, they are the inorganic HTL type so nominally they last longer than the organic LTH discs which were a kind of stopgap for DVD manufacturers to get onto Blu ray manufacturing. Plus, they are common and inexpensive. I've only got about 5 years experience with Blu ray as a backup as a whole but have not had any corrupted discs as jet. I store them vertically in jewel cases in a box.

To answer your last question, I don't tend to fill discs before writing them, so I'm not sure. You can use something like 7zip, WinRAR, etc to put them into split archives with a recovery record if you so desire. But that can make it a pain if you want to quickly access one file.
 
I regularly back up from my main PC to the NAS which I mirror to another NAS that's physically disconnected from the LAN and power unless it's getting a data update. Then store my critical data such as documents and photos onto several re-writable Bluray discs. The re-writeble are fine as long as you refresh them regularly, i.e. Don't leave them untouched for years in an archive state. For static, long term backup I use the Millennium Discs.
 
Look up M-Discs

Millenium bluray discs. I use them for backups. For essential photos and videos I know if I make 2 copies on M Discs they will outlive me and my families family.
 
mrbell1984 said:
Only if you can buy the readers then which I highly doubt. Devices become hard to get a hold of over a period of time especially where data is concerned.
Click to expand...
I think there should be Bluray drives still for some time.
Problem might first appear in finding drive supporting M-Disc writing.
For example newer Pioneer writers don't support it.
 
wigster said:
Stopped using data discs years ago, Now i use flash drives.
Click to expand...
Knowing Flash-memory's operating principle (at deeper than marketing material level) I would be at least as wary about using standard Flash memory devices for long term storage than good quality optical medias stored in good environment.
 
How about an external USB HDD unit? I connect to mine using USB3.0 and just buy off the shelf SATA HDD's. I have 4 HDD's which I rotate. My unit can copy from one to another without my PC being switched on which I find quite handy.
 
Used to, haven't done if for a while though as it takes too long.

Just have my QNAP backing up to USB drive overnight and rotate 2 disks off site to my work drawer.
 
I only found out that this open source project existed the other day - it may be old news, but just in case it helps - http://freefilesync.org/ is an open source backup tool. It can backup manually or in real time, so far I've just been using it for manual backups.

Just in case it helps anyone else :D
 
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