# Is Optical Media dead?



## SR_Ind (Nov 19, 2012)

CD/DVD/BD etc. ? The press has been proclaiming it for a while.

Newer laptops have begun to start shipping without any optical drives.

Some observations here.

Personally I've not used my laptop DVD drive for years. In my part of the world (extreme heat, humidity and dust) optical drives tend to die very rapidly. 

My first USB stick (circa 2003, 128GB) has outlived 2 DVD players and 4 PC DVD drives. 

So what does the FreeBSD community foresee?

>>

Off Topic, it was pleasant surprise to find that my new Panasonic Viera is running FreeBSD.


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## SirDice (Nov 19, 2012)

I haven't used mine in ages either. The only reason I use it is to install a game (on Windows). And even that is getting slowly less as I've started using Steam to get games. 

Also any stuff I download I just park on my NAS, I still have a stack of empty CD-R and DVD-R disks, gathering dust. It hasn't been touched in quite a while.


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## sossego (Nov 19, 2012)

Considering the fact that I'm one of the poor and that I'm without a place to live, whatever I'm able to find will be used.

For those of us with very little, optical media will be used for quite a while. The "media" which states such- "CDs/DVDs/etc are dead."- is composed mostly of those who have not to struggle.

If I'm looking about and find a computer which uses a cassette tape or 
eight inch disk- and that the media is available and working- I'm going to use it.


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## Carpetsmoker (Nov 19, 2012)

SirDice said:
			
		

> I haven't used mine in ages either. The only reason I use it is to install a game (on Windows). And even that is getting slowly less as I've started using Steam to get games.
> 
> Also any stuff I download I just park on my NAS, I still have a stack of empty CD-R and DVD-R disks, gathering dust. It hasn't been touched in quite a while.



The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.


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## Beastie (Nov 19, 2012)

sossego, I have to disagree. Many people struggle economically, but it's not *always* a valid reason to stick with obsolete (and far from perfect) technologies.

I was the last person around here to ditch the floppy drive and I still have a box full of brand new diskettes that I bought years ago and couldn't use because the last drive I had died and I didn't want to replace it (<$10 drive) with a $30+ USB-connected one.

But when it comes to optical media, it's just the opposite. Drives die quickly and cost (along with the many discs) just as much if not more than a USB pendrive. Discs store much less data than a single pendrive and take more physical space. Most importantly, they are way less reliable and durable compared to USB pendrives.
Like SR_Ind, I still have a 10 year old pendrive (256 MB). I've never had a single problem (e.g. data loss) with it or any other that I've bought in the past decade.
On the other hand I've lost a couple of CD drives and way too many discs. CD writers can easily burn discs and I've lost boxloads that way too. I'm a very careful person and I've still lost a few *original discs* I was very fond of!

So when it comes to all optical media, I only have this to say: *I hope they disappear as quickly as possible; and good riddance!!!*


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## roddierod (Nov 19, 2012)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.



Oh man did this piss me off when I bought my shinny new copy of Skyrim.  Until this, I didn't even have networking enabled on my Windows drive.  Being an old RPGer from the 80s they should bring back the cardboard wheel that SSI games had, or the old "on page 35 of the manual what is the 3rd word in the 5th paragraph" security questions.

As for the topic, when Microsoft, Apple and other start distributing there OSes and software on pen drives then I will say that the CD/DVD are dead.  Right now that are still some people out there that like having a physical medium when purchasing software.  My feeling is that if you purchase something, you should get something physical on a medium that is going to last and not be susceptible to stray magnetic fields or power outages.


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## SirDice (Nov 19, 2012)

roddierod said:
			
		

> As for the topic, when Microsoft, Apple and other start distributing there OSes and software on pen drives then I will say that the CD/DVD are dead.


Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.


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## roddierod (Nov 19, 2012)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.



Oh...I don't have any current Apple hardware/software. Well then...the CD/DVD is dead!!


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## kpa (Nov 19, 2012)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.



You can do a full (re)install of OS X 10.7 or 10.8 from scratch over the network if you have an apple id and you have purchased the OS from the app store. The only snag is that for installing on an empty disk you need a ready made recovery system on a USB memory stick but that can be made using tools provided by Apple very easily.

On topic, I hope that optical media (what's left of it) dies a quick death, blu-ray included.


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## Carpetsmoker (Nov 19, 2012)

fortune(6) threw this at me today



> In reply to a message by Scott Long:
> 
> > Note: this amounts to life support for floppies.  The end IS coming.
> 
> ...


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## kpa (Nov 19, 2012)

Queue "It's the end of the world as we know it" by R.E.M


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## gkontos (Nov 19, 2012)

The cost of optical media is far more expensive when it comes to portable computers than USB pens.

When we talk about optical media we have to understand that behind the media there is a mechanism that has to read and write data. It turns out that the cost versus reliability is very high. Another important factor is capacity which is very limited. BlueRay media could be an exception but the markets did not embrace this technology.   

So, it would not surprise me in the future if optical media disappears like floppies did. 

PS. Optical media is not the poor mans choice unlike some naive tend to believe


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## Deleted member 30996 (Nov 19, 2012)

roddierod said:
			
		

> Being an old RPGer from the 80s they should bring back the cardboard wheel that SSI games had, or the old "on page 35 of the manual what is the 3rd word in the 5th paragraph" security questions.



I've still got my translation wheels for Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Hillsfar.  The disk drive to play them on my laptop is dead though.


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## Crivens (Nov 19, 2012)

For data use, I also no longer see a point.

But until music and movies come on pendrives which work reliable on my machines and my car stereo, I accept the existence of the optical drive and continue to buy DVDs (provided they conform to the orange book). Whatever carries DRM is no longer allowed in my house.


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## _martin (Nov 19, 2012)

Beastie said:
			
		

> So when it comes to all optical media, I only have this to say: *I hope they disappear as quickly as possible; and good riddance!!!*


I second that!


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## TiberiusDuval (Nov 19, 2012)

Even Windows can nowadays be installed without optical media. I got (legally) Windows 7 in ISO file, and transferred it to USB-stick and installed it from stick to my desktop machine. Process needed just couple of third party tools, but after some tries I managed to do it.


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## SR_Ind (Nov 20, 2012)

sossego said:
			
		

> Considering the fact that I'm one of the poor and that I'm without a place to live, whatever I'm able to find will be used.
> 
> For those of us with very little, optical media will be used for quite a while. The "media" which states such- "CDs/DVDs/etc are dead."- is composed mostly of those who have not to struggle.
> 
> ...


If you are running a really old computer, then I think you have a valid point. 

In fact I have a PC (sent it to my dad) which requires a really weird BIOS setting to get it booted up from USB stick. So, yes if you are not in position to upgrade or even procure a recently built second hand computer (anything later than 2008/2009) then you do require an optical drive.

However you may be mistaken with respect to the ownership cost. The optical drives have very short shelf life. The discs themselves are prone to damages due to breakages, scratch, material deposits and even chemical deterioration.


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## SR_Ind (Nov 20, 2012)

Crivens said:
			
		

> For data use, I also no longer see a point.
> 
> But until music and movies come on pendrives which work reliable on my machines and my car stereo, I accept the existence of the optical drive and continue to buy DVDs (provided they conform to the orange book). Whatever carries DRM is no longer allowed in my house.


Once pen drives are common with 50GB space to hold a Blu-Ray movie that'll happen. Maybe a couple of year down the line. 
The old school media will also have to take into account increasing broadband bandwidth and simultaneous increase in broadband user base.


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## SirDice (Nov 20, 2012)

TiberiusDuval said:
			
		

> Even Windows can nowadays be installed without optical media. I got (legally) Windows 7 in ISO file, and transferred it to USB-stick and installed it from stick to my desktop machine. Process needed just couple of third party tools, but after some tries I managed to do it.



You don't even need third party tools to do that. Format the stick, put a boot sector on it and copy the files from the CD/DVD to the stick and you're done.


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## Crivens (Nov 20, 2012)

SR_Ind said:
			
		

> Once pen drives are common with 50GB space to hold a Blu-Ray movie that'll happen. Maybe a couple of year down the line.


I would not bet on that. The _powers that be_ in media distribution will not allow for this because without the DRM endpoint in the drive firmware for DVDs or BRs, they will not do this no matter what. But it would indeed be great, and also save a lot of space on my shelves.


			
				SR_Ind said:
			
		

> The old school media will also have to take into account increasing broadband bandwidth and simultaneous increase in broadband user base.


The old school media will first need to learn how to read the manual of the beeding obvious which will tell them how to see the writing on the wall hinting at what users want and will pay happily for.


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## expl (Nov 20, 2012)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Apple already did. Try and find an install CD for Lion and/or Mountain Lion.



I have 2x DVD (Install and extras, official, from Apple) with Lion that I have got with my MacBook Pro. Also there are torrents for Mountain Lion DVD ISO so there should be disk for that as well.


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## kpedersen (Nov 20, 2012)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> The major problem with steam is the DRM. If steam shuts down or decides you should not have access to certain games, then you don't.



Agreed. And the day this happens, it will be glorious.

(Might even push consumers to try to demand a new law *against* DRM. It probably wont do much, but at least it will mark a historic occasion where we will be on the attack for our digital rights for once.)


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## SirDice (Nov 20, 2012)

expl said:
			
		

> Also there are torrents for Mountain Lion DVD ISO so there should be disk for that as well.


Except that Apple never released ML on DVD.


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## Pushrod (Nov 20, 2012)

I used to use DVDs to back up my data. I had gotten to about 800 of them. One day, I had to do a hard disk rearrangement (long story) and found it was best to restore most of the data from the DVDs. Of the 200 I went through, about 10 of them were no good, and many others had single or a couple bad files on them. They were stored carefully and all that.

After this experience, I threw them all out and now just use more hard drives. Hard drives are cheaper gig for gig anyways.


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## SirDice (Nov 20, 2012)

Writable CDs/DVDs tend to be prone to bit rot, not something you want with backup media.


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## TiberiusDuval (Nov 21, 2012)

SirDice said:
			
		

> You don't even need third party tools to do that. Format the stick, put a boot sector on it and copy the files from the CD/DVD to the stick and you're done.



You need. At least in my case, first virtual optical drive (Daemontools Lite) to mount iso-file directly. Then little surprise, I had Vista 32-bit, and iso for for Win7 64-bit. If you write bootsector to stick with Vista's bootsect tool, it will not boot Win7 setup, and you cannot run bootsect tool from that Win7 iso-file with 32-bit Vista. Of course it would have been much easier to burn iso file to DVD, but I did not have blank DVD's on hand at that time. I don't remember which tool I used for making that stick work, probably Unetbootin.


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## sossego (Nov 21, 2012)

Beastie said:
			
		

> So when it comes to all optical media, I only have this to say: *I hope they disappear as quickly as possible; and good riddance!!!*


Try to remember a few things:
1. I'm using RISC architecture that does not always have the ability to boot from a pen drive or any USB device.
2.I've gone from sleeping in the woods to sleeping in an old camper. If any money or work comes my way, I've the idea to spend it on better things.
3.Unlike the majority of you- make that 99% or greater, I'm one to look through what people have thrown away for replacement parts. I'm including older hardware that I've fixed for others.
4. Being in my situation is what most of you cannot understand. I'm homeless and still trying to work on projects while trying to stand on my own.


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## Crivens (Nov 22, 2012)

This sounds rather grim.



			
				sossego said:
			
		

> 2.I've gone from sleeping in the woods to sleeping in an old camper. If any money or work comes my way, I've the idea to spend it on better things.


Please state where you are located and what profession/skills you have.
If I got it right, you are in Florida?
Maybe someone could push something in your direction.



			
				sossego said:
			
		

> 4. Being in my situation is what most of you cannot understand. I'm homeless and still trying to work on projects while trying to stand on my own.



I salute you for this efford.
Understanding is approximately possible, even when lacking the first hand experience, from what I heard and was taught from parents and grandparents - those who served in two wars and came home only to rebuild homes and make do with whatever was available.


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## _martin (Nov 22, 2012)

sossego said:
			
		

> Try to remember a few things:
> 1. I'm using RISC architecture that does not always have the ability to boot from a pen drive or any USB device.
> 2.I've gone from sleeping in the woods to sleeping in an old camper. If any money or work comes my way, I've the idea to spend it on better things.
> 3.Unlike the majority of you- make that 99% or greater, I'm one to look through what people have thrown away for replacement parts. I'm including older hardware that I've fixed for others.
> 4. Being in my situation is what most of you cannot understand. I'm homeless and still trying to work on projects while trying to stand on my own.



I'm sorry for your situation, but that has nothing to do with @Beastie's comment (it's almost trolling I'd say). Optical medium is old enough to be replaced. Why? It was stated already in this thread .. 

If you want to stick to CD/DVD, you can. You'll find the workaround or boot from network (that's how I booted my N4000 (rp7400) back when I had to install HPUX on them).


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## sossego (Nov 23, 2012)

If I wanted to troll, I would not be so personal- remember this statement before you make such a hasty reply.


It will be a long time before the entire world is able to use, afford, et al on computers that do not have optical media.

I am only one of billions who do not have the resources the rest of you have- keep this statement in mind.


We can now return this thread to its original purpose.


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## Pushrod (Nov 23, 2012)

sossego said:
			
		

> If I wanted to troll, I would not be so personal- remember this statement before you make such a hasty reply.
> 
> 
> It will be a long time before the entire world is able to use, afford, et al on computers that do not have optical media.
> ...



Your situation is an edge case and doesn't change the argument.

An abacus is also old and obsolete; it doesn't mean that anyone should be using one.

If you have a specific purpose for optical media, that's great. Meanwhile, almost everyone else has discarded it for the junk that it is.


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## throAU (Nov 23, 2012)

Yup, it's dead.

I can buy an 8gb USB stick for 8 dollars.  Which I can easily re-use.

All my software is downloaded.  All my media is streamed/downloaded.

The only time i've used my DVD drive in recent history was to install some real old games in dosbox.


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## bsduser35325 (Nov 23, 2012)

SSD USB 3.0 will be the mainstream imo. Its just better and a lot more convenient to carry around.


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## kpa (Nov 23, 2012)

And the next technology to go to the museum will be magnetic storage on rotating disks, at least in my dream world


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## gkontos (Nov 23, 2012)

kpa said:
			
		

> And the next technology to go to the museum will be magnetic storage on rotating disks, at least in my dream world



I wish! It will take some time though for this to happen.


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## kpedersen (Nov 23, 2012)

Is it even possible to buy a usb stick that is 100% guaranteed to be bootable. Some of the larger ones floating around seem to have chipsets in them that cant be read by a few bios.
Once the last one of them disappears will I be happy to accept usb bootable media.

The netboot stuff is great for servers and mass clients, but I find it a massive faff to do just for a single laptop.

My biggest worry is that CD/DVD's wont be replaced by anything else sane... instead perhaps we will require the "cloud" to install operating systems on our computer. And frankly that can fsck off!

I hope CDs and DVDs live on for many years to come because 100 CDs will always be cheaper than a memory stick.


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## Pushrod (Nov 24, 2012)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> I hope CDs and DVDs live on for many years to come because 100 CDs will always be cheaper than a memory stick.



If your time is of absolutely no value.


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## wblock@ (Nov 24, 2012)

If anyone wants to get rid of SATA 12X DVD recorders, I could use a couple more.


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## silicium (Jan 2, 2013)

Is a backup of all one's music CD/video DVD collection to SD cards or USB sticks the way to go ? Handling and labeling small media will waste more time than copying all to a large SATA disk, but they will be easier to play in any recent media player.
I like SD card write protect switch emulating read-only CD/DVD.
Anyways, good riddance of optical media (and motherboards not supporting USB boot) for i386/amd64 hardware !


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## Persephone (Jan 2, 2013)

Wow, a whole bunch of delusional people in this thread.

Blu-Ray discs are down to about 4 cents per gig. Have significantly better durability and longevity than CDs and DVDs. I have stacks of CDs and DVDs that date all the way back to the mid-1990s that all work perfectly except for one or two that I personally physically damaged.

With the insane failure rate hard drives have you would be a fool to use them as anything but temporary backup. If you want to run your own personal data center where you are copying your data to redundant drives and testing them constantly and swapping out drives as they die over time, knock yourself out.


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## Uniballer (Jan 2, 2013)

When I had a 2 GB hard disk it only took about 3 CD-R's to back it up.  That seemed pretty reasonable.  And most computers at the time could read the backup.

Now I have a 2 TB hard disk and it would take around 80 BD-R's to back it up.  That doesn't seem very reasonable.  And there are plenty of computers that can't read BD-R's.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an easy, inexpensive alternative on the market at this time to backing up to hard disks.


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## bsduser35325 (Jan 2, 2013)

> With the insane failure rate hard drives



I still have 2 80gig hard drives(Platium, and Maxtor, now Seagate. They still work fine after 10 years. Hard drives are cheap just get more if you worry about them failing. They work perfectly fine for storing personal data.


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## wblock@ (Jan 2, 2013)

But you can't buy small hard drives.  So either you waste a lot of space, or you put a lot of data on the drive, and it's all at risk.  Backup DVDs are cheap, small, and can be spread around.  Dual-layer or Blue-ray would be better, except the drives are less common and the media is more expensive.  I want my backups to be readable on the lowest common denominator machine.


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## Pushrod (Jan 3, 2013)

I still don't see any advantage to DVDs or BDs. They are not reliable; I've had many not work even when simply written to and then stored properly.

They are throwaways once the data on them is out of date, which it is shortly after, by definition.

If you are backing up more than the capacity of a single disc, you either need to buy a changer, or sit there and jockey them yourself. No thanks.

Optical media ensures that the data is on site, which means it is not protected in the case of fire or other similar bad luck.

I back up my data to other hard drives, and the important stuff is in "the cloud" in multiple places, tarred up and encrypted.


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## wblock@ (Jan 3, 2013)

Having multiple copies is the important part.  I've been happy enough with DVD reliability.  Actually, I've been surprised at how even old, scratched disks still work.  I do backup to more than one disk, by using multiple DVD drives at the same time.


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## sossego (Jan 3, 2013)

Isn't Optical Media Optimus Prime's nearsighted cousin?


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## shepper (Jan 3, 2013)

In addition to a cheap way to back up ones data and store it off site, branches of the US government are now requiring data submission on electronic media.  I am putting together an eCopy of a 510(K) application for the FDA.  They will only accept CD, DVD or thumb drives with data that has been through their java based app (? filter for viruses and make all data read only).  Once I get to the point of generating the iso with their app it will be interesting to mount it loop back and see the file ownership and permissions.
Also, their instruction do not say anything about returning thumb drives.  Electronic submissions have yet to be implemented and the electronic media has to be accompanied by paper copies on submission.  So if you have to work with the FDA and if you do not like donating thumb drives, optical media is not dead


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## gkontos (Jan 3, 2013)

Which method is cheaper to backup 750GB of data?

1) 160 DVDs
2) 1 external USB drive

Which method is safer to backup 750GB of data?

1) 160 DVDs
2) 1 external USB drive

Which method is easier to retrieve data from 750GB of data?

1) 160 DVDs
2) 1 external USB drive


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## wblock@ (Jan 3, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Which method is cheaper to backup 750GB of data?
> 
> 1) 160 DVDs
> 2) 1 external USB drive



Actually, I usually see a greater compression ratio.  But okay, if we say 160 DVDs at $0.20 each, that's $80.  About the same price as a (cheap) USB drive.



> Which method is safer to backup 750GB of data?
> 
> 1) 160 DVDs
> 2) 1 external USB drive



Hard to say on that one.  The USB drive has fragile platters, motors, and electronics.  Without actual statistics, I don't know.



> Which method is easier to retrieve data from 750GB of data?
> 
> 1) 160 DVDs
> 2) 1 external USB drive



The USB drive, sure.

Now... what if you don't have 750G of data to back up?  What if you have varying amounts, say anywhere from 1G to 110G from various machines, and want to keep archival copies?


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## xibo (Jan 3, 2013)

No. If even one out of 160 DVDs fails, the backup is gone. Chances this happens are considerably higher then the USB external drive failing.


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## wblock@ (Jan 3, 2013)

xibo said:
			
		

> No. If even one out of 160 DVDs fails, the backup is gone. Chances this happens are considerably higher then the USB external drive failing.



And if even one spot on the hard drive fails, that backup is gone.  The question is which is more likely, and I don't have numbers either way.  Personally, I can't recall ever having a DVD fail.  I did have a brand-new hard drive fail last week, though.


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## gkontos (Jan 3, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Actually, I usually see a greater compression ratio.  But okay, if we say 160 DVDs at $0.20 each, that's $80.  About the same price as a (cheap) USB drive.



Let's make them double layer. Let's even assume that you get them at the same price. So, that would be 80 DVDs. Lets even say that with compression you manage to get them to 70 DVDs.

Even then, you would need to hire someone full time just to swap DVDs. 



			
				wblock@ said:
			
		

> Hard to say on that one.  The USB drive has fragile platters, motors, and electronics.  Without actual statistics, I don't know.



Sure but again simple math. 70 points of failure or 1



			
				wblock@ said:
			
		

> Now... what if you don't have 750G of data to back up?  What if you have varying amounts, say anywhere from 1G to 110G from various machines, and want to keep archival copies?



I intentionally exaggerated for the shake of the argument. But again I don't believe that optical media is cheaper for backup solutions. 

The big picture is that when you backup data, you need to somehow be able to archive and index them. Why? Because the most important factor in a backup strategy is the ability to restore in a timely manner while keeping the costs down.

Respectfully always.


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## kpa (Jan 3, 2013)

I use an external USB disk with a ZFS pool that has copies set to 2 as my back up media. If one sector goes bad the data is still fully recoverable.


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## wblock@ (Jan 3, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Let's make them double layer. Let's even assume that you get them at the same price. So, that would be 80 DVDs. Lets even say that with compression you manage to get them to 70 DVDs.
> 
> Even then, you would need to hire someone full time just to swap DVDs.



Ah, but part of my scheme is using multiple DVD drives (six at present).  I think the most swaps I've done so far are three. 



> Sure but again simple math. 70 points of failure or 1



Certainly it's not that simple.  70 slabs of inert plastic whose major enemy is sunlight versus a hard drive with moving parts and RoHS solder, whose main predators are electricity, temperature, G-shock, and, arguably, cost reduction.



> I intentionally exaggerated for the shake of the argument. But again I don't believe that optical media is cheaper for backup solutions.



I can agree with that.  Per gigabyte, DVDs are about the same cost as inexpensive hard drives.  But you don't have to buy or use 500G at a time, and they can be separated.  Dual-layer or even Blueray have advantages, but the drives are far less common.  I like the idea of backups that can be read on any available machine, even if it's not running FreeBSD.



> The big picture is that when you backup data, you need to somehow be able to archive and index them. Why? Because the most important factor in a backup strategy is the ability to restore in a timely manner while keeping the costs down.



Right, but that is driven by the kind of backup.  These DVDs tend to be emergency backups, images of machines to be restored in the case of hard drive failure, fire, flood, theft, that kind of thing.  Secondary backup.  For primary backup, I have a ZFS RAID setup.  The combination of these two is an attempt to provide quick backup along with offsite archival copies without the expense of external drives or tape.


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## fonz (Jan 3, 2013)

I for one am not going to backup 2 TB with DVDs. I'll take my chances with external USB hard drives and use other media (DVD and USB flash drive) as a second backup for the _really_ important data.

Fonz

P.S. Unfortunately I'm apparently not real enough a man to do what Linus Torvalds claims to do: "_Real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it _"

[size="-2"]DISCLAIMER: The smiley comes from the quote itself. I wouldn't dare trying to be funny on my own accord, that would probably just get me reported for vulgar, childish, unprofessional and inappropriate humour. Please don't complain.[/size]


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## bsduser35325 (Jan 4, 2013)

Hard drives tend to last very long. I have old PCs that bang and shake and they still work as long as its properly secure. Backing up more than 100G of data with DVD is just silly you would have to organize and label them. Hard drives are so cheap you can get a few TB under $150. 

DVD is a lot slower too.


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## kpa (Jan 4, 2013)

fonz said:
			
		

> P.S. Unfortunately I'm apparently not real enough a man to do what Linus Torvalds claims to do: "_Real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it _"



The more recent version of that scheme would to create a torrent out of your important data. Encrypt it first and publish it with a promise of a price in case someone can crack the encryption.


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## recluce (Jan 4, 2013)

I would never trust my backups to DVD-R (DVD-R used to include DVD+R). Experience has taught me that not all DVD media age well. While using high quality media helps, you will have a hard time reliably purchasing "high quality". The brand name DVD-R may have the same box now and six months from now, but the media itself may be completely different. Quality white label media, like Taio Yuden, is often counterfeit by some fly by night operations, so it may be even more "hit or miss". This disqualifies DVD-R as an archive media in my opinion, I just had too many media go bad over time.

The alternatives: 

1.) "naked" hard drives used in an external eSATA dock - light years ahead in transfer speed and reliability compared to DVDs. SMART monitoring gives at least some assurance about drive health. 

2.) DVD-RAM. Old fashioned and slow as hell, but highly reliable. I have yet to see a DVD-RAM media that fail on READ (they may fail during write), DVD-RAM low-level read-verifies while writing.

3.) USB thumb drives may be an adequate replacement for DVD-RAM - or not. I had USB sticks fail on me and SD cards too, mostly without any rhyme or reason.

My strategy: all data is held in a raidz2 ZFS pool, with a copy on external hard drives that are not usually connected to the server (but stored in an archive box). The most important data gets an additional copy on DVD-RAM.

As to hard drive handling for backup drives: I use only drives that have had at least a 1000 hour burn-in and are no older than 6 to 7 years at the most. Drives are started up and run for about 24 hours at least once every 3 months, with conveyance and extended SMART tests. 

Using these precautions, I have yet to see a quality drive (I don't use low-cost "green" drives) to go bad on me. The 1000 hour burn-in takes care of "infant deaths" and the 6 to 7 year limit reduces the risk from aging components. (I have just started to retire 500GB WD Black that exceed the 6 year limit).


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## Savagedlight (Jan 5, 2013)

My current backup scheme:
- ZFS send/recv to an external harddrive. There's three hard drives which are used, on rotation. Stored in a fireproof safe on-site.
- ZFS send/recv important (i.e. user-generated) data to an off-site server
- File copy of important data (really important user-generated data; such as databases) to dual-layer Blu-Ray disk. Stored in a fireproof safe off-site.
Optimally, I should have some tape backup tossed in there somewhere, but this is for my home system, so I can't justify that expense.

It's not a question of optical media being dead, because it's not. It's more a question about when it's appropriate to use it.

As for all the previous posts about "if only one of the 80 DVDs failed, your entire backup would be dead": Only if you're doing it wrong. You should backup in such a way that each DVD would contain a part of the data set, so if one dvd goes lost, the remaining DVDs are still accessible. The same argument goes for backup to a hard drive; If a sector is dead and data is unrecoverable, that shouldn't kill your entire backup.

If you have a single type of backup, and think it's enough; think again.


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## Pushrod (Jan 5, 2013)

fonz said:
			
		

> I for one am not going to backup 2 TB with DVDs. I'll take my chances with external USB hard drives and use other media (DVD and USB flash drive) as a second backup for the _really_ important data.



In my experience, USB external hard drives have a 100% failure rate. Every single solitary USB drive that I or a friend has owned, has had controller issues and has caused writes to fail and the device to become unresponsive. I would never put anything other than music or something else unimportant on one.


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## fonz (Jan 5, 2013)

Pushrod said:
			
		

> In my experience, USB external hard drives have a 100% failure rate. Every single solitary USB drive that I or a friend has owned, has had controller issues and has caused writes to fail and the device to become unresponsive.


I'm sorry to hear that. However, I myself have yet to have a single problem with any external USB hard drive I own - even while some of them have seen quite a bit of travelling - and none of my friends/relatives have so far reported any such problems either. Classic case of YMMV, perhaps?

Fonz


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## gkontos (Jan 5, 2013)

Guys wake up please. We are living in a world where we daily consume Terabytes of data. Our storage needs have grown so much during the last 5 years.

I see people daily having to deal with 8-12 TB of data on their storage boxes. That data need to be backed up daily and believe me there is no optical media that can ever handle this amount of data.


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## wblock@ (Jan 5, 2013)

Therefore, even if you only have 20G to back up, ignore optical?  There does not have to be a one-size-fits-all solution.


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## gkontos (Jan 5, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Therefore, even if you only have 20G to back up, ignore optical?  There does not have to be a one-size-fits-all solution.



See how you limit the size of data. But still, having to organize all those disks ...


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## wblock@ (Jan 5, 2013)

That's the point, that people have different amounts of data to back up.  Not everybody has 2TB to back up, and those who do will probably have to use a different system than those who have 20G.  That's not an imaginary figure; I actually do have multiple "small" systems to back up.  In the world in general, they are more common than multi-terabyte archives.

20G, incidentally, is only three or four DVDs due to compression.  Not a terrible hardship to organize.


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## bsduser35325 (Jan 6, 2013)

Flash drives are still better if backups are anything below 200G. They are smaller and faster. We already got USB 3.0. DVDs are oudated.


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## Savagedlight (Jan 6, 2013)

bsduser35325 said:
			
		

> Flash drives are still better if backups are anything below 200G. They are smaller and faster. We already got USB 3.0. DVDs are oudated.


Better how? Are they cheaper per GB? Easier to physically store? Easier to destroy when no longer needed? More resistant to magnetic fields?

I find it more practical to keep 12 dual-layer blu-ray disks (50GB per disk; 1 disk per month) for a year, than to cycle 12 SSDs for the same purpose. And as I've already posted earlier in the thread: You really should backup your stuff to several different types of media.


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## wblock@ (Jan 6, 2013)

```
Media       $/Gigabyte   Size         Write speed
-------------------------------------------------
DVD             0.045    4.4G         10M/sec
BD-R            0.036    25G          17M/sec*
BD-R DL         0.093    50G          18M/sec*
Hard disk       0.050    500G+        20-120M/sec
SSD             0.800    32-512G      20-400M/sec
Flash drive     0.500    up to 64G    2-10M/sec
```

For reference.  The DVD write speed is average, I have some drives that consistently get 12M/sec, some that only do 8M/sec.  Don't have a BD drive to get an actual speed, hence the star.  Some flash drives are faster, but not the ones that cost $0.50 per gig.  And remember that if you are keeping archives, the media is not reusable.

There's a column that's missing, which would be reliability.  I don't have any hard numbers for that, but would be interested if others do.


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## wblock@ (Jan 6, 2013)

Savagedlight said:
			
		

> I find it more practical to keep 12 dual-layer blu-ray disks



That is something I have not tried.  Does the normal DVD burning software available on FreeBSD like growisofs(1) and cdrecord(1) work to write BD disks?
Do you have an idea of what sort of actual data transfer rates it achieves?

One downside is that not every machine around can read one of those disks, unlike single-layer DVD.  But the capacity is tempting.


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## ch (Jan 6, 2013)

sossego said:
			
		

> Considering the fact that I'm one of the poor and that I'm without a place to live, whatever I'm able to find will be used.
> 
> For those of us with very little, optical media will be used for quite a while. The "media" which states such- "CDs/DVDs/etc are dead."- is composed mostly of those who have not to struggle.
> 
> ...



I beg to differ. I have no money for CDs, and using my flash drive fifty times is a lot more economical than paying for an optical drive in a computer or buying CDs. I started using USB when I got my cheap computer, and it became even more necessary once I was living in a restaurant building and had no space for wasted CDs.


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## Pushrod (Jan 7, 2013)

So, what we can conclude is that optical media are suitable for backups when you have any of the following:

-Incremental archives (and keeping them all)
-Backing up a small amount of data
-Personal preference
-Large amounts of free time


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## TiberiusDuval (Jan 7, 2013)

For small amount of data (<100 gigs for DVD's) why not? Optical media is durable when stored well, is quite compatible and so on. I had most of my mp3 collection and some personal files, PGP keys and like backed up on CD-roms- Nowadays I have multiple computers where data that is not easily available from net is backed up. 

I don't know for sure how long data will reliably last on cd-r's or dvd-r's but I think they will certainly be more reliable than magnetic 3,5" floppies. And regarding floppies just took out couple of months ago my Amiga 500 from storage, tested my disk collection and most of floppies used with it are still in working condition and show no noticeable data loss, quite many of those diskettes are over 20 years old.


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## throAU (Jan 7, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Let's make them double layer. Let's even assume that you get them at the same price. So, that would be 80 DVDs. Lets even say that with compression you manage to get them to 70 DVDs.



To be fair, if you're serious about storing bulk data on optical media, you'd be using 40-50GB BD these days. rather than DVD.

But yes, if you have any significant quantity of data, retrieval and indexing is so much easier with hard drives.  Backup and restore speed is so much faster.


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## kpa (Jan 7, 2013)

How is redundancy best handled on DVDs or BDs? As noted before the backup may be lost completely even if one block is unreadable. There must be solutions to this problem?


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## TiberiusDuval (Jan 7, 2013)

What if you do not compress files but burn them as they are, that way only file or two may be lost if there is some bad blocks.


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## Savagedlight (Jan 7, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> That is something I have not tried.  Does the normal DVD burning software available on FreeBSD like growisofs(1) and cdrecord(1) work to write BD disks?
> Do you have an idea of what sort of actual data transfer rates it achieves?
> 
> One downside is that not every machine around can read one of those disks, unlike single-layer DVD.  But the capacity is tempting.


Actually, I haven't used BD's to make FreeBSD-compatible backups yet. They're intended to allow access on a Windows computer (as that is the working environment), and as such I haven't prioritized doing the BD backups directly on the FreeBSD server. I'll make sure to post something about it once I figure out how to do that.


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## Persephone (Jan 8, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> I see people daily having to deal with 8-12 TB of data on their storage boxes. That data need to be backed up daily and believe me there is no optical media that can ever handle this amount of data.



Knocking down that strawman is the best argument you can come up with?


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## gkontos (Jan 9, 2013)

Persephone said:
			
		

> Knocking down that strawman is the best argument you can come up with?



This coming from someone who wrote:



			
				Persephone said:
			
		

> With the insane failure rate hard drives have you would be a fool to use them as anything but temporary backup. If you want to run your own personal data center where you are copying your data to redundant drives and testing them constantly and swapping out drives as they die over time, knock yourself out.



What can I say, you obviously have no idea how storages operate in the 21st century.


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## Persephone (Jan 10, 2013)

gkontos said:
			
		

> what can i say, you obviously have no idea how storages operate in the 21st century.



So you have nothing other than silly strawmen to knock down to support your assertion. That's what I thought.

Moving on...


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## wblock@ (Jan 10, 2013)

This is what I've been trying to say.  "Backup" covers a whole... what's the word... continuum of things.  From making a floppy to using some monster $3000 tape drive.  I personally think that optical drives and media still have a useful place in there.  How long that will last, and which particular type of media, I'm not so sure.


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