Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR at DVinfo.net

James Manford · March 15th, 2015, 04:24 AM

As the title really.

Opinions ?

With the cost of hard drives coming down but still having reliability issues (most recently I purchased a brand new western digital drive directly from WD UK it failed on me within a few days of use - dreaded clicking sound issue but I did have ANOTHER backup). I was thinking a more permanent solution would be simply backing up the RAW wedding files to several BDRs that are WRITE ONCE only. The cost of discs are DIRT cheap having a quick look on Amazon.

Quality Printable Verbatim 25GB 50 pack spindles can be purchased for £20 - £25.

An average wedding lets say has 100gb of RAW, that's 4 discs at approx 50p a disc. Yes they are write once only but the main thing here is you will always have a secure copy of the raw files with no risk of a mechanical drive ever failing on you.

Nigel Barker · March 15th, 2015, 10:11 AM

Even if the BD-R discs were reliable long term the time & effort in burning the discs would rule it out for me. There is very little difference in cost as a 4TB HDD is about £100 i.e. £1 for 40GB vs. £1 for 50 GB BD-R With either medium you wouldn't want just one copy anyway.

Gary Huff · March 16th, 2015, 07:49 AM

BDXL discs are 100GB and can be had for $65/5 pack on eBay (make sure you have a burner which supports the format). I stick with good brands (Verbatim) and don't have an issue. With hard discs, I can definitely see needing, at minimum, two drives, but with quality BD discs, I would just burn one copy. In fact, doing that right now for some older projects I wish to archive but don't need to access.

Nigel Barker · March 19th, 2015, 05:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary Huff

BDXL discs are 100GB and can be had for $65/5 pack on eBay (make sure you have a burner which supports the format). I stick with good brands (Verbatim) and don't have an issue. With hard discs, I can definitely see needing, at minimum, two drives, but with quality BD discs, I would just burn one copy. In fact, doing that right now for some older projects I wish to archive but don't need to access.

I wouldn't trust one copy as I have been let down by both CD & DVD media in the past. It's a hassle burring to disc versus a simple sync to another hard disk & finally those 100GB BDXL discs are far more expensive per GB than multiple external HHDs.

To compare prices in dollars I see that a 4TB external HDD is about $120 on Amazon.com whereas 4TB of BDXL discs even at those cheap eBay prices would cost $420,

Gary Huff · March 19th, 2015, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

I wouldn't trust one copy as I have been let down by both CD & DVD media in the past.

That can absolutely happen, and I have been as well. However, in those instances, they were CD and DVD media from one of the first cheapo brands that made it affordable for someone just starting out. I haven't had an issues so far with the quality media that I research and purchase (Taiyo Yuden, Verbatim, etc.).

Quote:

It's a hassle burring to disc versus a simple sync to another hard disk & finally those 100GB BDXL discs are far more expensive per GB than multiple external HHDs.

That hassle is mostly in changing discs if you're burning something more than what can be held on a single disc. However, I've done hard drive copies that take 7-9 hours per drive, which means about 14-18 hours of copy time spent duplicating. And that's via eSATA.

Quote:

To compare prices in dollars I see that a 4TB external HDD is about $120 on Amazon.com whereas 4TB of BDXL discs even at those cheap eBay prices would cost $420,

That external HDD has an average lifespan of 5 years. Archival quality Blu-rays and such go from 25-100 years. And there's no moving parts that need to be refreshed (you can't just dump to a hard drive and leave it sitting for a long time, the mechanical parts will wear out).

Ideally, you use a RAID enclosure (I have several) that automatically duplicate the drive contents for you and make it easier to spin up both drives on occasion.

I'm not saying Blu-ray is the best way, but for larger projects I probably won't even touch again, it makes sense. It frees up space on my RAIDs for current work, I'm not just trashing things, and I don't have to worry about it as much.

LTO tape is probably one of the most ideal solutions, but even that is not 100% foolproof, and it's a nearly $4000 upfront cost to me to go that route. I just picked up another set of BDXL discs (under $200) and dual 6TB drives and a Thunderbolt enabled Guardian Maximus enclosure (under $1000) and I'm set for now.

James Manford · March 19th, 2015, 10:55 AM

It's the quickest way for me to back up and keep off site as cheaply as possible.

£2-3 tops for me to back up the RAW footage of a Wedding i've just filmed.

In conjunction to using external hard drives, I think it's the best way for me have some peace of mind that I have backups on multiple devices.

Taky Cheung · March 19th, 2015, 11:04 PM

Home burn DVD and BluRay are using dye to represent 0's and 1's. They are affected by sunlight. I would suggest archiving raw footage to bare HDD. they are very cheap. Also sign up a cloud backup service. I use CrashPlan which is US$5 a month unlimited storage. Once I stored files there, they won't delete them until I explicitly remove them.

Jim Michael · March 20th, 2015, 04:35 AM

There's a distinction between backing up and archiving. Archiving is long term preservation of important files and must take into account accessibility and readability of the media. That's dependent on a number of factors but the time horizon for access to the data plays a role. Hard drives are not a long term (for me 25 year or more) solution. Currently the two best solutions I know of are M-Disc and LTO. M-Disc is an archival disc with a projected 100 year or longer life that's available in a 25 GB BD version writable by normal BD writers. Your greatest risk with those is probably availability of a reader on the tail of your time horizon. M-Disc is a pretty good solution for small archiving projects like a copy of someone's wedding footage, family photos, etc.

James Manford · March 20th, 2015, 04:49 AM

All great points.

But I think for my needs BDR's suit me fine.

I simply require a back up until delivery of the final product to my client.

So lets say 6 months max ?? external hard drives are fine at the moment.

But rather than uploading to cloud, using BDRs to quickly burn at my convenience, storing them away in a dark cupboard away from the harsh UV rays of sunlight is safe enough in my opinion.

I still have CDRs that work which I burnt nearly 15 years ago.

March 15th, 2015, 04:24 AM	#1
James Manford Trustee Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,393	Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR As the title really. Opinions ? With the cost of hard drives coming down but still having reliability issues (most recently I purchased a brand new western digital drive directly from WD UK it failed on me within a few days of use - dreaded clicking sound issue but I did have ANOTHER backup). I was thinking a more permanent solution would be simply backing up the RAW wedding files to several BDRs that are WRITE ONCE only. The cost of discs are DIRT cheap having a quick look on Amazon. Quality Printable Verbatim 25GB 50 pack spindles can be purchased for £20 - £25. An average wedding lets say has 100gb of RAW, that's 4 discs at approx 50p a disc. Yes they are write once only but the main thing here is you will always have a secure copy of the raw files with no risk of a mechanical drive ever failing on you.

March 15th, 2015, 10:11 AM	#2
Nigel Barker Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Norwich, Norfolk, UK Posts: 3,531	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR Even if the BD-R discs were reliable long term the time & effort in burning the discs would rule it out for me. There is very little difference in cost as a 4TB HDD is about £100 i.e. £1 for 40GB vs. £1 for 50 GB BD-R With either medium you wouldn't want just one copy anyway.

March 16th, 2015, 07:49 AM	#3
Gary Huff Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: Austin, Texas Posts: 2,006	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR BDXL discs are 100GB and can be had for $65/5 pack on eBay (make sure you have a burner which supports the format). I stick with good brands (Verbatim) and don't have an issue. With hard discs, I can definitely see needing, at minimum, two drives, but with quality BD discs, I would just burn one copy. In fact, doing that right now for some older projects I wish to archive but don't need to access.

March 19th, 2015, 10:55 AM	#6
James Manford Trustee Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,393	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR It's the quickest way for me to back up and keep off site as cheaply as possible. £2-3 tops for me to back up the RAW footage of a Wedding i've just filmed. In conjunction to using external hard drives, I think it's the best way for me have some peace of mind that I have backups on multiple devices.

March 19th, 2015, 11:04 PM	#7
Taky Cheung Inner Circle Join Date: May 2007 Location: Los Angeles, USA Posts: 2,114	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR Home burn DVD and BluRay are using dye to represent 0's and 1's. They are affected by sunlight. I would suggest archiving raw footage to bare HDD. they are very cheap. Also sign up a cloud backup service. I use CrashPlan which is US$5 a month unlimited storage. Once I stored files there, they won't delete them until I explicitly remove them. __________________ LA Color Pros Blog RODE Authorized Reseller . Comer LED Camera Lights . TakyBox HTML5 Menu Generator

March 20th, 2015, 04:35 AM	#8
Jim Michael Major Player Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 895	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR There's a distinction between backing up and archiving. Archiving is long term preservation of important files and must take into account accessibility and readability of the media. That's dependent on a number of factors but the time horizon for access to the data plays a role. Hard drives are not a long term (for me 25 year or more) solution. Currently the two best solutions I know of are M-Disc and LTO. M-Disc is an archival disc with a projected 100 year or longer life that's available in a 25 GB BD version writable by normal BD writers. Your greatest risk with those is probably availability of a reader on the tail of your time horizon. M-Disc is a pretty good solution for small archiving projects like a copy of someone's wedding footage, family photos, etc.

March 20th, 2015, 04:49 AM	#9
James Manford Trustee Join Date: Jan 2013 Location: London, UK Posts: 1,393	Re: Archiving RAW footage to 25gb & 50gb BDR All great points. But I think for my needs BDR's suit me fine. I simply require a back up until delivery of the final product to my client. So lets say 6 months max ?? external hard drives are fine at the moment. But rather than uploading to cloud, using BDRs to quickly burn at my convenience, storing them away in a dark cupboard away from the harsh UV rays of sunlight is safe enough in my opinion. I still have CDRs that work which I burnt nearly 15 years ago.