[geeks] Best media for personal long-term backup?

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Feb 28, 2009, at 14:41 , Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>> True... but even 50GB dual-layer is really not a big improvement
>> compared to the amount of data on a typical machine today, even a
>> personal machine.
>
> You are aware that Blu-Ray can be pushed far beyond two layers, right?
> 10-layer Blu-Ray discs have been demonstrated in the lab.  That's  
> 250GB
> per disc.

I don't care much about what is in the labs.  It's the market trends  
that generally point to what we will be using in the future so that's  
what I look at.

Firewire is better than USB, but USB is our future, for example.

The prices of Blu-Ray disks has been fairly stagnant, and in some  
cases I saw BR media prices go up in 2008.  It is taking along time  
for 25GB media to become affordable, so I would guess that 250GB won't  
be affordable for a long time, assuming it ever makes it to market in  
the first place.

One thing to remember is that burned media is most useful if it is  
large enough to backup all your data on a single volume.  That's  
because burned media doesn't work well as a multi-volume media.  Most  
burning software can't even do it.

Tapes and tape software is generally far better at multi-volume, so it  
matters somewhat less that media size isn't keeping up.

Personally, I think we need 100GB Blu-Ray, at a minimum, right now,  
and it needs to be no more than around $10 per disk, ideally $5 or less.

It seems like it's going to arrive after it is relevant, at least the  
way things are going right now.

Hopefully things will change of course, because backups are really a  
bitch right now.




-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com