Computer backups are still done on tape because LTO tapes have reasonably high capacity and they are very reliable in the long term, if stored properly. But the trend is away from tapes to HDD-based backups plus backups to the cloud.
Studios have gone to HDD-based recording since the early 00s.
Studios have gone to HDD-based recording since the early 00s.
RAID backups, even in clouds, sometimes geo-redundant. But still, Datasafe & IronMountain are not out of business, because tape storage is still more reliable than HDD & CD storage. I lost many CDs that I recorded during ears.
I have been in IT for a long time, people coment that IU still print some things out.
My reply is that Paper does not tend to erase it's self.
I've learned to not trust the technology
My reply is that Paper does not tend to erase it's self.
I've learned to not trust the technology
All valid points, but the main point here should be: people should not use recordable / rewriteable CDs as backups. They are definitely not reliable in the long term.
If you really care about your data, you should go with a RAID array and you should back that array up to another array (or just to a single external HDD) and/or to the Cloud. That's what I've been doing for the last 25+ years (well, a little less for the cloud part 😛) and I've yet to lose a single useful file, in spite of losing a bunch of HDDs.
If you really care about your data, you should go with a RAID array and you should back that array up to another array (or just to a single external HDD) and/or to the Cloud. That's what I've been doing for the last 25+ years (well, a little less for the cloud part 😛) and I've yet to lose a single useful file, in spite of losing a bunch of HDDs.
Very true about recordable CDs, but even properly pressed CDs can deteriorate in my experience!
Tape can be better than HDD for reliability but for cost an HDD stuck in a disk caddy and then disconnected and locked in a metal box takes some beating, if you double up to off-site so one backup disk is always powered down and somewhere else I think it's good enough TBH.
The big benefit for me of HDD is simply access speed, I can locate and play one of 15,000+ tracks in a few seconds.
Additionally I declip my CD tracks as they are streamed, CD players are good at hiding clips but not in my view as good as letting a computer have a go at fixing them first. Also if I feed a raw CD level track into my DAC (modded Behringer Ultracurve) the red clip LEDs light up and it sounds like a loose wire in the speakers, so the PC also switches to 24bit and attenuates.
I discovered this phenomena using iTunes via Airplay with an optical lead from the Apple Airport device going into the DAC, took me a while to realise all the older CDs played fine and I didn't have a loose connection - just a poor relationship with the record company.
The last CD player I had connected to my HiFi was a carousal of about 40 discs IIRC, it was OK but hardly SuperFi and locating track 8 of disc 17 wasn't as user friendly as a text search on artist/album/track of todays HDD system 😀
BTW I like the idea of Cloud backup as it's waaay off site, but not as a first resort backup: if I needed to restore from the cloud at home it would take weeks and some nasty letters from my ISP + fights with the family as the Netflix and Skype would suffer.
I did have a disk eat itself a few months back, a screeching sound alerted me as it literally shredded itself. That was the mirror disk in my NAS so I just plugged a new one in and a couple of hours later it was restored, with only about 5 minutes downtime to swap the disks. It was a good reminder that ones entire audio library can disappear at any time though 😀
Tape can be better than HDD for reliability but for cost an HDD stuck in a disk caddy and then disconnected and locked in a metal box takes some beating, if you double up to off-site so one backup disk is always powered down and somewhere else I think it's good enough TBH.
The big benefit for me of HDD is simply access speed, I can locate and play one of 15,000+ tracks in a few seconds.
Additionally I declip my CD tracks as they are streamed, CD players are good at hiding clips but not in my view as good as letting a computer have a go at fixing them first. Also if I feed a raw CD level track into my DAC (modded Behringer Ultracurve) the red clip LEDs light up and it sounds like a loose wire in the speakers, so the PC also switches to 24bit and attenuates.
I discovered this phenomena using iTunes via Airplay with an optical lead from the Apple Airport device going into the DAC, took me a while to realise all the older CDs played fine and I didn't have a loose connection - just a poor relationship with the record company.
The last CD player I had connected to my HiFi was a carousal of about 40 discs IIRC, it was OK but hardly SuperFi and locating track 8 of disc 17 wasn't as user friendly as a text search on artist/album/track of todays HDD system 😀
BTW I like the idea of Cloud backup as it's waaay off site, but not as a first resort backup: if I needed to restore from the cloud at home it would take weeks and some nasty letters from my ISP + fights with the family as the Netflix and Skype would suffer.
I did have a disk eat itself a few months back, a screeching sound alerted me as it literally shredded itself. That was the mirror disk in my NAS so I just plugged a new one in and a couple of hours later it was restored, with only about 5 minutes downtime to swap the disks. It was a good reminder that ones entire audio library can disappear at any time though 😀
That advice is kind of 8 years out of date.
M-Disc technology is good for 1000 years.
M-Disc optical media reviewed: Your data, good for a thousand years | PCWorld
Of course no-one uses CD-rs because their capacity is too small and why would you back up a CD to a medium that has a fraction of the life expectancy? No point unless to avoid the original being used by someone you know scratches them through lack of care (cut them out of your life!).
Last edited:
Of course I am sure we all are aware that ripping CDs in any form, as backup or use in a hdd based media server is ILLEGAL in the UK ..... still. 😀
Sad but true.
Why, in 2015, is ripping CDs still illegal in the UK? - Telegraph
Sad but true.
Why, in 2015, is ripping CDs still illegal in the UK? - Telegraph
I don't understand.. My details are contradicted by what you have set up and how you maintain it 😕 😀
That's what the guys selling the disks say. These guys are claiming that these very expensive disks will last about the same as ordinary organic recording layer based disks: https://documents.lne.fr/publicatio...syylex-glass-dvd-accelerated-aging-report.pdf
So I'm not about to shell out ~$20 x 30 = $600 for 3TBs of storage capacity that is write-once, only useful for archival purposes and with suspect lifetime. With that kind of money I can buy enough 3TB HDDs that will last me close to my lifetime and be a heck of a lot more convenient.
The idea is to back up our CD rips that we have made to use in our computers, SBCs and network transports in general, since it's 2017 and almost no one uses CD transports any more.
Anyone who has invested a significant amount of time in order to properly rip, tag and catalog his (presumably large) CD collection can testify that its a process that he would not want to repeat. So he needs to keep backups.
CDRs are definitely useless for backup, DVD-Rs are somewhat useful, 50GB BD-Rs are better.. But all of them suck in convenience compared to a disk based backup or a cloud service.
Just build 2 NAS devices and rsync nas #1 to nas #2.
There's a Kickstarter for a diy nas that cost $139 and up. Or, build your own FreeNas servers. They can be as cheap or expensive as you want within reason.
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...onal-cloud-the-worlds-1st-open-source/rewards
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
my thoughts too.
I bet you folk will look back on this thread one day and laugh at the idea that CDs might be preferred over more modern higher speed storage options.
Why not record to paper tape 🙄
What i'm doing right now is keeping my music on a RAID set in a Synology NAS, rsyncing that to a second Synology NAS, keeping a third copy in another Windows file server, and syncing everything to the Cloud.
Sure, I'm paranoid. But am I paranoid enough? 😀
Really? I don't know how old you are and how long that life time will be but that is only about 10 drives. You will need several raid systems in that time (smps's will have died in them many times over let alone other components) and likely within 5 years your 3tb drives will not work in the new raid box. So all in all, you will have to upgrade as you go along and that $600 won't have stretched far. Remember to cost in power costs over that life time as well as maintenence time .
The M-discs DVDs are £2 each - not expensive at all. 3TB would be over 4000 CDs ! Seriously have that many CDs to back up? How can you listen to them all, what's the point?
The M-discs in the French test were tested at temperatures past their operating temperature. Aging by high temperatures is normally a good test but if that high temperature specifically destroys the material being tested then you are no-longer simulating accelerated aging. The US Navy archive test aged at a vital 5 degrees lower and verified the 1000 year claim.
However, if you have the original CDs you likely have to do nothing and spend nothing to continue to listen to those same CDs for another couple of decades at least. Some may go but you can replace as and when they do.
Last edited:
@DimDim Granted you live in Greece so your CD failure rates may be higher if you don't have a cool house. Living in cloudy UK has some advantages 😀
Just having the CDs in a cupboard saves you from all the paranoia too , at least from a music point of view. Still that paranoia exists for other data. Again, that paranoia of things going wrong, drives needing replacing, Raid redundancy etc are all part of what I find to be extreme hassle for listenng it music. Mental hassle.
Just having the CDs in a cupboard saves you from all the paranoia too , at least from a music point of view. Still that paranoia exists for other data. Again, that paranoia of things going wrong, drives needing replacing, Raid redundancy etc are all part of what I find to be extreme hassle for listenng it music. Mental hassle.
Yes, you are. 🙂
I'm doing just about that minus the cloud.
I have Blu-Ray writer but haven't used it for backup of music.
I'm not counting the cost of the RAID systems since I will be needing them anyway. I wouldn't even consider using the optical disks as day to day playback mediums. Too much hassle. You can't even do a proper playlist. So RAID is a must in any case.
I'm only considering the cost of backups. Power costs will be nearly zero, since the backup HDDs do not need to be powered all the time. Maintenance is also near zero - not much to do but power on the drive and run a backup app whenever I remember to.
As a matter of fact, M-Disc DVDs appear to be less cost effective than 100GB M-Disc BDs, so I see no reason for using DVDs.
Atm my music collection takes up about 1.5TB and besides ripped CDs it also includes DSD files, MP3s, etc.
All of that data needs backing up, in fact it's more important to keep backups of my other stuff, rather than the CD rips that in theory I could redo in case of a catastrophy. This music collections of course is growing, so 3TB is a pretty realistic number, if a bit on the low side. I have friends with music collections much larger than 3TB.
That may be true. I have no way of verifying that since I can't really find the M-Disc specs.
Like I said, my original CDs have been ripped and stored away since the early 00s. Its repeating the ripping process that I would really like to avoid.
I can confirm that all of my original CDs (the oldest one is from about 1987) are in fact intact.
Anyone notice the OP stopped posting on the 14th at post #19 and here we are at post #79
Trolled
Trolled
Ah, well there you go! No need to maintain their storage and yet still accessible with a completely hands-off approach. Sounds like an excellent storage medium. That wouldn't be possible with HDDs.
QED CDs are a better storage medium for CD music than HDD. They may not be as convenient in some systems for some people's way of doing things but purely as storage they are excellent and dependable, passive and need no attention whatsoever.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.