Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
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Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#2A huge shame. I backup my optical media to S3, but I also use M-DISC "mineral discs" which hopefully will last much longer. Sadly they were not available back then.
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#3Anecdotal evidence, but I've recently gone through my ancient CD collection (in so doing, I found Ubuntu 6.04 installers, AOL dial-up CDs and other relics) and archived them with GNU DDrescue. It had no problem reading all bar a handful of CDs from the mid-to-late 90s and early 00's - the failure rate was much lower than I expected. The failures were mostly completely visually identifiable too - the layers had started to separate.
I've also been backing up personal photos to DVD annually for quite a few years. Each disc contains encrypted Duplicity files, and a PAR2 archive to assist with any deep failures of the on-medium parity. I also usually include a disk or two of pure parity archives, to handle a total failure of any disk or two in the middle.
Each year I check the price of DVD vs. Blu-ray and when factoring in the cost of the burner DVD seems to stay just on top for $/GB. It doesn't help that I've still got spare DVDs lying around, and people basically give away the blanks these days.
This is not my only backup strategy, but it is the only one that is cold, read-only, and offline.
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#4Anecdotal evidence, but I've recently gone through my ancient CD collection (in so doing, I found Ubuntu 6.04 installers, AOL dial-up CDs and other relics) and archived them with GNU DDrescue. It had no problem reading all bar a handful of CDs from the mid-to-late 90s and early 00's - the failure rate was much lower than I expected. The failures were mostly completely visually identifiable too - the layers had starte…
> Each year I check the price of DVD vs. Blu-ray and when factoring in the cost of the burner DVD seems to stay just on top for $/GB. It doesn't help that I've still got spare DVDs lying around, and people basically give away the blanks these days.
Cost is one thing, but does the capacity not bother you too? DVDs are so small in comparison to BDs. Not to mention the time you have to waste switching discs (or reading/writing them, if relevant).
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#5My most popular blog post is a test I made, reading 400 CDR:s of backed up data. Most interesting is people discussing their own strategies in the lengthy comments.
https://www.rlvision.com/blog/how-long-do-writable-cddvd-las...
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#6Archival grade blu-ray or mdisc, those should last surprisingly long. Even normal blu-ray is ok, but the very cheap ones are not, those use organic dye. The rest is usually ~5-8 years.
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#7A huge shame. I backup my optical media to S3, but I also use M-DISC "mineral discs" which hopefully will last much longer. Sadly they were not available back then.
Do you mind sharing your monthly S3 bill and it’s rate of change?
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#8Anecdotal evidence, but I've recently gone through my ancient CD collection (in so doing, I found Ubuntu 6.04 installers, AOL dial-up CDs and other relics) and archived them with GNU DDrescue. It had no problem reading all bar a handful of CDs from the mid-to-late 90s and early 00's - the failure rate was much lower than I expected. The failures were mostly completely visually identifiable too - the layers had starte…
> Each year I check the price of DVD vs. Blu-ray and when factoring in the cost of the burner DVD seems to stay just on top for $/GB. It doesn't help that I've still got spare DVDs lying around, and people basically give away the blanks these days. Cost is one thing, but does the capacity not bother you too? DVDs are so small in comparison to BDs. Not to mention the time you have to waste switching discs (or reading/…
Burning tens of DVDs is a little tiresome, but it is well enough scripted that it is easy to slowly swap them in and out while focusing on another task - the brief interruption is barely noticed.
It also means that the failure of a whole disk has a lesser impact on the whole.
Edit: that said, I do have a spindle of 100 CD-R that were given to me. I haven't had the motivation to use them up yet.
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#9Direct link to the source: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1138537238537625601
Direct link to the images: https://www.flickr.com/photos/textfiles/albums/7215770899728...
And what a title! The photos do not show the need, but the need is shown by some of the CD-Rs on which the photos are stored being faulty. Ground Zero refers to 9/11 here, not the nuclear bombing of Japan in WW2.
Re: Newly recovered Ground Zero photos show why you should back up your CD-Rs now
#10A huge shame. I backup my optical media to S3, but I also use M-DISC "mineral discs" which hopefully will last much longer. Sadly they were not available back then.
I used to use S3 but quickly realized how expensive it is and switched to Hetzner. The more data you need to store and transfer, the more pronounced the difference is.