CD or DVD ???

[Bob Riegl]

I am starting to get an awful lot of pictures saved up in MY PICTURES and wanted to know whether to use a CD or DVD disk to do the job. This is an elementary question, for most but I am looking for some outside guts and brains. Thanks

[Bonish Photo]

You'll save a ton of money and time by going with DVD's.

Most CD's can only hold 700mgs, where you can get DVD's up to 8gig!

They also make different quality of each. I've read a few articles in Outdoor Photographer about Gold Plated DVD's that are supposed to be strictly for photo storing, but I dont know if it is worth the cost.

I just bought an externial hard drive, and make a duplicate of everything. I keep the hard drive at a seperate location then my regular CPU incase of a fire or damage.

Pat
http://www.everymilesamemory.com

[gldiana]

Hi Bob,
for now I'd say go for DVD, even better go for Double Layer DVD, they're a little more expensive ($2 each when you buy them in packs of 25, but I've seen some around $1.50 about a week ago) but hold twice the capacity (nearly 9GB each disc); most DVD-RW out there are Double Layer capable, just make sure that yours says DL too (ex.: DVD-RW DL).
For the medium and long term I recommend you look into Blue Ray technology (I'm not suggesting HD-DVD beacause: 1) Lower Capacity than BR and 2) I think its days are numbered). A Double Layer Blue Ray disc holds 50GB; Burners right now are going for around $500-$600 but that's because there are only 4 of them in the market (the Philips and Sony models got the best ratings), but around Christmas time you will see many new models coming out and the prices will surely drop.

As for me, I burn DL DVD and have 4 external Hard Drives for back up, and I'm waiting for Christmas to get me a new Blue Ray burner.

Luca

[gldiana]

They also make different quality of each. I've read a few articles in Outdoor Photographer about Gold Plated DVD's that are supposed to be strictly for photo storing, but I dont know if it is worth the cost.

Hey Pat,
you know, there are companies out there that claim to make DVD for photo storing and other for Music storing but at the end of the day, data is data.
Data is recorded in pits on a dvd, just a sequence of 1's and 0's; the above is just a marketing ploy.
Now, little different for those discs with gold layers (yes, much more expensive than regular 35 cents DVD's); the difference is not that they store photos better than anything else (again: data is data in the eyes of a computer), but they are certified to last longer. It all depends on you. Regular DVD's have shown in lab tests that they last around 100 years so maybe those gold DVD's last 200 years. If you ask me, 100 years from now the DVD format won't exist anymore and by then I will have backed-up my photos many times.

Luca

[maxvenum]

My .02 dollars:

Ignore all the terms like gold plating and special technology this and that. Each cd/dvd company has their own names and technologies. The key thing to look for is "archival quality", whether data, photo, or whatever. Otherwise, others have said, a dvd is a dvd.

The real difference between dvds is quality, especially initially. The better quality dvds will given you fewer (if any) problems while burning. Ever burn a dvd or cd and then have it fail at the end of the burn cycle? Many times, it is because of poor quality cds or dvds.

I have been buying "Taiyo Yuden" dvds for around 6 months and made numerous backups with them in that time. I don't recall a single bad burn in that time, though I have had numerous bad burns on the quick cds I have burned for transferring data between machines (throwaway cds). These burns were succesful, and I have unfortunately had to use a few of the backups in that time. Taiyo Yuden is a japanese company, and many regular U.S. brands sell Taiyo Yuden cds and dvds, though it isn't always easy to tell where the cds and dvds come from. I buy mine from Supermediastore.com.

I would personally avoid anything other than cds and dvds. The other technologies haven't taken enough of a market share to be able to tell if they are going to stick around (anyone remember VHS vs. beta? I'm not old enough for that, but I heard about it...) Blu-ray or HD-DVD only have a small portion of the market. CDs have been around for many many years and will still be around as the vast majority of audio media (ignoring downloads) are sold on cd. 5 or 10 years from now, when you buy a new computer, you should still be able to find readers for cds and probably dvds. It may not be so easy to find readers for Blu-ray or HD-DVDs if they don't catch on as well.

Tobyn

[Bonish Photo]

So you all think that DVD/CD is better then just having an extra Externial Hard Drive and backing images up to them??

With the cost of memory coming down each day, I'd still say that having everything backed up on an Externial Hard Drive and storing it in a fireproof safe is your best bet at keeping everything backed up.

Pat
www.everymilesamemory.com

[maxvenum]

Being the ultraparanoid, I use all three. I have them backed up on 2 separate hard drives on a separate machine from my main desktop. One of these hard drives is never mounted by the operating system except when performing the backup operation. I also create backup dvds.

The nice thing about dvds is that you can easily them to a physically separate location. You can do this with an external hard drive, but if you are making multiple backups over a few days, it means retrieving your hard drive from your safe location for each backup. With dvds, you can just stockpile them for a few days and only make one trip to the separate location.

I also don't trust hard drives that much. They have come a LONG way, however, using a single hard drive for backup means each time you connect it for backing up you risk your OS (or some virus) messing up your hard drive. You have that risk for dvds, but it is limited to the one disk. You don't risk messing up the rest of your backups each time you create a backup. Also, as a hard drive is mechanical, so you risk breaking your hard drive while moving it around.

Tobyn

[gldiana]

Like Tobyn I use multiple media to back up. I just got another 500GB internal HD today to add to my RAID0 HD system and the 3 external ones. After losing over 1000 photos from the failure of a hard drive I'm not going to take anymore risks, call me paranoid but I learned my lesson.
DVD are safer than Hard Drives being non-mechanical devices.

Luca