What Makes a Good CD/DVD Duplicator? 195
zachjb asks: "With all of the recent articles and buzz in the technology community regarding recordable/pressed optical disks being an unreliable medium to backup your data on, I figured the best way to keep my data alive is to duplicate my CDs/DVDs every few years. I've searched Froogle for CD/DVD duplicators, but I have no idea what I should be looking for. Does anyone in the Slashdot community have a lot experience with this type of equipment? Is this a reasonable solution to the problem or is there a more cost effective one?"
Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:5, Informative)
There are some standalone devices that live to do nothing more than copy... but with prices Checking in at close to $400 [bwayphoto.com] you might as well buy a Sub-$500 PC that has both a reader and a burner right out of the box [emachines.com] if you're too lazy to build one from the parts yourself. Afterall, for the extra $100 you get a functional PC instead of the one-trick pony of a device that consists of nothing more than a reader and writer with firmware in between.
If you're publishing content on CDs, then you might be able to justify the cost of getting a one-to-many CD copier device... but think carefully about how often you're actually going to use it before taking the dive. It may be cheaper and easier to just outsource the project to a fulfillment house that does that kind of thing for a living. However, for this particular question's situation of making a one-to-one digital copy every few years to restart the aging clock, having one-to-many capability just isn't going to help much.
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course the downside to all this is that since we started adding CDs to our books, our sales have actually declined and the same is true for our competitors. It's easy to guess why, if it's so cheap and easy for us to make copies . . .
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the exact model [e3works.com]. It even works under Linux, as long as your kernel supports the right USB options.
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:5, Informative)
Umm... Sorry, no.
Although errors can theoretically occur, for the PC to not catch it, you'd need an enormous amount of corruption over a small area, that produces reproduceable false reads, with the correct CRC. Not bloody likely.
Now, if you refer to either subchannel data, or to physical disk features (such as "hard" bad sectors), sure, a number of imaging programs will work better than a 1:1 copy. But that doesn't really apply to audio data, only to various copy protection mechanisms.
As something of an aside, making disc images does have advantages, even though the ones you suggest seem a tad irrelevant. For most driver disks, before I even install the hardware, I make an image of the install disc. It goes to my fileserver, and if I ever need to reinstall, I find it takes me less time to burn the ISO than it does to find the original disc. And, if something happens (ie, the dog eats the original), not a problem; a $0.25 disc and 4 minutes later, and I've replaced it.
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't a hard sell. "Get three 250GB IDE Drives, raid them, and put the entire CD library on fault tolerant space for less then $600 and never worry about a lost CD again, and have the entire library available anywhere in the world."
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Informative)
From the FAQ at exactaudiocopy.org:
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:2)
Key phrase there, "poor readers".
Yes, back in the days of cheap-but-fast CD-ROM drives, the phenomenon you describe could occur.
On a higher-quality CD drive (such as a burner) or on just about any DVD drive, those sort of errors simply do not occur.
So yes, if you want to talk about decade-old hardware, I did indeed err. I probably should h
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Insightful)
So yes, if you want to talk about decade-old hardware, I did indeed err. I probably should have also said, in my list of ways-such-errors-could-occur, "if you use ancient noname drives"
Bzzzt. Wrong again. These problems were certainly NOT solved "decades ago" The CD-ROM was only invented in 1984. I've had sync problems as late as 1997 or 98. It wasn't on no-name hardware either. I've personally seen on on Mitsumi drives, Lite-On drives, Apple drives, etc. It's a VERY common problem. Yes, if you b
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:2, Interesting)
Errors do occur (Score:4, Informative)
This is just plain wrong. There is a big difference between data CD's and audio CD's.
Your statement is essentially correct for data CD's. However, for audio, the parent's statements are correct, you must use a tool like EAC to get an exact copy.
With audio, the drive does all of the error checking and correcting. Uncorrectable, or C2 errors, can not be corrected, and occur on almost every CD. When a C2 error is encountered by the drive, it extrapolates (yes, guesses) the data and provides this data to the PC. You can't hear it (probably), but those errors do accumulate.
Most importantly, those errors, however slight, prevent you from doing a digital compare of the dupe back to the master.
BTW, IAAPD (I Am A Professional Duplicator).
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:2)
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Insightful)
--Reiserfs can have hash collisions too (if you have umpteen-thousands of files in a single directory) but that doesn't stop me from using it.
Here's an example:
tmpfile="this is a test"
md5sum tmpfile
e19c1283c925b3206
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:2)
MD5 creates a 128 bit signature, meaning that there are only 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,4 5 6 (2^128) possible uniques.
Once you try the 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,45 7th input, you will have a collision.
This is also assuming that MD5 will even output all the possible hashes. There may be something in it that prevents certain results from ever occuring,
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Interesting)
Likewise, the modern reader is smart enough not to return errant frames unless the error just happens to have also corrupted
Re:Just toss another drive into your PC... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't worry too much (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are just thinking about the future, you might as well just wait until the next big thing is out and the copy them when that time comes.
Re:Don't worry too much (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't really need to be concerned about hot-swapping, because you can afford your pictures being unavailable for the hour or so while you're swapping out a failed HD every few years.
Re:Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:5, Insightful)
Malicious programs, accidental rm -rf... filesystem corruption.. bugs..
Set up some rsync backups for your data to multiple separate systems, with at least one offsite.
You can do rsync-incremental backups too if you want a really good backup solution. Rdiff -backup uses similar ideas too, but the simlipcity of rsync-incrementals can't be beat.
Re:Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:2)
Re:Snapshots ... more info (Score:4, Interesting)
A snapshot is a freeze-frame image of your computer's hard drive. The location and contents of every file are noted in an instant, and then the computer continues with its work. Making a snapshot is like making an instant backup of the hard disk to the same drive.
Not every operating system supports snapshots, but the feature is becoming more popular. It was recently introduced in FreeBSD 5.0, for instance, although it wasn't really reliable until the 5.2 version. Snapshots have been a part of NetApp's gFiler appliances and EMC's storage systems for years.
The advantage of the snapshot is that it can be made very fast and it takes up hardly any disk space at all. That's because snapshots are implemented with a technique called "copy on write." Basically, the operating system makes a map that notes the name and contents of every file. If an application tries to overwrite one of these files after the snapshot is made, the operating system writes the new file contents to an unused location of the hard drive and preserves the original contents.
The same thing is done with directories. If you try to delete a file inside a directory, the computer actually writes a second directory onto the disk that doesn't have the file you just deleted. If you want to get back a file after you've accidentally deleted it, you just retrieve it from the snapshot.
On my primary server, for instance, I have a program that makes a snapshot every night at 11 p.m. I keep these snapshots for seven days, then they are automatically deleted.
The disadvantage of snapshots is that deleting a file doesn't actually free up space on the disk-the blocks remain "used" until every snapshot that references the file is deleted too. And, of course, snapshots don't protect you against a hardware failure or somebody accidentally formatting the hard drive.
One last thing: Once you have your backup system in place, you should practice trying to restore a backup from time-to-time. The best way to do this is to take a brand-new computer and a set of your backup tapes, and see if you can restore a 100 percent working system. Many organizations can't, so don't overlook this important test.
Re:Snapshots ... more info (Score:3, Interesting)
Rsync incremental does the same thing, with no special software or hardware.
Basically, it does
cp -al
This makes a ghost tree that is just hard links to the r
Re:Snapshots ... more info (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not what hard links are... hard links are indistinguishable from the original file. If you make a hard link, modify the hard link then you'll see the changes in the "orig
Re:Snapshots ... more info (Score:3)
How much would it take... (Score:4, Interesting)
For the last hour, keep all records.
For the last 24 hours, keep an hourly snapshot.
For the last week, keep a daily snapshot at midnight.
For the last 3 months, keep a weekly snapshot each Monday.
Basicly, it would work recursively to create the snapshot. If you're making a 1hr snapshot, combine all records of the last hour (i.e. if word auto-saved it 10 times, you get one "master diff". Same with 24h snapshot. Combine all the hourly ones. Changed it 8 times during the hours of a workday? It's now one daily diff.
Then you can simply have some "magic" functions like roll-back, cp -time "-4 hours" "mylostfile" "myrecoveredfile" etc. Given 100gb+ harddisks and 100kb word documents, umm I mean OpenOffice documents, why not?
Kjella
Re:How much would it take... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like a job for RAID... (Score:2)
Even for all that, I mostly use the same online storage you describe. :)
Sometimes, though, I like to archive that stuff off to cd or dvd. When I do, I use par2 [sf.net] to generate parity sets of the data I archive to dvd. That way, if I suffer some minimal bit rot, I can still correct it. With large enough parity sets, you can even correct f
I find a CD writer helps (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously is the author daft? If you're only duplicating your disks every few years then I've got news for you -- a second 24x or faster CD-writer costs under a hundred bucks! And every CD burning program out there supports disk duplication.
Seriously, even if it takes a couple days I don't understand why you need a machine dedicated to disk duplication if you re-burn your backups only every two or three years. Or perhaps are you looking for advice on disk pirating devices and you used a recent (and duplicate) /. article as an excuse to slip under the radar?
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:2)
Those burn-seven-at-a-time CD burners smell like devices that would only be bought by software pirates. Why would anybody want to buy and then use one of those, when you could just send your master CD to a fulfillment operation that duplicates CDs for a living?
When you need more than 2000 copies of the same CD, the price those places charge per disc starts t
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:4, Informative)
The thing has paid for itself a hundred times over - the markup on CDs is amazing, and with the demand for small runs we make a tidy side profit from our normal business. The duplicator sits on our multimedia developer's desk and he can run about 500 almost unconsciously.
Man, I sound like a magazine testimonial.
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:3, Interesting)
This helps a lot for our student
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:2)
My church uses those things to make copies of the sermons to sell for $2.00. This fills a perfect need. If you need onsies or twosies, use a computer. If you need a thousand, use a commercial house. If you need a few dozen in an hour or so, a duplicator is perfect!
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:3, Informative)
Definitely _way_ under $100. I picked up my 52x24x52 CD-RW for $0. And guess how much the 100-CD spindles cost? You guessed it. Free.
It pays to look at local ads, those two deals come up pretty frequently at places like OfficeMax, CompUSA, and Staples.
Personally, though, I'd go for a pseudo-RAID
Sheer Volume (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally have over 1000 audio CDs, 800 DVDs, and another 1500 or so archive CDs (patch downloads, dev kits, work backups, etc.)
Having played CD monkey just reading a few of the audio CDs, I can't imagine trying to duplicate the whole set by hand.
What's needed is not a volume duplicator, but a robotic CD/DVD archive device with CD and DVD burners instead of readers. Load up the first half of the slots with disks to dup, and the other half with blanks. Then just run a script to dup disks and log any failed burns.
I do know that you can expect to pay a few grand for such a setup. I know one fellow who set up a drive tower with 6 CD readers just to load his audio collection into MP3's for his player.
While most people consider a couple hundred disks a "collection", there are plenty of us media junkies who've actually own thousands of legal media.
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:3, Insightful)
I really have no worries about trying to duplicate all those thousands of discs.
The prospect of backing up all of my data to a different medium is daunting at best. The option of having everything backed up to a RAID setup just has not been viable at all until recent times. Even now I'd need at least a couple TBs just to fit all of the lossless
All hail the mighty RAID5 bigot!!! (Score:2)
Why in the world would I use an entire DVD or tape media to back up a project that compresses to a couple hundred megs of .tgz?
One volume, one version. Cheap, handy, easy to dup when it's time to deliver to the customer.
I'll really be fascinated to see how well your RAID5 does with a site disaster like a fire or a flood.
I'm also curious how you use the RAID5 to deploy a hot backup server.
The most baffling thing is how you manage to store your RAID5 in an offsite facility for emergencies while cont
RAID 5 Not a backup (Score:2)
Re:RAID 5 Not a backup (Score:2)
You just don't get it -- RAID volumes are a fact of life for datacenters. It's not an "extra", it's not an "add on".
Hot swap RAID arrays allow the servers to keep running, even while they rebuild a failed drive. That is their purpose, and they serve it well.
Archive media is a different requirement entirely, and you seriously need to get over the mentality that RAID is the be-all end-all solution to your problems.
Lets say you offline the system and image those RAID arrays (bad idea in the first plac
Re:RAID 5 Not a backup (Score:2)
I dont sugest using raid drives for backup thats where tape fits in. (Optical if your needs are tiny and if your running more than one machine that dosent fit)
I'm talking about online real time block for block replication to a remote facility. If you have to use
Re:RAID 5 Not a backup (Score:2)
The block repliction you mention is handled by EMC and equivalent storage solutions from other vendors.
You know as well as I do that how far you go for disaster recovery depends on budget. The cheapest is offsite archiving, which loses some data and takes the longest to restore.
Next up is hot backup systems -- identically configured, they just need to have an image restored from the archives. Whether optical or tape depends on the size of the archives and the budget, but it's not a disk pack!
Hot fa
Re:All hail the mighty RAID5 bigot!!! (Score:2)
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:2)
I bought my first CD player about 17 years ago. I've bought a whopping average of 6 CD's per month over the years, including a huge number from fleamarket discounters and used retailers.
You'd be surprised how the collection builds up, even if you were only buying an album or two a week. Let's not forget this was pre dot-bomb, too. It only took about 15 minutes work to pay for a CD, so why not pick up one up on the way to work or over lunch if you got the urge?
Even today, a couple large lattes is a C
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:2)
You may be trying to be sarcastic, but frankly I do find that to be a lot. I buy maybe six CD's a year, if not less.
Books, well, that's a different story - but even there it's only a book every week or two.
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:2)
So you don't buy a lot of disks. The point is that having a large collection does not mean you are a pirate -- I know several people with collections as large or larger than mine, and it's all originals.
There are legitimite needs for handling large volumes of media, and the people who own large, legal collections are also the ones most likely to spend the money on toys like robotics.
We're also the most likely to insist on duping a DVD to RW if someone wants to borrow it. Do you think we risk the origi
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:2)
Terrabyte drives (Score:2)
Re:Sheer Volume (Score:3, Informative)
You mean something like this [sentex.net]?
Re:I find a CD writer helps (Score:2)
Or even give an error if it won't work?
With minimal effort?
How about a program to consolidate all my CD's onto DVDs? Such an obvious concept but once again left wanting
Online Storage (Score:3, Interesting)
I've decided that I'm going to keep all my data in online storage - the hard drives in my server. It's backed up (to an external USB2 hard drive) and I'm not going to lose it or find that I can't read it in five years.
Drive storage is cheap, simple and it works.
Re:Online Storage (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless you suffer a catastrophic hard drive failure.
Re:Online Storage (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was dealing with real data, it was backed up on tape. One tape with a week end full backup. One tape per day with the changed data. I made an effort to store the previous cycle of tapes off site. Offline storag
Need two external drives (Score:2)
You need to be careful with strategies like this. If the drive you're backing up doesn't fail catastrophically, likely the time you'll discover it's failing is when you're reading it. What do you read the whole drive? When you're backing it up. So you're halfway through doing a backup, ov
New Concept. (Score:5, Funny)
A printer.
Fermat Joke Rehash (Score:3, Funny)
:P
Store it on a hard drive! (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I think a set-top style box (though still a rather big one, at least now) could be built to do exactly what consumers need. And with increasing Internet bandwidths, it would be really cool if you could buy a movie with your remote control and have it delivered and stored on your system at home. If only the big few could get past their DRM-inducing fears and offer a reasonable way for consumers to do this. I believe that if this were offered with music, back when the whole Napster thing started, downloading stuff for free might have been a fringe weird geek sort of activity, because most reasonable people would have an easy way to get perfect recordings every time for a small payment. Hopefully the movie industry won't be so blind to this gaping wide business opportunity as to cause themselves the same problem, and eventually ruin technology for everyone by making it decide what we are and aren't allowed to do.
Depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many variables. Some can print the CD after burning it. (Print the CD, not apply a label which is a bad idea) Some are completely automated, just stick a stack in, hit run, and come back latter to a stack of burned CDs. Some are faster than others.
If your quantities are large enough you will find that pressing the disks just like the big music guys to is cheapest. Unless you are really really big this is an outsourced operation. Even if pressing doesn't make sense, it might make sense to outsource to someone who can do it for you.
For dirt cheap it is hard to beat turning an old PC with a burner into your station.
Start by defining your needs. Do you need labels? How many do you need, over what time period? How often are you likely to change what is on the CD? How cheap is labor in your area? How much human attention can you afford to give each burn? What will you be doing after the burn is done?
The answers will define what you need in a solution. They may even define the divide between burning in house and outsourcing.
Plextor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Plextor (Score:2)
I'd like to confirm this. I have a SCSI PlexWriter 12/10/32S, burnt 3000+ CDRs with it and it never failed me once. I just bought a Plextor DVD burner a few days ago, hoping it will be just as good. Don't know about their media though...
Forget CDrot -Flea bombs are CD killers (Score:5, Interesting)
My legs are crack for fleas.
Before calling an exterminator, I flea bombed the house with those flea/insect foggers. Several CDs that I left out were covered in a haze that made them unusable. The purchased audio CDs did not have the printed surface compromised but the silver computer CD-ROMs had the silver peel off.
I was able to use chrome polish (Welon) and a towel to restore the Music CDs so I could rip them but the Burned CDs were gone for good.
Be warned if you ever flea bomb your house and leave CDs out. And be careful with your choice of roommates.
Re:Forget CDrot -Flea bombs are CD killers (Score:2)
Re:A different kind of RAID problem (Score:2)
Re:A different kind of RAID problem (Score:4, Interesting)
People who regularly use insect sprays have the worst problems. The dried chemicals land on the fibers in the carpeting, and as they or their pets walk on the carpet their feet flick the toxic dust right back up into the air and into their lungs. Indoor air is now frequently more polluted than outdoor air.
Of course, you had a special case. You had a really, really stupid flea-infested roommate, and you used a flea-bomb one time to solve the problem. If it happens again, a good vacuuming immediately after the bombing and tossing out the bag when done would go a long way towards keeping your house healthy.
I like to manually re-copy just important stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, this may sound like a nuisance to do, but this scheme works for me.
-Mark
Did you even bother searching? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Did you even bother searching? (Score:2)
FWIW, I've ordered from TigerDirect on 6 or 8 occasions. Two full systems (including the one I'm typing on now, which arrived on Friday), and various upgrades e.g. RAM, routers, hard drives, etc. I haven't had a single problem. These days they're the first place I look if I need something computer-related, stuff is often cheaper elsewhere, but I wind up ordering from Tiger anyway because they've done me right in the past.
I have no affiliation with TigerDirect aside from
A good duplicator (Score:4, Funny)
The value of a CD Duplicator Unit (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a former DJ (using CDs), I never understood the beauty of units that you could just plug in, and copy cd to cd (ala CD Duplicator). The one caveat I list to this, is that they are overpriced, and often times run more than $300. But none the less, one day while DJing, I had a DJ from another club (same owners, different locations) come in, and show me some of his new CDs, and showed me what was really hot and so on. In an instant, he went to his car, grabed his duplicator, and some CD-Rs and burnt me copies, real quick like. It was beautiful to have an on-site on-location CD duplication. If I could have afforded the equipment, I would have bought one myself (even after seeing the somewhat rediculous prices of the equipment).
CD Duplicators can come in real handy, in situations you wouldn't believe!
Re:The value of a CD Duplicator Unit (Score:2)
I am the sound engineer for a university choir. Many days I announce that I'll be bringing my laptop to rehearsal, and will sit around before/after practice churning out copies of recordings people need.
Re:The value of a CD Duplicator Unit (Score:2)
While I am no computer novice, I will speak for the computer illiterates (sp?). Plugging a small, simple unit (smaller than 8"^3) and inserting one cd in the top try, and inserting a blank cd in the bottom tray, and pressing one of the two buttons located on the unit is purely simple. The ability to have the power of CD duplication in a unit that has no more than 4 buttons on it is quite nice when working with people that aren't famliar with computers. Also, as I refer back to my DJ job, I could actually
Piracy and Legitimacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Build a Terabyte Array! (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, it beats the pants off re-burning a huge stack of CD's every year, while praying that none of them turned out to have a lifetime of 364 days.
When you house burns down? (Score:2)
are on both the main data partition of our hard drive (which we access frequently) and an external firewire maxtor 160 gb, which I monthly or so copy over from the data partition.
in case of fire, my wife knows to 1-grab the kid, 2-grab the turtle 3- grab the maxtor, just pull it away from the desk
I've also told her to drop the turtle in the backyard before the firemen get to the house (not legal in my state)
who's gonna grab your ten drive bay box with
Re:When you house burns down? (Score:2)
For smaller amounts of data i've previously used an offsite rsync - you can get a reciprocal agreement going wiht a friend. But that doesn't cut it when you've got lots of huge images.
I've even had sin
Re:When you house burns down? (Score:2)
[PSA: Fire extinguishers start at $8. There's no good excuse for not having one or more in your house.]
Fire proof safe (Score:2)
replicator not needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:replicator not needed (Score:2)
Stuff like:
-How do humidity, temperature, and the presence of light affect deterioration rates?
-What does the failure rate vs. time look like? Mean-life isn't the only important statistic you need to know when designing a system.
-How exactly do disks fail? Does the whole disk go at once, or do you only lose a few bits here and there?
-How do the lifetimes of cdrs vs. "real" cd's differ?
-Is there any way to detect deterioration
Re:replicator not needed (Score:2)
* It's a pretty good guess that media vary a lot. So maybe after a five year study, you conclude that the longest-lived disks are a particular variant of Sony-sold discs. It's even odds that Sony isn't making that exact brand of media anymore, and hasn't for years.
* It's really not possible to do very good real-world testing -- you have to do accelerated aging or something, as a seventy-five year test not takes forever, but wouldn't be useful at the terminus. Accelerat
Re:replicator not needed (Score:2)
The only problem is that it requires an input of energy to do so. Someone's got to keep swapping out disks as they die. All storage solutions are like that--we've got no *single* durable storage object. Everything relies on redundancy and the replacement of bad media.
I suppose the most durable things used nowadays are vinyl records...
cheap, single duplicators are useful (Score:3, Informative)
but, even though i have cd and dvd burners in my computers, it is really quite useful to have a cheap, single disk duplicator handy. i have one i bought a few years back, at a target store (a discount store), no less.
something like this [runtechmedia.net]. that's ony $150, similar to what i paid. its very useful to not have to tie up my machine when i'm running some quick copies.
and, they are so dead-simple to use, your non-computer literate friends and family can do it themselves. for example, my mom can't use a computer to save her life, but she owns a single disk duplicator and can use it without my help.
It will be a never ending process (Score:2, Interesting)
I had plans awhile back.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, the idea was to use a 4'x8' table, a mini-ITX case with a bunch of external drives (some readers, some burners, depending on your needs) and an Automation Direct [automationdirect.com] PLC with serial communication capability to set up a "pick and place" type system that could easily be scripted. I lost my motivation before I had the $2k it probably would have taken me to do it, but the plan was pretty solid.
I think the motivation behind it was an interesting ice cream vending machine I saw, which was more or less a box containing a consumer freezer, an arm to open the freezer, and a vacuum hose that would go to the proper coordinates, drop down, suck up the treat, and drop it into a chute.
Just think of the possibilities though. Thousands of blanks, matched with thousands of sources. It'd make a nifty interface for archival and automated backups, etc.
Whoa... (Score:2, Informative)
Instead of running a complete backup every few years, why don't you do a rolling backup...say half a dozen copies a week, toss out the old copies and copy the next half a dozen from your collection the next week and so on. You'll still have a backup every few years, it's just that you're not doing the whole thing at once.
Don't commit to the format, commit to the content. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Don't commit to the format, commit to the conte (Score:2, Interesting)
That way you have a 'rotating' backup copy of your current items, as well as all your old backup copies.
RAID is a decent way to keep a systems FS up and running, but its no backup. I've had ATA cards and controlers take out whole HDD arrays
Re:Don't commit to the format, commit to the conte (Score:2)
LOL. So you're saying I'm lazy and lack judgment?
Seriously, there is no way to know what you REALLY want to keep. I organize my files by subject matter, not importance. Life is too short, and I'm too busy, to waste time and brain power on sorting out the important from the unimportant for backup.
Maybe I'm Weird (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, this helps a lot with the "Jeesh I'm a dumbass" rm -rf scenario. If I don't remember within two weeks (or two days or whatever is left on the cycle) that I did a rm -rf on something I shouldn't have, well... Of course, if I did the rm -rf a few seconds before the cron job kicks off... OK... screwed.
When my 120GB drive gets close to full, I'll purchase two 200GB or two 280GB (or whatever) HDs and continue on. This has worked very well for me.
Oh yeah... If you set the backup drive to spin down, you'll feel good. hdparm is cool.
I am weird I guess.
What Makes a Good CD/DVD Duplicator (Score:2)
Archival quality CD/DVD blanks (Score:4, Informative)
Mitsui claims that their new dye formulation for their DVD-R and DVD+R blanks has a >100 year life, but they don't offer any independent information to back that up.
What they really need... (Score:2)
My CD writing strategy and photo workflow (Score:3, Interesting)
Each night after I return from a photo expedition, I'll immediately copy the contents of the compact flash cards onto my Windows machine. They are stored there with a minimum of organization - just a directory named for the date. I then FTP them to the Linux machine, leaving a copy behind (plenty of disk space on the Windows machine).
On the Linux machine, on a 160GB disk that's used for almost nothing else, I'll sort the day's photos by location, putting them in subdirectories and adding a prefix to each filename based on the location (but leaving the image's original sequence number intact); this ensures that every file has a unique name even if the directories are munged together - something like "calvary/calvary7932.jpg"). I'll then group these directories together into lots of slightly under 650MB - depending on productivity, one day's work will fill either one or two CD's - write a text file as an index for each, and burn them.
My shell script wrapper for cdrecord will mount and list the contents of the disk after the burn is complete, allowing me to visually verify that it was successful. This has been useful, as on at least two occasions cdrecord recorded success but the disk would not mount.
At least five copies will be made of each, on different manufacturer's media, and stored in different locations. Currently, the media I'm using are Sony, Memorex, K-Hypermedia, Maxell Black, and Maxell Pro. These last are much more expensive but promise superior quality - time will tell if this is true.
The disks are stored in several locations - one copy of each into a sleeve in a binder, other copies storied upright in slim cases in various lightproof CD drawers in different rooms; a complete set is also at my parents' house in another city, and a friend in a nearby town will also be hosting a copy as soon as I drive out there with it.
I have a strict rule - no matter how tired I am, the Flash cards do not get erased until after I have written and verified at least one CD.
The images also remain on the 160GB drive in their original forms, and also in a parallel directory structure where everything has been resized (via shell scripts invoking gimp) to 600x400.
By next year I'll likely acquire a DVD-writer and make additional copies on DVD, again with the quintuple redundancy on different manufacturer's media. Five dollars isn't too much to spend to ensure the survival of a full day's work!
And a few years later, the process will be repeated with whatever replaces DVD's...
Re:My CD writing strategy and photo workflow (Score:2)
XEROX (Score:2)
-JT
Don't buy it! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Archive Hard Drives... (Score:2)