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Technology

Time to Purchase a DVD-R? 307

Posted by Cliff from the higher-density-removable-media dept.
Evanrude asks: "With DVD writers having significantly come down in price over the past year more companies are coming out with their version of the DVD-R. My company has a large file archive of documents and data that don't necessarily need to be stored on read/write media, but need to be kept online. I want to accomplish this with online DVD storage but is this the right way to go? Who has the best value with the most features of all the DVD-R's on the market? What are some things to look for and things to avoid when purchasing a DVD-R? Is it even time to purchase one, or should I wait another six months?"
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Time to Purchase a DVD-R? More

Time to Purchase a DVD-R?

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  • No (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft hasn't yet formalized their standard, yet, so thus you can not safely buy what you want.
  • I'd recommend MWave [mwave.com] -- They have really good hardware prices. I searched for DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM and found a good many products in there. Some for even under $300. Definitely worth a look. =)

  • Go for it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mfos.org ( 471768 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:35PM (#3750275)
    I would say to most people to wait, the standards haven't been entirely ironed out. But it seems that if you need large amounts of online storage and don't really need to worry about compatibility, I'd say go for it.

  • Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by duke_trinity ( 228663 )
    I bought a CDR right when it came out and after around 3 weeks of playing around I stopped using it. Unless you have a real need, a bunch of cash you're looking to burn (in which case I have a nice dot-com I'd like you to invest in), or you're going to be renting a bunch of movies from Blockbuster and ripping them, don't bother wasting the money. They may seem cheap now but they'll drop a lot after New Years.
    • I bought a CDR right when it came out and after around 3 weeks of playing around I stopped using it.

      EXACTLY my sentiment. I was an early adopter of both CD-ROM and CD-RW drives, but in both cases I didn't have a regular use for them until about two years later. And I'm one of the lucky ones, if you really think about it. If I had been an early adopter for Laser Disc, Divx, or any of the failed writable DVD standards, I would've wasted several hundred dollars on a stupid mistake.

  • Details... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rakslice ( 90330 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:37PM (#3750290) Homepage Journal
    You'd have to have a fairly large jukebox system before it would begin to be cost-competitive with hard drive storage, wouldn't you? How much data are we talking about here?

  • Too many types... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by UnAmericanPunk ( 310528 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:39PM (#3750304) Homepage
    I've been thinking of getting a dvd writer drive as well, but decided to wait. Mainly because there's too many differences in the writers, there's dvd-r, dvd+rw, dvd-rw and so on... I donno, maybe some of those are the same format. I read a couple articles about how certain types are better than others and how one was supposed to have support for just read only (currently it's rw), then backed out of that, and so on.
    So I think it'd be better to wait till they got a format that was agreed upon by all. Otherwise it reminds me too much of the k56flex vs. X2.
    Besides, the longer you wait, the more favorable the price will be...
    • Not to mention the blu-ray writers [eetimes.com]. While they aren't exactly compatible, 27 GB per side is a hell of a lot of p0rn! Think of all the multiple angles! And advertisements! But half-kidding aside, supposedly these could be in a store near me by fall 2003. How long would it really take before someone made a hybrid drive with a red and blue laser that could read both formats, and maybe write both too?
      • How long would it really take before someone made a hybrid drive with a red and blue laser that could read both formats, and maybe write both too?

        I'm thinking perhaps one purple laser...
      • Using CD's to back my HD is a pain, but its cheaper than tape. DVDRs are too slow still to use, and blanks are expensive. (For now..) Trying to backup a website that is 6gigs (db dumb/etc), and would fit on 1 blank media, would rock. With 80-120 gig HDs out there, 4 blanks to back up would be a god send.

        BTW, my Half-Life directory alone is 9 gigs, with mods, skins, level, movies, sounds. My entire Game directory fills a 80 gig PC. We need larger media NOW.
  • If it needs to be kept online, it'll probably be cheaper and certainly faster to just buy a couple of 100gb harddrives.

  • Hard Drives are best for online storage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:39PM (#3750308) Journal
    Why mess with DVD-Anything for online storage?

    I just picked up a few 120GB disks for $110/each. That will hold a lot of DVD's worth of Data. If the data needs to be kept on-line, HD's are much faster than any DVD drive. You'll also need another DVD drive for each 5-10GB of data, if using DVD's. So, the HD solution is much cheaper too.

    DVD's are fine for backing up that data, but for real-time access, they are not ideal.
    • For data that has to be online but is not accessed by anyone and needs to be read only, a dvd drive *is* the cheaper solution. The cost of a 200 disc dual drive firewire dvd changer sits around $1500 (and they could be cheaper, this was the first price I found [macworld.com] . . I don't remember the exact size of a dvd, but its somewhere around 4gig. 4*200=800. To get 800 gig out of hard drives, you'd need at least 6 160gig eide drives which would cost you about $225 each. This is $1300, and you'd have to get one of those 3 channel eide raid controllers . ..thats another 100 bucks. So, I either have fast access for lots of files I don't need fast access for, or for the same price I get something that I can make very cheap duplicates of to keep off site.
      • For data that has to be online but is not accessed by anyone

        I'm not sure what this means.. If noone needs to access it, it doesn't need to be online.

        4*200=800. To get 800 gig out of hard drives, you'd need at least 6 160gig

        Hmm.. 6 * 160 = 960; 5 * 160 = 800;
        Or, 7 * 120GB = 840GB; $770.

        So, I either have fast access for lots of files I don't need fast access for

        Why do you assume that there is no need for fast access? Even if fast access is not an issue, how about concurrent access.. if a few people in the office need access to data on DVD's, that jukebox will be doing some major thrashing.

        Also, you don't account for the cost of the DVD Media, or the time required to burn hundreds of DVD's.

    • Re:Hard Drives are best for online storage (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @06:37PM (#3750504)
      You'll also need another DVD drive for each 5-10GB of data, if using DVD's

      That's silly. A jukebox only requires one DVD drive for X number of DVDs, depending on your requirements X could be as large as 400 - that's the size of the largest consumer DVD *movie* jukebox - a Kenwood something or another.

      As for data jukeboxes, take a look at the Powerfile C200 Studio [dvdjukebox.com] which is $1000 MSRP (not street) for 200 DVDs. With blank DVDs runing about $1.25 in quantities of 100 that puts you at no more than $1250 for 940GB of online data and probably closer to $1K if you buy from a discount hardware place.

      The equivalent space in hard disks is going to run you more than that - according to pricewatch, the cheapest 120GB is $136 for the IBM models. Ignoring the reliability questions regarding recent IBM hard disks, that puts you at about $1100 just for the drives alone, you are looking at another $500 or so for an IDE controller that will handle 8 drives (3ware escalade 7850) plus you then need some sort of case to hold the drives and the computer in one since IDE cables aren't suppossed to get much longer than 18".

      So, at least $1700 for an equivalent disk-based system, without redundancy. The DVD approach will give you a full mirror in offline storage for another $250 but to put redundancy into the hard disk system you are going to need either raid-5 or mirroring - both of which will significantly push up the price because 8 drives is the limit for a 3ware controller so you could go with larger disks (160GB) but they are about 180% the price of the 120GB drives or you could go to two more controllers controller and maybe five 120GB drives per controller which is going to be another $500 for the 2nd controller and another $270 for the extra drives pushing the total up to $2500 or so for the cheapest raid-5 system.

      Sure, online storage of a disk array is going to be a whole lot faster than near-line storage of a DVD jukebox, but the guy who asked the original question only needs near-line speeds and the price with DVDs is a about half that for sizes around 1TB.
      • $500 US for 8 drives worth of IDE controller capacity? That seems pretty high; a pair of Promise UDMA133 controllers (2 ch = 4 drive ea.) would set me back 150$ US total at the local corporate-office mart. And consider also that motherboards typically have 4-6 drives of capacity to start with, which should take care of other IDE peripherals and then some; you may not need more than one additional controller.

        Keep in mind that you need a computer system to connect the storage to either way; but interfacing would be really affordable with the model of jukebox you suggest, since it uses firewire (IEEE-1394). (I had sort of assumed that any high capacity changers would use FC or SCSI, requiring a significant chunk of cash for the interface, but apparently they don't.)

        Also, any decent full tower case should be able to handle 8 3+1/2" standard height drives. (The fact that the majority of the world banishes themselves to bad mid or mini tower cases doesn't mean that everyone has to). My cheap-assed A/Open ATX full tower has 5 internal 3+1/2" bays (3 front, 2 rear), so I'd have to convert 3 of the 5+1/4" bays to hold the remaining hds, but there would still be 2 5+1/4"s and a 3+1/2" external left. Yes, this is quite a stretch, because my case isn't suited for the crapload of cooling you would need for all of those drives. Also the power supply would need to be fairly high capacity, as it might be difficult to stagger the drive spinups to avoid power problems without using SCSI. But it still shouldn't require especially rare/expensive casing, PS, or ATA controllerage.

        I don't see why you're bringing RAID (especially hardware RAID -- very expensive and unnecessary when high throughput isn't crucial) into the equation. The jukebox wouldn't do mirrored reading in the RAID sense, because it only reads one disc at a time. And, although especially capabale bundled media jukebox software may prove me wrong, I doubt that it could automatically switch to an online backup disc when encountering a read error. So you would probably just keep the mirror set offline on the shelf to reclaim the jukebox capacity. The equivalent HD solution would have backup tapes on the shelf too. (the Jukebox may have less repair downtime, more than software RAID's none, but more cost competitive also.)

        more later...

        • If you are going to do raid-5 then you almost surely don't want to do it in software, that's why you need a relatively expensive controller. Furthermore, you really do need a system with some sort of redundancy to put the two options on par for availability because a read-only jukebox of optical media is going to have a much smaller chance of irreparable data-loss than an array of disks.
      • Depending on the application, jukeboxes can cause unacceptable latency. If the data is accessed via a web page, you'll lose a lot of customers who won't wait 30+ seconds for the page to start loading. And if a lot of people are using the data (200 disks & 1 drive), the delays will make the system completely unusable.

  • The time is right? No way. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Enonu ( 129798 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:41PM (#3750313)
    I've been told the only decent DVD-R drive out there is the Pioneer DVR-A04. One decent drive doesn't inspire me to go out and buy a DVD-R drive just yet. Anybody else know of a better DVD burner?
    • With the Pioneer A03 and A04, you can --
      (1) make DVD's that play on your settop box
      (2) burn 4450 megs of file onto a platter.

      What more do you need? I love my A03.

      • Re: Pioneer DVD drives (Score:3, Informative)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )
        Ehh... about choice number 1 in your list; only if you're REAL lucky.

        I originally had a Phillips DVD+RW drive, and quickly learned it wasn't compatible with anything but itself, and some of the DVD-ROM drives in computers out there. I returned it promptly.

        Then, I read all the hype about the Pioneer A03 (and now A04) being the only sensible choice, since the write-once DVD-R media it burns is much more compatible with the average set-top DVD player.

        I bought my A03, and while the drive seems to be great quality -- I haven't had any luck making a DVD movie that plays on anything other than a computer's DVD-ROM drive.

        My Sony Playstation 2 makes a pretty valiant effort to play the DVD-R movies - but they seem to start getting read errors as you near the end of the disc. This is really frustrating when you're watching a 90 min. long or so movie, and right when it hits the action-packed climax - it stutters and quits playing with an "invalid media" message on the screen!

        I also own a Samsung set-top DVD player (the model 812). It refuses to play anything on DVD-R discs I create. It seems to read the disc and recognize it as valid - but then it typically gets errors trying to bring up the initial menu screens. If you ignore that and press PLAY, it starts playing but skips large portions of the movie, freezes occasionally, and the sound stutters.

        In my experience so far, the people tabulating lists of which DVD players are "compatible" are simply dropping DVD-R discs in the devices and seeing if it recognizes them as a movie. That's only the first part of the battle, folks. If it can't play the entire movie error-free, what's the use?

      • Re:The time is right? No way. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I have to say that I haven't ran into the compatibility problems with my Pioneer A04. To be honest, it has worked perfectly to play movies on *every* set top DVD player I have tried so far (but in fairness, I have tried less than 15 players total). Maybe the errors you are running into have something to do with the software being used (just a guess). I use a Mac with iMovie and iDVD.

        -Bill

  • DVD+RW (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xoro ( 201854 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:42PM (#3750315)

    I've just been thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, there are a couple of competing standards out there now: DVD-RAM, DVD-RW and DVD+RW. The first, DVD-RAM, seems to have no future that I can see, and is apparantly a superclass for several different standards. Apple's DVD writers are the second kind and probably have the largest installed base. But it looks like the big players are going for the third ("+"). In addition, one of the -RW format's big supporters was Compaq and HP supports +RW. I'm assuming that Compaq will switch camps, leaving Apple more or less isolated. That has me leaning toward +RW.

    One thing to watch out for -- the "first generation" of +RW drives can't handle write-once media. They're RW only, and the disks are more expensive. HP, for one, is releasing a second-generation writer (maybe called the 200i?) this month, that can do the write-once archival thing.

    If I really needed it now, I'd go for a newer +RW format. But it would probably be less risky to wait 6-12 months to see how things shake out.

    • Re:DVD+RW (Score:4, Insightful)

      by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @06:55PM (#3750575)
      DVD+RW is technically not even a DVD format. Technically, it can't even be called "DVD". It can't even use the familiar DVD logo. Only formats approved by DVD Forum (DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW) can technically use the name DVD and the DVD logo. DVD+RW is more appropriately referred to as "the +RW format". It's bad enough they're confusing the marketplace by having two formats with the same exact name with only a non-alphanumeric character being different between the two.

      All that said, yes, all the big Wintel companies will probably successfully force DVD+RW on the marketplace, and eventually win out. You're sold yourself: referring to +RW as "3rd generation" (it's not) and "newer" (which it is, but you're using it to imply "better" or "more mature", which it's not). +RW is a COMPETITOR to DVD-RW, not a generation ahead of it. DVD-RW is the accepted DVD Forum standard, but apparently the Wintel crowd just couldn't stand Apple being first[1] to the table with a new technology again.

      [1] As in, the first big player to mainstream it, akin to 802.11 with AirPort.
      • My, don't you sound bitter. What is it with you & this weird agenda? Is it all because Apple promoted DVD-R, and somehow you associate DVD+R with the Wintel crowd, which is therefore the Enemy? Sigh.

        The DVD Forum backs the DVD-R format, the DVD Alliance backs the DVD+R format, and consumers couldn't give a damn about either of them, except apparently you. The DVD logo is only usable by DVD Forum-approved products, the DVD+RW logo is only usable by DVD Alliance-approced products, and again you dredge up another meaningless legal distinction.

        But where you get the idea that DVD+RW products "technically" aren't DVDs and can't even be called DVDs, I still don't know. The letters "DVD" are not a trademark, so it's not even a legal issue. Technically, since DVD+R discs more closely resemble [dvdplusrw.org] DVD Video discs due to how they're written, that makes them more a DVD that DVD-R, but again - who cares. They're both equally compatible with DVD Video players & DVD ROM drives, even with each other - they both read each other's discs.

        Since "better" is a very subjective term, it's pointless arguing over that. One could say that DVD+R/RW writers are faster [dvdplusrw.org] & more [dvdplusrw.org] flexible [dvdplusrw.org] than even the 2nd gen of DVD-R/RW writers, but then DVD-R/RW writers & media are still a little cheaper, so maybe that's "better" for some. Or maybe just that Apple is backing DVD-R (since it was available first) and not DVD+R, is enough for you.

        In any case, get over it. Both standards have their advantages, and since each will read the other's discs, the only real concern consumers need have is where to get the appropriate media. There's no need for such blatent FUD, even here on /.

        • Re:DVD+RW (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jafuser ( 112236 )
          That's it. Forget this... I'm not going to bother with any (re)writable DVD[+-]* formats. I'm going to just stick with CD-R until I can find either the 27G capacity blue-laser discs announced recently here [slashdot.org], or the flourescent multilayer discs [c-3d.net] which have been (slowly) coming along and should be due any time now, or something else...
    • I agree. DVD+RW may not use the DVD standard, but it's being supported by a whole slew [dvdrw.com] of big manufacturers. Since you're using it for special purpose data storage, maximum compatibility isn't important.

      Many modern DVD players already support [vcdhelp.com] DVD+RW, and I'm sure support will only grow.

  • Wait a little longer. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mesozoic ( 134277 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:42PM (#3750316)
    DVD burners will go the same way as CD burners. There may be a bit more competition over formats (since it's a lot more obvious how much of a cash cow DVD burning is going to be for corporations), but eventually they will become fairly inexpensive. Give it at least six more months, if not a year or so, before you consider making DVD burners part of your company's storage strategy.

  • Use hard drives... (Score:4, Informative)

    by bob1000 ( 174146 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:42PM (#3750317) Homepage
    The cheapest 4.7G dvd drive from pricewatch [pricewatch.com] is $36 which is $7.66/gig. A 60 gig hard drive is only $69 which works out to be $1.15/gig. There just isn't any reason to use DVD for online storage when hard drive space is so cheap. The software raid [tldp.org] driver in linux makes these large arrays easy with a trivial amount of hardware behind it.

    • Re:Use hard drives... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      I agree about using hard disks for the most part, but there are DVD changers that hold several hundred disks, did you really think he was going to buy hundreds of 5 1/4 inch DVD drives, one per disk?

  • DVD? Why? (Score:2, Informative)

    by mrmag00 ( 200868 )
    Why would you ever bother putting a large amount of data on DVD? Espically when it needs to be accessable from the internet. You are going to end up spending a lot of money on the DVD media ($20 a pop i believe?) and then you need to buy an equal number of dvd drives to be able to access all the data. You will likely need more then one writer to be efficient with the entire process, too.

    A 80gb IDE drive costs less then $100, and holds more then 5 DVDs. If you need speed, go SCSI, it'll end up costing as much as the opticial solution and be easier to manage. But really, optical media has been obsoleted by todays harddrive sizes. If it needs to be portable, then there might be a reason to go for it, but even then you should look at removable harddrives.

  • You said it yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @05:47PM (#3750334) Homepage Journal
    "...more companies are coming out with their version of the DVD-R."

    As someone once said, that's the great thing about standards, there are so many of them. You might want to wait and let the dust settle rather than risk a heavy investment in a possible orphan format. Already HP and a couple of other makers are weasling on drives that were supposed to be software upgradeable to record more than one DVD-R or RW format, but it turns out it's not going to be that simple and the hardware will have to be replaced.

    • Which standard wins is largely going to be a question of what burners end up being used for. DVD-R has the benefit of the widest compatability with consumer DVD players, so if all you're interested in is dumping your home movies to DVD rather than VHS, that seems the best bet.
    • then it doesn't really matter which DVD-R you buy. I predict that within another generation or two of drives, the price should be so cheap that the only way manufacturers will be able to differentiate their drives from the rest of the pack will be to add in compatibility for the other DVD-R formats.

      After all, look at 56k modems... two incompatible standards when they first came out, but now every 56k modem supports 56k-Flex and X2. Similar situation with CD-RW drives; the format is incompatible with CD-R, but manufacturers quickly saw the importance of selling burners that support both formats.

      It'll happen, I guarantee it.
  • Personally, I wouldn't go this route when selecting a large storage format for a business unless it's know that only one person would be accessing this information all at once. I would expect the performance to horrid when multiple people try to access different information from the same DVD. I'd much rather use a large scsi raid array for storing this type of information.
  • I have had problems with corrupted media. Must have been BIT ROT. I wouldnt say DVDRs are a stable storage medium yet. If you want to store non-critical data, maybe they are ok, but every once in a while expect to have a disk go bad and be unreadable for no reason. At least I do any way. Maybe this was a while ago and they have become more reliable by now.....

  • DRM and DVD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jaaron ( 551839 )
    When I saw the title I thought this would be about whether or not to get a DVD-R now before companies standardize on Digital Rights Technology that could effectively cripple the device in the future. In fact, that would be the only reason that I would consider getting a DVD-R (or +R or +RW or whatever other format and crazy acronym they come up with).

  • Really. The cost per gig on an extra hard drive is no longer prohibitive to just use one to back up your data, then store it in a safe location. It's faster in transfer than a CD, and depending on setup, could work very well with a central server in your network used to back up files. There are various caddy's available from various companies, so the process would be to plug in, and synch up with the server.

    Just one example of such a product [devdepot.com]

    If I needed to set up a comprehensive backup, I'd definetly choose a secure central server for important data with a nice RAID setup, and have a set of external HD's synched up daily and stored offsite.

    The major disadvantages to CDr/DVDr's would be vulnerability to magnetic damage, and lack of a true history due to the write-once nature of CDr/DVDr's. You'd still want a CDr drive also, for things like mailing data to people, and perhaps for special backup situations with limited data. I still see no major role for a DVDr drive though.

    Ryan Fenton
    • Magnetic damage to CD's DVD's?? Hunh?? No, you HD is vulnerable to Magnetic damage because it is a magnetic storage medium.

      The material that "holds" the data in most audio CD's is usually aluminum, and the way that the data is stored is through "pits" or tiny holes in the media. Other types of CD's use dye layers to
      "expose" these pits, and still others use gold and other substrates to hold the data. As such, most CD's are basically immune to magnetic fields unless they are *extremely* powerful. There are
      other types of CD's that do use magnetics (the Magneto-Optical CD for one) that could theoretically be affected, but it would need a
      far higher strength magnetic field for a long period of time than you would probably have. It is improbable that you would come into
      contact with these media in a music library (unless perhaps they are CD master pressings which are used to actually make the CD's at the
      factory).

      I have no Idea what you think a "True History" wold be on a non write once media type. Do you mean like a Journal in a File System?? Not needed due to the unchanging nature of the write once media. History as far as backups?? Well, write once means it can't be overwritten, so properly stored it could concievably hold the history of a file system much better than a Tape backup that gets overwritten every third week.

      DVDr is great for archives that do not need to be accessed often, and are more convenient that using 7 CD's for the same purpose. Law and Real Estate firms can use them for storing scanned contracts, Graphic Artists can use them for storing large layouts, or an entire portfolio.

      Goes to prove, don't believe everything you read on Slashdot.

      Hammy

      • I meant the only disadvantage [compared] to CD/DVD's in response to the first complaint, not that CD's were at all vulnerable to magnetics as HD's are.

        The "true history" would mean that you get a real snapshot of what was on the drive at that time, each day's image kept on record. With source control, for instance, older versions may even be removed or altered. Having distant history kept on CD would also prevent damage from having files deleted long ago that weren't discovered until much later, and were outside source control. The problem with a rotation of HD's would be that you lose this long-term history.

        :^)

        Ryan Fenton

  • DVD still not up to Par (Score:5, Informative)

    by HamNRye ( 20218 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @06:02PM (#3750394) Homepage
    I work for a newspaper where we have just completed a cost comparison for CD based systems to DVD based systems. We have a large Image archive that was outgrowing our second 100 CD jukebox. Our quandry, should the new Jukebox be DVD or CD based.

    4.1GB per disc (with double sided support not looking promising...) at 100 DVDs = 411 GB storage
    100 CDs = 65GB storage. (roughly)

    Our first look was at the costs associated. The Price difference between a DVD Jukebox and a CD jukebox was not insignificant, but was not a breaker. The writers have come down in price, and the Media is expensive, but not prohibitively so. So, from a simple cost perspective, the system was feasable.

    However, when working with provided demo models, we found a 25% CHANCE OF BURNING A COASTER, with the write times being ridiculously slow. We then recalculated for the extra media expense and extended staffing. (The admin would need to keep a longer watch less often, but the CDs could be burned during the BU guys shift, now they will go past.)

    With the addition of two hours employee time and planning for the purchase of 10% more media, the costs of DVD were slightly more. Then the vendor called, the DVD jukebox requires new switching Software that runs some $5,000.00.

    So, we looked for used CD jukeboxes, found one for almost 1/2 the price of the hardware alone, and it still works with our old software.

    Now, we did all of these calculations based on price per MB, and condidering the the DVD system has 7x the storage space, that also means it is 7x the cost. I feel confident that when we revisit this upgrade in 2 years the prices will be dramatically lower and the quality will be better. I still think you can't beat a $50 CDR and 0.20 media costs.

    Unless you work for a company that enjoys having the latest and greatest (OOOH! I can access the SAN from my PocketPC with wireless.) I think you'd be better off sticking with the tried and true methods, wait for the writing SW to get more stable and wait for the standards to crystalize.

    01 - That's my two bits
    01110110 - That's the Byte I took out of "Crime"
    Hammy
    • Honestly, my first thought when I read your post: why don't you guys just buy a few HDs? I've built 2/3 of a TB of RAID5 storage for $1500US. Granted you'll probably want to spend around $5000US and get a real solution (not my ghetto setup) that will probably give you a full TB of storage for not a whole lot more than one of those 65GB 100 CD changers.

      • Re:DVD still not up to Par (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spiral ( 42436 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @08:09PM (#3750811)
        > why don't you guys just buy a few HDs?

        Great idea. All they'd need then is some sort of terabyte backup system. Do you recommend CDs, DVDs or tape?

        This keeps coming up again and again. No matter how cheap HDs get, they just don't have the durability, portability, or lifetime of "real" offline storage. Sadly, backup technology just isn't keeping up with HD capacities. When >1GB drives first came out, you could get 20GB tapes. Now that we've got 100GB drives, the world needs a TB archive media.
        • It is RAID5, so a catastrophic loss of data would only occur if several disks failed before they could be replaced. Granted, RAID5 protects against harddrive failure but it's not a backup- but considering it should cover natural HD death, I would say that should be sufficient.

          As for the backup, well, the original CDs that were loaded onto the jukebox can act as the backup of music data, no?

          • Yes, RAID 5 is a good way to keep your data safer than a simple disk array but it really isn't a good backup medium.
            • If the machine that houses the RAID dies, can you put it in another machine and get the data back easily? If it is a good RAID then it probably has a dedicated controller, so you should have an extra on hand.
            • If the RAID machine gets burnt up in a fire, how will you get your data back? You don't seem to have off-premises storage.
            • Do you have the RAID set up to do incremental, differential and full backups of your data? Can you get back the data from yesterday, last week and last month?
            • If someone maliciously screws with your system then it seems that all the data can be wiped out immediately. This can't happen if the storage media isn't physically in the machine--or on the premises.
        • Huh? Just buy twice the # of hard drives & use them for backup. Since they're only being used for backup and otherwise just sitting there (spin them down when idle), their lifetime is more or less infinite. Also, backup then happens in a fraction of the time of tape or DVD.

          Backup with tape made sense when a tape cartridge was larger than a typical hard drive, and also cheaper than a typical hard drive, not to mention that hard drives used to be extremely expensive as compared to the present day.

          If you want portability, there are quite a few ways to drag a hard drive around and hot swap it wherever you might need it.

          And "real" offline storage? WTF do you mean by that? I've seen far more tapes die than HD's. I still have two hard drives over 15 years old and they still work. The typical life of magnetic tape is 10 years. I've had plenty of CDs die too.

          Maybe you mean punchcards? Those suckers last forever so long as the overhead plumbing holds up! Maybe I should hook the old card reader back up? I'm sure I saw it around here somewhere just the other day...
  • I'm waiting for MS to get the standard set (finally) in longhorn :D

  • DVD Jukeboxes (Score:5, Informative)

    by handsomepete ( 561396 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @06:14PM (#3750428) Journal
    The company I work for currently uses Plasmon [plasmon.com] jukeboxes for DVD media coupled with Kofax's [kofax.com] Ascent products. We store document images on them and you would be surprised how quickly they go. It's certainly not the end all of storage solutions. After messing with these things for over a year, I'd say they're more trouble than they're worth. Explore other routes unless this is for extremely limited access. Although the jukeboxes can be occasionally found for cheap on E-bay, you still might be better off running good 'ol fashioned hard disks.

    If you do go the DVD route, watch out for:

    Running out of discs (these things go faster than you think)

    Jammed discs

    Depending on the client software, inane Windows error messages - quite a few programs don't know how to handle waiting for a disk to move into an active drive.

    ...and if you don't use Windows, well... lucky you. Just my experiences - everyone else's will undoubtedly vary.

  • "Should I by a piece of computer equipment now or wait another 6 months?"

    Honestly know:
    What kind of answer do you expect on a question like that? In other words: A friend of mine has a saying: "The sky is blue, computers get cheaper." If a DVD-R is worth the money for you now, you need it and can afford it - then buy it. If not, don't. It's that simple.

  • I've had a DVD-R for nearly six months and after having used it, I think it's a technology that's best suited for a few things (IMO, of course):

    1. Burning home video to DVD - this one's pretty obvious, given the Apple commercials earlier and the increasing market penetration of DVD players.
    2. Backing up large amounts of data for archival purposes - This is a pretty common use -- archiving tons of Quark/Photoshop/etc documents that take up tons of space but don't need to be instantly retrieved.
    3. Backing up MP3s - Since I have a large collection, this is the easiest way to prevent the nightmare scenario of having to re-rip a couple hundred CDs.

    If I were in your situation, I'd go for a large drive -- 120GB drives are around $200, last I checked, which is a steal. Plus it's faster and generally less hassle. DVD blanks are at a minimum $5, but usually more expensive (RWs definitely are, I think Rs are around $5)

    Alternatively, if you're looking for portable but large-volume storage, I'd definitely consider a firewire drive. (and depending on your needs, this is an excellent opportunity to justify the iPod purchase... ;) )

    Recordable DVDs seem to be most convenient as a large-scale archiving medium; smaller stuff can go by the 'net or CD-R.

  • Just buy more hard drives. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dr. Zowie ( 109983 ) <slashdot@defores t . org> on Saturday June 22, 2002 @06:55PM (#3750577)
    At about $1.20/GB, hard drives are about the same price as CD media and about five times less expensive than DVD media. You can buy an NFS/SMB networked appliance complete with 1TB of disks for around $2,000 -- the price of a high end tape drive and certainly less than a DVD jukebox. And you get the terabyte of storage for free. And you can access it REALLY FAST because it's a hard drive array.

    I just finished costing out a 3-petabyte database for a NASA project, and by far the cheapest way to back up data is to write them to hard drives, unplug the hard drives, and stick them in the closet. It's not an archival solution but archival media cost so much more and are so small compared to hard drives, it's ridiculous. For archival stuff we're holding out to see whether Blu-Ray takes off.

  • I went for DVD+RW (Score:5, Informative)

    by e40 ( 448424 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:04PM (#3750603) Journal

    I had to take the plunge due to my having many GB's of digicam generated photos. My DLT backups were just using too many tapes.

    Some random thoughts:

    The second generation DVD+RW drives are just coming out. The only one availasble is the HP 200i. Here's [dvdplusrw.org] an overview of the 2nd gen drives, and here's [dvdplusrw.org] an overview of the 1st gen drives.

    The 2nd generation drives support DVD+R, many of the 1st do not.

    TheNerds.net [thenerds.net] have the best media prices. I looked a lot and could find no better.

    The HP drive, which I bought, comes with "drive letter access" software. Basically, a packet writer so you can just use the Windows explorer (yes, where I use the drive) to drag and drop files onto it. I have the suspicion that my McAfee VirusScan 4.5.1 stopped working when I installed the HP software. McAfee has not been able to figure out why their software is not working (service error 5011, which is a timeout of some sort).

    I've been trying to author some DVD's, and I had good luck playing my DVD+RW's in my DVD player. I used a trial of Uleads DVD Workshop.

    I held off until the 2nd gen drives were available, and was forced to purchase the HP because it's the only one out. I would have prefered the Philips DVDRW228 over the HP, but no one has the Philips drive in stock, that I could find.

    So far, I'm happy, and I'm hoping HP will update their drivers and VirusScan will start working again.

  • Two tangents that worry me (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chuu ( 307073 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:13PM (#3750628)
    I also have been looking hard at DVD-R/+R as a backup solution, but two things worry me greatly.

    #1. I want to be able to access this material 5-10 years from now. With CD-R's, if you want to protect your data we now know that you are best off with Tayio Yuden or Kodak. With DVD mediums though . . . no one has any clue what the real life on these discs are, especially since most are apparently using a different dye then CD-R's do (if you've never seen a DVD-R, on most the bottom is a light blood red).

    #2. Cost. CD-R's are pretty much the cheapest backup medium now. DVD-R's are still fairly expensive, but the third option is what intrigues me. IDE drives are easily available now for $1/gig. A hot swappable IDE drive bay from Vantec runs you about $40 retail. I have seriously considered just buying IDE drives for backup, and using the hot swappable bay to change them. Much easier, much faster. What makes me nervous about this is the 'all your eggs in one basket' problem, but from my experience with hard drives, if they survive the initial part of their 'bathtub' failure cure, they are good for years.
    • With CD-Rs, if you want to protect your data we now know that you are best off with Tayio Yuden or Kodak.

      Unfortunately, Kodak is getting out of the CD-R business. Which is a damn shame - if anyone knows about archival properties of dyes and plastics, it's them, as they've been doing similar stuff for over a hundred years.

      Right now if you go to shop@kodak on Kodak's home page [kodak.com] you can get some "closeout" deals on their remaining stock. Most of the online wholesalers have already run out of existing stock.

      I think Mitsui is planning to remain in the high-quality CD-R media business for a little while longer.

  • Double bladed lightsaber (Score:3, Funny)

    by Phattypants ( 469233 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:18PM (#3750643) Journal
    DVD-R is neat. You probably want it. DVD technology is so cheap and getting cheaper. How do you justify buying one? That's hard because most IT employers don't seem to be hiring people in IT any more. Many people are wasting their time and money on higher IT education when a stable position will not be forthcoming. Therefore how do you pay for such a thing when the most important thing to do is find a job, any job, to keep a roof over your head, and to feed your family. Needless to mention the never ending debt that piles up when you are stuck looking for gainful employment and your nest egg turns out to be as fragile as an easter egg.

    Maybe the next paycheck will purchase this DVD-R technology, but probably not because of the mortgage payments or the fact that you can easily spend and equal amount of money on gas for six months. Better win the lottery or cross your fingers if you want that new toy movie recorder.

    Don't worry, this doesn't really apply to you at all! You probably got a job and can pay your bills. Cherrish what you have because it has been taken from so many.

    Where is the pot of gold? The ninjas of plutocracy have stolen it away during the night and the daimyo is pleased.

    Peace to all.
    • Of course we all know that a real geek faced with the situation of buying a New DVD-r drive, or buying groceries, would of course opt for the DVD-r drive, Afterall, once you have the DVD-r you can stand outside the blockbuster with a 'will burn DVDs for food' ;)
  • This discussion, though productive, is kind of going down the wrong track. It seems to boil everything down to the question of storage media, and that's just a minor point.

    If you have this big archive you need to keep online, "Should I use DVD-R?" is the wrong question. DVD-R is just a kind of media, and there are many choices here. The basic issue is "What kind of application is this, and what is there to support it?"

    The answer to that is that is that this is a Hierarchical Storage Management [techtarget.com] application. I won't pretend to be an expert on HSM, but there's a lot of different HSM technology. The choice of media here (and there are lots of alternatives to DVD-R and CD-R) is probably less important than jukeboxes or other robot hardware you have to buy to manage them, and the software you have to buy to manage to hardware.

  • Near-line vs. backups vs. archival... (Score:5, Informative)

    by trims ( 10010 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:32PM (#3750697) Homepage

    There are really three seperate categories you get into once you're considering moving data from primary storage. You seem to be asking about the first, but I'll cover all three for completeness.

    Near-line (a.k.a secondary storage)

    Primary storage almost always consists of the fastest hard drives directly attached to your data source (file server, SAN, workstation, whatever). Historically, near-line has been some medium where the end-user could access the data required in the same manner as primary storage, but at a slower rate. The old solution used to be either a different server using older/slower disks, or an RW optical jukebox. Near-line storage almost always is very high read-usage, but the occasional write isn't unlikely, so you generally want a media that can support writes.

    Backups (a.k.a. save-your-ass storage)

    Backups are a place to temporarily save data in case of an emergency. The criteria generally don't include re-writability, but do concern with ease-of-access in the case of a recovery. In addition, Backups expire - after a certain period of time, the data is no longer available. Tape has been the choice for this for a long time, with it's high storage capacity and low cost. Higher-end solutions have been the "on-line snapshot" capabilities of SAN and NAS devices (essentially to make a static mirror of data on extra storage space). CD-R and even floppies have been popular for the low-end. Whatever the choice is, the main concern is reliability, and the ability to backup the data within a set time window.

    Archival (a.k.a save it for the history books)

    This is a big one, and one frequently misunderstood. The two major criteria for Archival purposes are Survivability, and Retrievability. That is, the solution has to make sure it does NOT degrade with time (i.e. it doesn't introduce errors after sitting on the shelf for 20 years) and that you will realistically have a method to retrieve the data over it's lifetime (e.g. are they still going to have devices that can read your data media in 30 years?) Magnetic tape is a BAD THING for Archival purposes, despite its common usage. It fails on both tests. Mastered CDs (NOT CD-R) and Optical Disks are generally the preferred method here.

    In the modern world, I would recommend a backup server using RAIDed IDE drives for Near-line these days. The relative cheapness of IDE drives, combined with the newer IDE RAID cards provides an unbeatable cost/storage/reliability ratio (far superior to CD, DVD, Tape, or Optical Disk), and it's by far the easiest to maintain and use, since it's simply another fileserver. Don't scrimp, however. A good one of these should probably run $3-$4k with 8-10 100GB drives, redundant power supply, and hardware RAID.

    Backups are a bit more complex, and the variables make a one-size-fits-all recommendation unrealistic. And you didn't ask for that anyway, so I'm not going to make one. :-)

    Archival really means you want to keep (or are required to keep) the data around, but don't need access to it much. If you don't intend to keep the data for more than 15-20 years, you can probably get away with CD-R. Otherwise, look into having your data pressed onto CD (i.e. real mastered CDs). They last a good 100 years or so, and it's relatively cheap. In either case, you want multiple copies of each disc, and the good-old CD-jukebox is your friend.

    As you imply (and other posters have noted), DVD-R/RAM/RW/+RW isn't quite stabilized yet. Despite their larger capacity, I wouldn't change the above recommendations, other than replacing CDs with DVD when it settles down - DVD mastering isn't anywhere as cheap as CD mastering is (and if you do master DVDs, make sure that you specify UNENCRYPTED DVD so you don't get CSS put on accidentally).

    As a side note: there's a whole industry built around Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) which deals with automatically moving data between the various storage levels, and recovering it as need be. It's a bit beyond what you describe you're looking for, but look at one of the big UNIX storage players' (Sun, HP, IBM, EMC) site for a whitepaper on it. They're a good read for concepts which you can apply, even if you're not using their multi-million-dollar hardware/software packages.

    Best of luck.

    -Erik

    • That's a good summary.

      It's sad these days that traditional near-line solutions (CD/TAPE/DVD) jukeboxes are inevitable more expensive than just expanding the online storage.

      It seems that pricing dictates going from 3 tiers to 2 tiers. A very large online storage saved to DVD or CD (without jukebox) for archival backup, along with software that allows for extended incremental backup. If the online is RAID, the archival backup decently unlikely to ever be called upon, so can be handled with at most a couple of 4 disc changers for burning new data. If a reload ever does need to happen, that's what unskilled labor is for (consider a temp agency).

      Given that, I don't see the point in a jukebox at all (other than it looks cool). If more enterprises realized this, their price would fall in line I suspect.

  • The TCO of IDE-RAID is much better (Score:5, Informative)

    by egarland ( 120202 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:36PM (#3750709)
    My company did a bunch of research into the tradeoffs between DVD based optical storage and IDE RAID NAS devices. At all levels of scaling the hard drives were cheaper to buy and cheaper to maintain. RAID is a "turn it on and forget about it" technology. DVD single drives are too small to be of any real use and the robots and their software are very expensive to buy and maintain.

    Hard drives on the other hand are very cost effective:

    Under 1TB $1000-$1500

    For low to medium sized storage you can buy a 3ware or Promise RAID5 controller and put some drives into a computer with a server case that can hold them. A 4 drive RAID5 array with 160GB drives is 480GB usable and will fit in almost any machine. A 6 drive RAID 5 array is 800 GB usable but you need to work a little harder to find a case which will let you hook them all up.
    1-10 TB $4,500-$45,000
    If you need something a little more scalable you can use Promise UltraTrak SX8000 or RM8000s. They are OS independent and extraordinarily easy to setup. Each one has the ability to store over 1.1 TB when full of 160GB drives and you can hook many of them up to the same machine easily. The connect to a server with LVD-SE SCSI and appear to the machine as a single drive. Using these you can easily store 1-10 TB of data and keep it all online all the time.
    10+ TB $45,000+
    If you want to go over 10 TB the UltraTraks can do it but you should really use multiple head units. You can put 12 RM80000's in a 42 U rack with room for a 2U head unit and a 3U UPS (with 1U left over). This would make for about 14 TB per rack. Then you just install multiple identical racks to scale the storage.
    Since you are looking at optical you are probably looking for a system in the 1 TB range. For this I would recommend a single UltraTrak. The purchase price will be a fraction of what a optical library would cost, the reliability will be better, and the maintenance will be cheaper. Maintenance of these things is very simple: when a drive fails the alarm goes off. Buy a new drive and put it in. That's it!

    Optical may not look that bad when you look at the purchase price and the idea of a robot is cool but you also have to look at the cost of maintaining a machine like that in terms of time and money. When you add it all up, hard drives win every time.

    -Eric

  • Buy a 60 gb hard disk instead. (Score:3, Informative)

    by HiyaPower ( 131263 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:45PM (#3750741)
    DV-R is nice to keep stuff in archive off site, but even with the current price of about $5 for a blank, it will take you $75 of blanks (15 DV-Rs each having 4 gb each) to get the amount of storage that you would get on a 60 gb drive for the same price. Faster access, less time to create the media, etc. Put it in one of the cheap 3.5 inch firewire enclosures, and it will even take up less space than 15 DV-Rs.

    Personally, the solution I have gone for is to put together a 1/2 terabyte server on my network. For the cost of $80 for a case, $80 for a motherboard, $80 for a cpu chip, $80 for memory, $640 for 8 60 gb disk drives (at $80 ea), and $80 bucks for 2 more ide controllers, you can get a ~1/2 terabyte server for $1040. Run a Linux and put up Samba and Appleshare for free. Super high performance, not. But enough to do storage of infrequently used files and backup space.

  • If you can afford to wait... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bora Horza Gobuchol ( 585774 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @07:54PM (#3750770)
    If your company can afford to delay the purchase of a new storage system I would urge you to consider the up-coming blue-ray [eet.com] high-definition DVDs. This advance is the primary reason why I have not bought any form of DVD media yet. A double-layered HD-DVD will clock in at 50 gigabytes - depending on your storage needs, that might well be enough to contain all your archived documentation, with no need for a jukebox solution.

    For data storage, this will be a godsend - and the prospect of a 1080i high-defintion movie on a single disk has me salivating.

    The problem with the format, as I see it, is twofold:

    • When can it be introduced? HD-DVDs for data can't be introduced soon enough - but the entertainment companies will logically want to wait until "standard" DVDs thoroughly saturate the market before introducing HD-DVD.
    • Will the MPAA and its ilk keep their hands off it? With a good projector, screen and viewing environment 1080i will be within spitting distance of a true theatrical experience. Naturally, the MPAA will be terrified of this experience being compromised, and at the prospect of HD films being distributed on the web (on the other hand, the sheer file size of HD movie files might preclude that - I don't see cable companies increasing their user bandwidths anytime soon.)
    When can it be expected? Most bets are on 2004 / 2005. Maybe they'll learn from the DVD-R / DVD+RW / DVD-RAM fiasco to stick to a common read-write standard, tho I wouldn't put money on it. If they do decide to fight, it might be 2006 before the standard is settled - which is a real long wait, in computer terms.

    Anyway, my $0.01 (the Canadian exchange rate sucks)

    "Don't critisize. Create a better alternative."

  • I had decided to wait for blue ray, but hey - I got lucky. Strolling a lane in Wal-Mart, I happened across a shelf with a couple of Philips DVD+RW burners for $74.88. The little yellow smiley face must have been on crack or something - it's about $400 off apiece.

    Anyway, the burners are sweet. It takes about a half hour to toast a DVD, but hey - it's 4.7GB per side. The media is kina expensive, more than twice CD-R for storage, more if you do the +RWs. Teamed with a Plextor, I'm covered.

    It's really not economical to put my TV shows on DVD yet. Besides, most are coming out now in DVD collections and I'd rather have those than go to the trouble of archiving. But for mp3 they're sweet. Do you have any idea how many mp3s fit on a DVDR?

    DVDs hold a lot of promise for storage. I'm hopeful that BlueRay will be cheap (and uncrippled) enough to be ubiquitous. Still, it's obvious that DVD will not be the format of choice for backups. Already, IDE drives outpace the storage capacity of DVDs, tape, and other backup mediums. Storing an image on a network drive still seems the best way.

  • I have one - depends on what you want to do (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rui del-Negro ( 531098 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @08:56PM (#3750935) Homepage
    Unless you want to make video DVDs, don't buy one (at least not yet). Not only are the drives quite expensive, but the disks are also more expensive (per MB) than CD-Rs. Buy a good CDRW drive (DVD recorders are not very good at recording CDs).

    And 4.3 GB really aren't a lot. It's not even enough to store one hour of DV video (13 GB).

    In a few months or a year you will have a) much cheaper DVD-Rs and b) new optical discs, likely to be over 10 times bigger than DVD-Rs.

    On the other hand, if you do want to make video DVDs, make sure you buy a drive that will record in a format compatible with most readers. Mine is a Pioneer (DVR-A03) and so far all discs have worked fine in all set-top players I have tried. From what I've heard, DVD-RW and DVD+RW have problems with a lot of players (especially old ones, but also some recent models). There is a nice list of formats and players here:

    VCD Help DVD players compatibility list [vcdhelp.com]

    Also, most "consumer" DVD authoring programs are crap. Be ready to pay at least an extra 1000 dollars / euros on software if you want to be able to do any interesting stuff like multiple audio tracks, animated menus, etc..

    To do the MPEG-2 encoding, I use TMPGEnc (slow but has the best quality, IMO). I wrote a small guide that you can find here [netcabo.pt].

    RMN
    ~~~

  • This early adopter of DVD-RAM is sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @09:24PM (#3750986) Homepage
    A couple of years ago, Apple started offering it as an option. At exactly the same time, a number of PC vendors did. One of my colleagues at work ordered a new PC and it just "came with" DVD-RAM. So, I figured it was going to be standard and I ordered it on my own Mac.

    The media started out being very expensive--$40 for 2.6 gig. Now the price of the media is reasonable, but the format is all but orphaned.

    I'm using DVD-RAM as my backup medium, but I have to wonder whether any future machine I buy will actually be able to read the things.

    So, I jumped in too soon and I'm sorry.

    Is it time for DVD-R, or DVD+R? Don't ask me. I thought it was time for DVD-RAM and I was wrong.

    Oh, well, at least I bought a ZIP drive when a colleague was buying some kind of magneto-optical 135-megabyte device that was faster/cheaper/better/orphaned...

  • FYI ... blanks are just US$1.20... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sleepy ( 4551 ) on Saturday June 22, 2002 @09:29PM (#3750994) Homepage
    A number of folks here are claiming DVD-R blanks are $5 each.

    I've been buying them from esbuy.com, for about $1.20 each.

    If you search pricewatch.com, you can find the DVR-104 (OEM version of DVR-A04) Pioneer drive for $260.

    The burn speeds are decent (beats DVD-RAM!), and it's compatible with (nearly all) DVD Video players that are less than a year old.
  • Could you make your question more precise ?:

    - what data do you want to store (video, databases, images...)
    - what do you use it for ? Which client programs (and, in which OS ) need the data ? Which OS do the server run on ?
    - what is the amount of data you need to store ? (to start with, and periodic updates thereafter)
    - how long to you need to archive it ?
    - what is the access pattern (frequent access to all and any data, just in case the Hd fails, if we have an audit...). Derived question: do you want full automatic acces to your backups, or is a long delay or even Restore operation OK ?
    - is what you are looking for part of a multi-tier data system, or just a plain backup system ?
    - what is your budget ?
    - what human ressources do you have, both in terms of time and competence ?
    - if you're investigating DVD, what is your take on the more classic media (HD, Tape, CD) ? What do you see are their strong and weak points ?

    Best regards, Olivier

  • DVD-R.....WHY? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <nokrog>> on Saturday June 22, 2002 @09:51PM (#3751044)
    For what you want, you'd be MUCH better off with a SAN and some sort of silo. DVD's have a tendency to grow feet. Security wise, I'd never do a DVD jukebox. It's too easy for stuff to go bye bye. The san can be backed up by a IBM silo running Tivoli or a StorageTek unit or something similar. For those who say that tape technology has not kept up, you can tell they are PC centric and never look beyond it. I have Magstar tapes that are 7 gigs uncompressed and a library that holds tons of them (around 100-200 at least...if not more). Also, I would rather not have 2 TB tapes. Too easy for you to loose something if it's only on one tape (of course you could backup multiple times, but your goig to do that anyway right?). The nice thing about the IBM/Tivoli units is when you run out of space, you can just get another silo, and more SAN. Your existing Tivoli server can still be used to back things up. Some say well, tapes have legs too....yeah, but it's MUCH harder for someone to swipe one if the door's locked and it's in a card accessed data center. I know the DVD jukes could be locked too, but it's much more tempting to try to steal something more commonly available. How easy is it to find a Magstar tape drive that a home user/hacker could afford?? DVD Juke's are not that great of a idea. I can't guarantee reliablity or data retrieval on a DVD. On a SAN I more readily can do this(and the SAN would be much faster to boot!). And if the data doesn't change, you can always have the users mount the drives in a read only status. Then they can't over write the files.
  • Leave it to someone to post a question like this after I've already made the decision to buy the technology in question. Although I won't get my Pioneer DVR-104 until later this week, I've already done my homework on the subject. I wanted a DVD-storage solution to backup lots and lots of TV shows that I have gathered/recorded over the past few months. Realizing that my 20GB+ of DivX videos was going to take a LOT of CD-R's, I decided that 4.7GB of storage per disc was the way to archive. That, and my set-top JVC player understands the DVD-R and DVD-RW if I want to make my own video disks (and yes, I meant to say -R and -RW, not +R/+RW, and I don't want to get into that discussion--I've already read up on that flame war).

    Anyway, the Pioneer drive is supposedly the top of the line, consumer version of the A04 (for general use DVD-R disks)--and it also burns CD-R's at 8x, so you get a 2-in-1 drive if you don't already have a CD-R burner. I also looked at the prices of the media, which have drastically dropped in price, down to about $2 a disk. Now, is this all worth it? I don't know--if enough ppl ask, I may post a review with this comment after I get my drive this week. In the meantime, I will say that I ordered my drive for $275 using PriceWatch.com as my guide. I remember getting my SCSI Yamaha 4x CD-R burner for almost $400, and spending $2-3 for the media, which was only about 3-4 years ago. I know I've been an early adopter, but I think DVD is the way to go for a lot of people--just give it some thought as to whether it's for you or not.
  • People keep talking about uncertainty about DVD-R formats. I'm not aware of any uncertainty about "DVD-R" (the read-only) version. Isn't there just one format, the one compatible with current DVD drives (including consumer drives)?

    There does seem to be uncertainty about DVD-RW/DVD+RW/DVD-RAM, but that is a different matter.

  • No proponents for tape systems instead? (Score:3, Informative)

    by ziegast ( 168305 ) on Sunday June 23, 2002 @02:27AM (#3751719) Homepage
    As other replies have stated, DVD isn't a mature technology yet. If you're into bleeding edge technology, feel free to experiment.

    Tape is still the cheapest media and most widely used and will continue to get more dense and less expensive over the next 4-5 years. You can currently buy LTO1 and AIT3 tapes for less than $100 per 100GB tape in large quantities. Sony has a 500GB half-inch format (S-AIT) coming out within a year. The jukeboxes and libraries are still expensive compared to CD changers, but if you have alot of data to backup, their up-front cost is not as significant. If you have lots of small data sets (600MB) to archive, it might make sense to use something random-access like CDs or near-line disk. If you have large databases or filesystems to archive, it's alot easier to manage one 100GB tape rather than 153 CDs or 20 DVDs for the same data. How are you going to manage and inventory all of those CDs? If you need to store more than 1TB, consider disk or tape solutions instead.

    ATA disk-based technology might seem inexpensive at first. I've seen FCAL/SCSI solutions lower that $20/GB. I've seen commercial ATA RAID5 subsystems as low as $10/GB. One can build-it-yourself using off-the-shelf cheap parts ($3/GB white box system?), but would you trust your data on the cheapest disk technology? What happens when a disk dies or when the filesystem becomes corrupted? Consider, also, how you might scale a disk-based solution beyond 1TB (if that's what you need to do). Think about power, cooling, managing failed drives, etc. Also, do you really need to keep disk drives actively spinning for data you might not access again for at least 6 months?

    In short, if you have less than 2TB of data to backup and small data sets, CD is inexpensive, but building an ATA-based archive system could work better, especially for managing the data. If you need to archive more than 10TB, tape is still the best proven way to go. In between, it may be possible to mix and match technologies to be cost-effective and still provide good performance. For example, you might keep 3-6 months of data on disk and archive the rest to a tape library.

    -ez
  • I installed a DVDRW drive in a client's computer a couple weeks ago and was appalled to see that the maximum burn speed was 1x (this may have been for rewriting, can't remember.) The manual gave an estimated burn time of something godawful like 5 hours or something. I was amazed.

    This was a brand spankin' new drive that had just hit retail like a week prior (I think it was a Philips), so I wondered if it was really the state of the art. Anyway, personally I'd wait until the burn speed increased to the point where I wouldn't have to wait most of the day to do an entire disc.

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