21st century data backup
 

I'm curious to see what everyone else is using for data backup these days. For me, CD-R's have always been stable, but they are a pain to label, sort and keep track of, especially since I often need to split a project up among several of them.

I have not had good luck with using DVD's for backup, I tried to use something I burned to 2 DVD's only 2 years ago and I could not get it to read. It wasn't a total loss, it was rendered video that I was able to re-render, but nonetheless annoying. I'd say one in 5 retail dvd's that I buy skips, pixelates, or simply doesn't play... This has pretty much convinced me not to use them for anything I want to make a stable backup of,

Recently I've been using usb flash drives and/or compactflash cards for backup, I figure there's no moving parts in them, they can't get scratched like cds and I've never had one fail me yet. The price is right too, I can back up most projects for about $10.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? Is flash memory stable over several years for archiving purposes?

Re: 21st century data backup
 

Blu Ray is the way to go. 45 gigs per disc!! :o

Re: 21st century data backup
 

How reliable are they though? The amount of storage is irrelevant if you can't access the data later on because your media failed. Only reason I say this is I haven't had a lot of luck with DVD's, and blue ray crams 5 times as much data onto the same sized disc.

Re: 21st century data backup
 

How about Mac software that does backups by looking for what has been modified and then replacing only what is needed to the existing backup files to make them current. I currently backup to a second Glyph drive just by copy and paste. I have to create a new backup folder each time and them I trash the outdated folder. It's cumbersome but it works for now. What I need is Mac software (if available) that has a cherry picker style of backing up files. Isn't there something called Retrospect or something like that for Mac?

Re: 21st century data backup
 

If you use leopard or newer time machine does this. You can even go back to different dates and restore earlier versions of individual files with it. The only thing I'll caution you with is if you move your time machine drive to a different computer you may have problems with permissions for accessing your files.

Re: 21st century data backup
 

Second and third ext HD.

DVDR's for the really important stuff.

I looked at online storage systems but Bandwidth is an issue here.

Re: 21st century data backup
 

Thanks guys. I am looking at Retrospect right now at Sweetwater. Anyone ever used that software for backup?

Re: 21st century data backup
 

SuperDuper here.

Re: 21st century data backup
 

Hundreds of DVD archives (and also DVD+/-DLs) here with no problems. I always always always verify each archive. Please expain the issue further and perhaps we can help solve.

Re: 21st century data backup
 

First off, what brand of media are you using? I know for CD's there are high end media from companies like apogee and hhb, but I've never seen anything that appears to be anything more than consumer grade for DVD media. The ones I had problems with were memorex and I believe tascam.

If there are better pro grade discs available, I'd to get like the inkjet printable ones if possible.

As I mentioned, I've had problems with several DVD backups that were 2-3 years old, the disk simply wasn't able to be accessed after sitting around for a few years. There isn't any visible damage or scratches to the disk. The drive will spin the disk up and down like it's trying to read it, but never does.