Thread: HDD vs DVD vs Bluray

I've never had problems with them.

how long have you used them , i mean how old is the oldest one you have working correctly

Originally Posted by awesomeo3000

I've never had problems with them.

Why not get a couple TBs of HDDs and attach them in RAID/0

There are lots of parameters the original poster is not mentioning. When talking about Blu-rays, do you mean full Blu-rays (i.e. with menu, extras etc.), or do you mean Blu-ray remuxes (e.g. untouched audio and video, Blu-ray is stripped from menus and extras to save space), or do you mean Blu-ray encodes (after stripping the extras, the audio and video are compressed in a lossy manner)?

Another parameter: what is your budget and when you intend to start that backup process?

Simple calculation with the market prices would reveal that BD50 discs are the cheapest storage media $/GB. That matters if you are going to store encodes (i.e. you can write them to the BD50 as files so that you can save 3-4 1080p on each BD50 disc). However, that $/GB is not anymore that relevant if you intend to store full Blu-rays or Blu-ray remuxes, because normally you will be able to write only one to a BD50 disc, be it as a file or as a blu-ray structure, i.e. you will loose lots of non-transferable storage space. But then again many Blu-ray remuxes fit on BD25, and full Blu-rays on BD50 have the advantage that they can be played right away in your Blu-ray player.

Regarding safety of the storage, don't expect from HDDs to last 10 years without issues... In particular, the more HDDs you use, the higher is the risk that some files will get corrupted. Predicting HDD failure is an utopia. Most of the time, when HDDs fail, they fail brutally and all of a sudden. Also, ask yourself: if some tool identifies a few bad sectors on your HDD and manages to "repair" the files there, will you still be willing to buy a new HDD and throw the old one with 95% working storage to the thrash?...

At the current stage, SSDs really seem safer than HDDs because, as already mentioned by others, they don't have any mechanical parts, plus the non-mechanical part of the technology is also entirely different. But, given the SSD price per GB, it would be almost insane to use SSDs for plain file storage for backing up Blu-rays which are notable for their size...

Having said that, you also have another option: you can prolong the life of HDD storage system by, say, creating a RAID 1 massive. This greatly improves the safety of your storage, but given the current prices of HDDs, this might be a little bit costly, depending on how many files you have.

Furthermore, at some point the prices of HDDs will go back to normal (maybe after another few months). Keep in mind that HDDs size will grow, while BD50s size is limited by definition. Also, I doubt that BD50s prices will go much lower than what already can be found due to technology limitations, so in a long run HDDs $/GB will be lower IMHO.

Last but not least, since we are on a forum dealing with trackers, there is one thing worth mentioning: you can't seed all these Blu-rays from BD50 media ;)

I store important info on a SSD. Standard Def movies on a HDD. and HD movies on Blu-Ray Disks. Easy-peasy japaneasy.

Perhaps you can try to store them on those archival gold discs that has a 50 yrs shelf life span, I hope that you just want to archive the most important file you have not the entire 8TB of data you have , that would be an insane task

I'd say HDDs with a RAID. DVDs and BluRays do not last as long as HDDs although they also tend to die..

If only we could have 2TB vinyls to store data now..

I thought that before i posted that thread due to my past experience with CDs then DVDs going corrupt in few monthes/couple of years max so i stopped using them (almost 4 years now ) and when bluray came up i thought it may be even worse due to high risk of losing a 25-50 GB at once , but people here seem more confident of 50 GB blurays than HDD , that make me have 150 Bluray disk to back up my 8 TBs by the way thats not crazy for me i almost made a 300 CDs (700 MB for those who do not remember them) 10 years ago :D before i knew external HDD

Originally Posted by CyniC

I'd say HDDs with a RAID. DVDs and BluRays do not last as long as HDDs although they also tend to die..

If only we could have 2TB vinyls to store data now..

Maybe think about a drobo. They are great for backup if you have the money. I love my drobo-S with 6Tb running in raid-5.