Using a Very Large Hard Drive For Storage? Good Idea or Bad Idea

[bikeman25]

Well originally bought this 4TB WD Black Drive to be secondary backup drive in a Drive Dock,  ordered it before i knew i won Seagate 8TB Drive from Twitter Contest

Excitedly installed it into my PC Case,  and literally only using 354GB of 3.63TB

So wondering would it be worthwhile before i do my next Windows 11 22H2 clean install some point if i reinstalled my WD Black 1TB Storage drive, and resumed using this one as Extra backup in Hard drive Dock at times

((1TB drive been used off and on sparingly in the drive dock, otherwise stored inside tv cabinet in anti static bag that 4TB drive came in)    Or is it wise to wait til Christmas and order a newer 1TB-2TB WD Black, and instead use this one to upgrade Moms older Toshiba drive in her Desktop

 

[Sikh]

It doesnt matter if the hard drive is "big" or "small", its are you able to backup all of that data on it or the data you care about. 

I tell people to stay away from large hard drives because people generally suck with technology and losing 4T+ is harder than losing 1T+. Also a lot of people wont pay for a backup to that 4T+ drive but will pay for a extra 1T+ drive. Its mainly a price thing.

I personally have a NAS thats 16T but I also have 2 8T external USB 3 drives that backup the NAS. 1 external is very important and has a backup of its own and I regularly check the integrity of both drives since the main external is plugged in and powered all the time by the NAS and does daily backups. The backup to it is powered on once a week. The second 8T external just holds data (movies, isos, etc) and if I were to lose it, I wouldn't care too much, it would just be a b***h having to get it all back. 

So it really comes down to how much data are you willing to backup and lose. If you are willing to backup 1T of that 8T, the 8T is fine as a storage drive, just get an external that you backup the 1T of important data you care about regularly. This way its way less painful if that 8T were to die.

As far as drive reliability in regards to the size/density of the drive, I usually stick to manufacturers that have proven themselves to me but there's also the BackBlaze Reliability report that I rely heavily on in case the manufacturer(s) I trust end up producing a unreliable drive. I am not blindly loyal to one brand, especially when it comes to my data. Report: backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2022/

[bikeman25]

Yes i backup my files weekly currently,  gonna try to get another 8TB drive at Christmas so i can fully backup the 8TB if need be.     4TB drive Mainly stores the following Windows Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music ((alot of that is Former Purchased Music from When Microsoft had Music in Microsoft Store, used to buy alot with Bing Rewards/Microsoft Reward GIftcards/Groove Music, Plus Windows Phone 30 Free Albums around Christmas of 2013, 2014, whatever year that was lol, whatever it was called back in 2015 lol.        1TB Externals i typically make sure i got extra copy of the most Important files

 

Onedrive also has a copy of the Most Important Files

so far haven't lost any data, though i haven't checked the integrity of the External 8TB in a long time though, guess i should do that at some point, though probably will take many hours to do lol.      Would it be best to leave it in the External Enclosure if i do that

 

 

Internal in Desktop is 1 Boot M.2 500GB

Game SSD 1TB

and 4TB Storage WD Black

 

8TB External Seagate  in Enclosure--((If i was to check the integrity of the External, i imagine that would take hours and days and days to run))

1TB old internal storage is used about weekly in Drive Dock to have extra copy of the music folder

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

My current primary desktop PC is set up with a 16TB RAID^* array (8×2 TB SSDs), which is backed up to a 30TB RAID^* array (3×10 TB HDDs), which is backed up to 10 TB external USB HDDs in rotation.  In addition, multiple computers have copies of key data files synced to them as well.

The point is, I don't think the capacity of the drives make as much a difference as does the number of discrete backups you have of the data.  Now, there is a case to be made for the more data you have stored, the longer it takes to back up (or restore) it, and the cost of the media to hold all those backups goes up as well, but that just means the decision point about what is and is not cost-effective is different.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

^*Actual capacity of each array is somewhat less to parity data, redundancy features, etc.

[ThaCrip]

On 27/11/2022 at 00:32, Sikh said:

I tell people to stay away from large hard drives because people generally suck with technology and losing 4T+ is harder than losing 1T+. Also a lot of people wont pay for a backup to that 4T+ drive but will pay for a extra 1T+ drive. Its mainly a price thing.

The problem with that is hard drives of less than about 2TB or 4TB tend not to be worth buying because of the inflated price and much less storage space.

so for me as a general rule I would straight up avoid buying hard drives any smaller than 2TB. hell, chances are these 2TB hard drives are about the same price or not much more than 1TB HDD's anyways. so unless someone gets a 1TB for next to nothing, it's not really worth buying over a 2TB which is twice the storage space, which is quite a bit for the average person backing up some photos and videos etc. hell, I got a 'renewed' HGST 6TB not all that long ago for only $60 which is a lot of storage space for a strong price.

but when it comes to general data backup... as a bare minimum rule (as those who fail to adhere to this standard(or equivalent) at the minimum are just asking for trouble) I would have two copies of that data on two different hard drives at the minimum. but depending on how much data one has and how high of importance that data is, I would still maintain that quality recordable DVD media (Verbatim/Taiyo Yuden) is still the best alternative for long term storage to a hard drive. like it's a good alternative to the usual two hard drive minimum backup standards as the odds of both of those hard drives along with the DVD media failing all at the same time should be quite slim short of say a house fire etc. but assuming more natural causes, it's unlikely a person would lose their data adhering to this extra standard (two HDD's at least one copy on DVD-R(+R)).

sure, some might say DVD burning is outdated etc, and it is to some degree as people don't burn those nearly like they used to, but it's still probably the best alternative for long term data storage outside of a hard drive for a reasonable price.

p.s. but if someone does burn DVD media I suggest running a disk quality check on it after burning (I use KProbe on my Liteon drives) just to make sure it's up to a certain burn quality standard as if it is, even if/when it slowly degrades as the years/decades pass you can occasionally check one just to see if they are still good as chances are if it's good upon initial burn and has degraded very little to nothing 5-10 years later, chances are it's going to last a very long time, probably at least a good portion of ones lifespan. I have some DVD's burned 10-15 years ago and still scan well to this day. so I don't see why I won't get at least another 10-15+ years out of them especially if their degradation is reasonably slow and don't suddenly shoot up out of no where. so short of it shooting up very rapidly chances are you will get a decent warning before the data is outright bad/no longer readable. hell, I got some new old stock of 8x Verbatim DVD+R (MCC 003 media code) not all that long ago, which I would guesstimate is likely these were made in the 2000's decade, and still burn pretty good as some discs you can see based on the KProbe scan are of higher burn quality than others but even the weaker burns are I don't expect to see them having trouble reading the burned data for the foreseeable future as I seen one a while ago in my testing that at least one of my burners had trouble reading (but it was one I burned from a more recent batch to where even after burning the burn quality was quite weak etc), which if that's a ball park figure, I might have a rough estimate on how the KProbe scan will look when the discs is nearing failure and the discs I burn (nearly all of them besides a disc that has obvious heavier scratches which I won't trust anyways) are comfortably away from that standard. basically those old MCC 003 discs, besides a very small amount that had obvious heavier scratching upon delivery, should be reliable as I basically scanned everything I burned and I burned a good portion of one of the 50 packs so far and they are solid even though, like I said, some have a bit better burn quality than others, but nothing I would be concerned with.

 

On 27/11/2022 at 03:08, goretsky said:

The point is, I don't think the capacity of the drives make as much a difference as does the number of discrete backups you have of the data.  Now, there is a case to be made for the more data you have stored, the longer it takes to back up (or restore) it, and the cost of the media to hold all those backups goes up as well, but that just means the decision point about what is and is not cost-effective is different.

 

Exactly.

Edited November 27, 2022 by ThaCrip

[NinjaGinger]

What software do you use for burning. The only drives I burn are my 2 W/Ds 16 T/B for backup on disk. Blue ray 50 T/B. Only 2 disks so sorted.

[bikeman25]

Well I Myself use Imgburn for Burning with my Portable DVD Writer,  ((gotta get some better DVD discs to burn to though,  ones family got for me a while ago, not so good Memorex discs lol)    

As Desktop case doesn't have internal bays for an Internal writer anymore since upgrade in 2020

Eventually might look into getting an External Blu-Ray Writer if there reasonablely priced

 

[ThaCrip]

On 27/11/2022 at 14:11, NinjaGinger said:

What software do you use for burning. The only drives I burn are my 2 W/Ds 16 T/B for backup on disk. Blue ray 50 T/B. Only 2 disks so sorted.

I use only the best... ImgBurn.

works well on Windows the last I knew. even on Linux once setup properly as it's not as easy to setup on Linux but once you know what to do it works well. but basically on Linux I got ImgBurn setup through PlayOnLinux ('sudo apt install playonlinux') using Wine 6.0.1 32bit (I used 32bit since it takes less storage space vs 64bit Wine) and then, you switch Wine (through 'Configure Wine' from the menu or 'winecfg' from terminal) to 'Windows Version: Windows XP' and apply it (as ImgBurn will hang if you try to use the default of Windows 7 mode), then you load up ImgBurn, at which point it won't see your CD/DVD etc burners, but then you simply go to "Tools > Settings > I/O" and on 'Interface' you change it to 'SPTI - Microsoft' and then set 'Device Enumeration Method' to 'Device Interface' (but I think 'Drive Letter' is okay to) and once you apply this (you might need to restart ImgBurn) it will then see your CD/DVD etc drives as expected unlike before changing this it's using ASPI and will fail to see your CD/DVD etc burners on Wine versions newer than the v4 series basically in my limited testing. ImgBurn should work okay for BluRay to but I never personally tested it but it's known to work well there to.

while ImgBurn has not seen a update since June 2013, it don't really matter because not much has changed since as that program was quite popular back in the day and many used it to make XBox360 backups etc. you can even overburn music CD-R's with it as I overburned a Verbatim 80min CD-R successfully not long ago to 82min15sec which shows up and plays fine on my old CD player from the early 1990's as on it's display the discs shows up as 82min12sec. but overburning a music CD-R is not super straight forward on ImgBurn as it's basically done through 'Tools > Create CUE File...' of which, at least on Linux, I use standard WAV files which should work without issue by default as I simply temporarily concern my FLAC (which are lossless) back to WAV so ImgBurn can use it which is easy enough to do with Foobar2000 etc.

while I get the appeal of going for BluRay I just am not sure how reliable these discs are long term as CD/DVD is a bit more time proven. plus, initial setup costs is a bit high on the BluRay side of things, even though I get it's much more convenient since it stores 25GB a disk vs 4.7GB for DVD. but it just boils down to how much data you consider 'can't afford to lose' level as I would suggest using it for the highest importance data for the most part with some side stuff here and there. because if you got many TB's of data to backup, it's not really practical to use recordable DVD. but if you got maybe hundreds of GB's or so to backup then DVD is probably still worth considering as a 100-pack of Verbatim will potentially give you 470GB of data to backup per spindle. but in all honesty, unless I got unluck or they changed the formula I got a Verbatim 16x DVD-R 100-pack from Amazon I think it was earlier this year, maybe last year, and with my older DVD burners (which are pretty much 2005/2009/2011 (or so)) the burn quality was fairly weak and even one disc outright failed to verify on a small amount I burned before I realized the burn quality was crap and sent them back to Amazon. but it's odd because I have those same discs bought roughly early 2010's and the burn quality on those is still great to this day. so I think they tweaked something in the formula is my best guesstimate as I suspect it's possible I could have gotten a bad batch but I think it's unlikely as those discs have been generally rock solid for me. I did keep a small amount of the discs scans from those discs though just for reference as while only one of the discs had outright failure (as ImgBurn could not complete the 'verify' process) even the ones that technically worked were still so-so burn quality and clearly weaker than the standards I am used to from them. as just checking a moment ago I kept a couple of discs scans and the one that actually had outright data failure was PI max of 369 (I think up to around 230-260 give or take is technically within spec) with the average being 87 across the burn, although a good portion of the burn was floating in the 150-200 or so range and slowly improved until near the end of the burn where it shot up to a peak of 369, at which point, which is even more important, the PIF's which I heard you generally want to keep the single spike to preferably no more than about 4 for a more optimal burn, you can see near the end of the burn it was solid red in the 10-25 or so range but in terms of the single spike peak was 76 as this is basically the disc I am using to guesstimate how bad a scan has to be before outright failure to read the data occurs and my typical burns are much better than that, usually in that 4 single spike range and still scans similar to this many years later etc.

even on the other disc from that batch of discs I sent back to Amazon, which still is technically readable, the PI's are about 175-225 a good portion of the entire burn but peaks near the end at 336. but on the bright side, the PIF's peaked at 4 so it was largely good enough here. but here is about what I am figuring with this particular disc, if it stays similar to how it is now 10-15+ years from now I suspect it will still be readable for the foreseeable future, BUT given the PI's are already high, when the disc does start to degrade it will fail faster than my other discs where PI's are generally a lot lower etc. because more of a higher quality burn in terms of PI's for a DVD is probably roughly floating 10-20 range (or better) but even going a fair amount higher than this your still far from worrying as a fair amount of those older 'MCC 003' discs I have, while vary some, as some are close to that high quality standard while some, at least for the earlier part of the burns is a bit higher but still a good amount lower to where I don't see them failing for the foreseeable future etc. hell, some of the better burns on that old batch, which I burned not all that long ago now, had PI's largely less than 10 and PIF's peaked at 2 with even the total of them being nice and low etc.

there was a side that I basically learned most of this stuff from but it finally went offline (the forums part anyways which is where all of the good info was) earlier this year as it's been online for probably 20+ years or so until this year.

so in short... that KProbe is basically nice for getting a bit more details on the burn quality of your discs which you won't really be able to see by just burning a disc with ImgBurn and then letting it complete it's 'Verify' process (because a discs burn quality might not be all that great, but still not bad enough for the drive to struggle reading it yet). although... one rough indicator a disc might be a bit more obviously so-so is if the 'Verify' process slows down during reading of the disc to verify the data burned. plus, some drives are less picky at reading discs than others as I think I have had some discs I burned, by running that Verify process on ImgBurn on two different burners I got you can see one is a bit more picky where as the other is not. but I think one area higher burn quality is of higher importance is if you burn a standard DVD video disc to play in random DVD players as these will probably act up sooner (like struggle to read it sooner) than a PC's DVD drive will. but if your just backing up data to read on a PC's DVD drive, then you ain't got to be as picky as you can still have a fair amount of lee-way and I would not worry about being able to read the data burned on the DVD for the foreseeale future etc.

sorry for the novel

p.s. I even have KProbe setup through Linux to but to use that I have to setup a older version of Wine. currently using v4.0.4 (32bit). my Liteon DVD burner is a good discs scanner with KProbe but in terms of CD-R's the only drive I have that will properly scan these is my old Liteon 24102b CD-RW drive I had since pretty much 2002 as you can tell that scans the discs properly unlike my DVD burners which do not(but my Liteon DVD burner is good for scanning burned DVD's). but on the bright side, CD-R seems to be generally less picky from what I can tell as if you get decent quality discs here they should last a rather long time since data is not as tightly packed on the disc etc since DVD's are 6.71 times the storage space in the same physical size basically. but CD-R's ain't really worth using for DATA unless you got a VERY limited amount of high importance data to backup as they are mostly just good for making standard music CD-R's nowadays, as I still burn one of those occasionally for use on my CD player from the early 1990's etc.

Edited November 28, 2022 by ThaCrip

[spikey_richie]

On 27/11/2022 at 08:08, goretsky said:

Hello,

My current primary desktop PC is set up with a 16TB RAID^* array (8×2 TB SSDs), which is backed up to a 30TB RAID^* array (3×10 TB HDDs), which is backed up to 10 TB external USB HDDs in rotation.  In addition, multiple computers have copies of key data files synced to them as well.

The point is, I don't think the capacity of the drives make as much a difference as does the number of discrete backups you have of the data.  Now, there is a case to be made for the more data you have stored, the longer it takes to back up (or restore) it, and the cost of the media to hold all those backups goes up as well, but that just means the decision point about what is and is not cost-effective is different.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

^*Actual capacity of each array is somewhat less to parity data, redundancy features, etc.

Please tell me some of those drives are in an alternate location.

[ThaCrip]

On 27/11/2022 at 14:15, bikeman25 said:

Well I Myself use Imgburn for Burning with my Portable DVD Writer,  ((gotta get some better DVD discs to burn to though,  ones family got for me a while ago, not so good Memorex discs lol)

 

Those may or may not last a long time as I have a little bit of those from probably 15+ years ago that still are decent. but with brands outside of Verbatim/TY(Taiyo Yuden) it's a bit more of a gamble even though there is still some decent stuff here and there.

basically if you had a drive that can use KProbe or the like you can do a disc quality check on those discs which will give you a pretty good indication of the overall burn quality. but if not, if you had the disc say 10+ years and it's still reading fast in your PC burner, that's probably at least suggesting it's still in decent shape and will probably last many more years.

 

On 27/11/2022 at 14:15, bikeman25 said:

Eventually might look into getting an External Blu-Ray Writer if there reasonablely priced

Personally I think the prices are still a bit too high to get into it (like burner cost and say a 50-pack of quality BD-R discs etc) and they are a bit less time proven like CD/DVD's are which ultimately pushes me away from them. plus, BluRay readers/burners are more obscure in general where as CD/DVD drives ain't hard to find which is another plus for standard CD/DVD that's been around for a long time now as if you can find a random optical media reader, chances are it will read CD/DVD, but with Bluray the odds are against many people having one of these as these never really took off as by the time these came around, burning discs in general I suspect started to decline with the masses.

so while I don't know the precise statistics off the top of my head I would imagine general optical media burning has declined quite a bit over the last 10 years (say 2012 to currently here in 2022).

p.s. but I get that initial costs can be off-set a bit in terms of $ to GB and does offer a lot more convenience at 25GB a disc vs 4.7GB a disc for DVD. but I suspect these discs are more finicky since they already taken CD to DVD which is 6.71x the storage space and then went from DVD to BD-R which is 5.32x the storage space of standard DVD. hell, they got those M-DISC, which are supposedly quite good, but the price of those is simply too high to practically use, especially given I don't feel there is a significant enough of a real world difference between them and standard quality media like Verbatim/TY. because say for example... if those M-DISC last 100+ years (I think it's claimed to be 1000 years but even if this is true I doubt anyone will care at that point) and a regular one lasts say 50+ years, while one lasts twice as long, it's not really going to matter because 50 years or so ill probably be dead anyways or very close to it and even if someone is quite young, say 20 years old, that still gives them until they are roughly 70 years old and I suspect they might not care or will have moved on to something else by that point etc. because I figure if your standard decent quality DVD recordable media lasts somewhere around 30-50 years that's great and another thing is even if the discs last a lifetme, eventually there might become a point where finding hardware to read the discs becomes a problem. because as long as SATA connections remain a standard for the foreseeable future, and DVD drives remain fairly easy to get a hold of, chances are we should be good for at least another 10-20+ years, but beyond this who knows. still, even if someone gets another 20 years or so, that's nice peace of mind for high importance data.

Edited November 28, 2022 by ThaCrip

[ThaCrip]

On 28/11/2022 at 10:04, spikey_richie said:

Please tell me some of those drives are in an alternate location.

Sure, I get what you mean here in relation to what Goretsky said, because of potential fire hazard/natural disaster etc, but assuming that don't happen, the risk is still reasonably low enough with the minimum standard of two different hard drives with ones important data and I figure since many people are fairly lazy, if data backup becomes to much effort, most people will simply not do it.

so that's why I just tend to suggest two different hard drives with ones important data (with one preferably being external, but even if both are internal that's still better than just one copy even though ones risk of data loss will naturally go up).

hell, ill admit I slack a bit on backing up to DVD (as I have a decent portion of my stuff backed up but a decent portion I do not as I sort of want to organize it a bit more, but this ends up being fairly time consuming so I largely keep putting it off and might get around to some stuff a bit more quicker than others etc) but I am still pretty good at the two hard drive minimum standards which just doing that gives one a pretty good level of protection against data loss, especially if their backup data is one in use while the other is external to protect against data loss from virus or power surge/hardware failure etc.

but just speaking for myself... short of a house fire or natural disaster the chance of me losing my high importance data is low (with at least two hard drives) if not very low(especially with the stuff on DVD as I usually burn family pics/vids to two different DVD's to with one being Verbatim and the other on TY media which basically effectively gives me four total copies at least (2 on HDD, 2 on DVD) as the odds of all of these failing to work, assuming no house fire/natural disaster level of stuff, has to be slim if not very slim.

Edited November 28, 2022 by ThaCrip

[bikeman25]

My External DVD Writer is Verbatim USB 2.0 or 3.0 i can't remember what exactly connection type it is lol,  haven't burned too much with it as yet,  hoping to afford Verbatim discs during Christmas this year..      

 

But have learned alot with this thread thus far

Macrium Home Paid is used for System image backups to the 8TB hard drive on a weekly/monthly schedule typically provided i remember to plug in the drive, and start the backup software lol on day i usually do it

Think just gonna leave the 4TB Internal,  realize now not worth switching it back to 1TB WD Black to use as Internal storage drive,  as its probably alot of work for not much gain.

Bought the WD Black 4TB on Christmas 2018, not knowing i'd win the Twitter CES Contest in 2019 for the Seagate 8TB drive at the time, as originally the 4TB was gonna be the backup files storage drive lol,  so ended up using the External Enclosure for the 8TB instead when it arrived lol

May get a second 8TB this Christmas to make sure i can backup the 8TB drive lol, and Verbatim DVD Discs or TY DVD Discs, then i think pretty much all set short of any natural disaster,  do have 1 external 1TB stored at nearby Relatives place, which is rotated out with another drive as needed with the most important files,   Might rotate the 8TBs in the future for even more security from natural disaster

 

 

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The 16TB NVMe RAID and 30TB SATA RAID are internal to my primary desktop PC.  The external drives and other computers are a mixture of on-prem and off-site.  Off-site is located one time zone over; I feel that 1,000+ miles away is likely to rule out data loss impacting an event in the immediate region. 

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

  

On 28/11/2022 at 08:04, spikey_richie said:

Please tell me some of those drives are in an alternate location.

 

[Sir Topham Hatt]

@ThaCripYou clearly are passionate about this subject but nobody is going to read everything you put.

Try and edit your posts a little - what info is really worth sharing.

[ThaCrip]

On 29/11/2022 at 03:12, Sir Topham Hatt said:

You clearly are passionate about this subject but nobody is going to read everything you put.

Try and edit your posts a little - what info is really worth sharing.

 

I get what you mean as I can babble on a bit too long and could probably condense what I say a bit, but I just mostly type stuff as it comes into my head.

but I guess the gist of it is... use quality CD/DVD's (generally Verbatim(with Mitsubishi dye!)/Taiyo Yuden) and one can potentially use KProbe (or the like) with the right burner to check the quality of the burns.   ; the Linux comments about getting ImgBurn setup will definitely be valuable to anyone who still burns CD/DVD and uses Linux and still wants to use ImgBurn though even though I realize that just about everyone, if not everyone, reading this won't use it.

anyways, I figure if someone is still burning CD/DVD etc today (which I would assume most people are not) it might be worth reading if they want more details. if not, they likely won't care in the slightest if my post is long or short anyways since they will just skip right over it, especially given this topic was mainly about using hard drives for storing data etc and that burning optical media came into it since it's a solid alternative to hard drive storage for important data.

anyways, I think people in general are like that as when I read random things online on random forums ill sometimes read longer posts if I have enough interest in the subject to get a bit more details, but if not, and it's a really long post (similar to mine), ill just skip over it and continue on with the next post etc.

p.s. but I do think peoples attention spans are kind of bad these days (hell, mine probably is on some level to, as I guess it's somewhat human nature, especially if I don't have some level of interest in a subject etc) where if they got to read more than a sentence of two, it's the end of the world

[ThaCrip]

On 28/11/2022 at 11:29, bikeman25 said:

My External DVD Writer is Verbatim USB 2.0 or 3.0 i can't remember what exactly connection type it is lol,  haven't burned too much with it as yet,  hoping to afford Verbatim discs during Christmas this year.. 

Even USB 2.0 should be 'good enough' as I think the transfer rate here tops out in the 30MB/s range and even with DVD's I don't think those exceed USB 2.0 speed (plus, I 'think' your external writer, especially if it's a slim one, will likely have a lower than usual write speed anyways). but burning a bit slower will help ensure it. I usually burn at 8x or 12x or 16x on DVD (as 16x on DVD is about 22.1MB/s). on CD-R 16x should be good.

as for your typical easy-to-find 16x rated Verbatim DVD-R vs DVD+R it generally ain't going to matter much either way (but you want the 'Azo' types since these are better than the Verbatim that costs less). but I do know that -R hold a little more data than +R does. but for whatever it's worth when I had the recent issue and had to return the Verbatim media to Amazon it was Verbatim 16x DVD-R (Azo) (but like I said I have a old batch of same media and media code etc that still burns well to this day on same DVD burners but not on that recent media). so it might be worth trying the DVD+R as if they did not change these I suspect they still burn well. like personally if I had to buy recent 16x rated Verabatim DVD-R or DVD+R, I would try the DVD+R and hope those still burn as strong as they used to when I used them years ago as basically all of the media I still have of Verbatims burned roughly 10-15 years ago are still going well today etc.

note: you generally want the 'Azo' dye which is Mitsubishi chemicals corp (i.e. 'MCC 004' media code I think it is on the 16x DVD+R Azo media) as they do make cheaper Verbatim's which costs less but it's worth paying a little extra for the Mitsubishi dye which you just look for 'Azo' on package (for older Verbatim DVD recordable media it's usually listed under 'DataLife Plus'). because I know when it comes to the typical cheap Verbatim CD-R's (of which I got some of these not all that long ago at a discount (100 CD-R's for about $18)) they are NOT the Mitsubishi dye on those but is using the cheaper 'CMC Magnetics' (even the surface looks different to) but these will probably be okay and I got them cheap enough (like about $18 for 100 discs where as the Mitsubishi ones will cost more) and I am just using them for occasional music CD-R (and maybe once in a great while very limited data backup).

like on Ebay you can see 'Value series' Verbatim's (or 'Life Series') which are almost surely not using the higher quality Mitsubishi dye. but I do see some 'Azo' DVD+R's which after shipping etc will be around $32 from a quick look. you can see these went up in price vs a while ago you could usually get them in the $20-25 range in about total cost, sometimes a little cheaper if you found a deal. but from a quick look on Amazon the DVD+R 100 pack of Verbatim Azo's are $24.99, which sadly is $0.01 shy of qualifying for free shipping, so I would guess will probably be over $30 when is all said and done. I even see TY (TYG03 media code which is 16x DVD-R TY media as the 8x TY discs I got a fairly long time ago now are TYG02 which is 8x rated) under the CMC Pro brand on Amazon for a bit less than $33 which should be a fairly safe bet (like one of the better ones you will get at a reasonable price short of finding stuff from the old days which will probably be inflated in price) especially if they kept pretty much the same formula for a long time as the TY media I have I think is the stuff from the old days as it burns quite well as I still got a large portion of my 100-pack left. I have not personally used those CMC Pro branded ones but it's probably the best your going to get for a reasonable price range (or the Verbatim variations with Mitsubishi dye).

one last thing... if you got one of those laptop burners (or external ones that are slim and powered solely from USB port) these are generally of lower quality than a proper desktop PC burner. so they might be more likely to fail on burning discs, especially if the discs are so-so quality.

anyways, good luck

p.s. but with that said, if one wants to save a little $ you could gamble on the cheaper Verbatim variations as they might still be 'good enough', but it's safer to stick with Azo (or equivalent) if you want data for long term storage.

Edited November 29, 2022 by ThaCrip

[SnoopZ]

On 29/11/2022 at 10:57, ThaCrip said:

 

I get what you mean as I can babble on a bit too long and could probably condense what I say a bit, but I just mostly type stuff as it comes into my head.

but I guess the gist of it is... use quality CD/DVD's (generally Verbatim(with Mitsubishi dye!)/Taiyo Yuden) and one can potentially use KProbe (or the like) with the right burner to check the quality of the burns.   ; the Linux comments about getting ImgBurn setup will definitely be valuable to anyone who still burns CD/DVD and uses Linux and still wants to use ImgBurn though even though I realize that just about everyone, if not everyone, reading this won't use it.

anyways, I figure if someone is still burning CD/DVD etc today (which I would assume most people are not) it might be worth reading if they want more details. if not, they likely won't care in the slightest if my post is long or short anyways since they will just skip right over it, especially given this topic was mainly about using hard drives for storing data etc and that burning optical media came into it since it's a solid alternative to hard drive storage for important data.

anyways, I think people in general are like that as when I read random things online on random forums ill sometimes read longer posts if I have enough interest in the subject to get a bit more details, but if not, and it's a really long post (similar to mine), ill just skip over it and continue on with the next post etc.

p.s. but I do think peoples attention spans are kind of bad these days (hell, mine probably is on some level to, as I guess it's somewhat human nature, especially if I don't have some level of interest in a subject etc) where if they got to read more than a sentence of two, it's the end of the world

Most people don't have time or the will power to read long posts like yours.. Like your mega post below, all I could read was the first paragraph. Hehe

No offence meant here.

 

 

 

[ThaCrip]

On 29/11/2022 at 07:29, SnoopZ said:

Most people don't have time or the will power to read long posts like yours.. Like your mega post below, all I could read was the first paragraph. Hehe

I can easily understand not reading some of my rather massive posts in this topic, but the one you quoted (unless you referred to the one to bikeman25 just above your post(?), but even if this is true, I suspect he has some level of interest in this stuff), while not short, does not babble on too long either as I cover different areas and pretty much kept each little section reasonably brief. not a single sentence level brief, but not anywhere near novel level either

but my posts related to bikeman25 and my initial post to NinjaGinger etc can be all novel like and I can easily see how many won't read those.

but since you brought it up that "most people don't have time"... I guess when people are really tight on time they probably ain't going to spend time reading much of anything besides whatever it is they got to do. but I guess it comes back to how interested they are in the topic and how much free time they got etc on whether they will read (or mostly read by skimming over the posts ) my novels or not.

hell, just roughly timing how long it takes me to re-read this general text to you here in this post is only about 1-2 minutes, which if someone can't spare that amount of time, good luck. I would not say it's unreasonable for someone to spend a couple of minutes reading a post as if it starts getting quite a bit longer than this, depending on ones interest in said topic, I can easily see how they might skip it at that point.

 

On 29/11/2022 at 07:29, SnoopZ said:

No offence meant here.

Yeah, I understand.

[bikeman25]

Yes my external usb burner is powered solely from USB port,   i could get a enclosure and grab old desktop burner outta very old AMD FX Computer that is still boxed up somewhere in my closet,   as i traded in my old PC DVD burner when i got my current Intel I7 10700 Desktop built in June 2020 at local shop,  and or when it gets to my birthday purchase a newer desktop burner possibly.     

 

Got plenty of options and choices to choice from to improve my file backups, and data safe keeping 

 

In Process of doing Monthly backup currently here, therefore replying from PC 2 Gaming Laptop lol at the moment,  no built in burner on this PC either lol.