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Yesterday I tried to do some backups to a 5 year old stack of blank Verbatim DVDs. This batch of DVDs have worked very well over the past 5 years, but yesterday I had several of them fail to write. I have always found Verbatim discs to be a very reliable product. In the end I had to throttle down the write speed to the very minimum (2Mb/sec) before writing to the disc worked.
From past experience I know that once you have successfully written a disc, it will remain readable for decades. But it seems if you want to write to a blank disc, it had better be less than about 4 years old?
I was wondering what your experience with DVDs is like? In your opinion, what is the expiry time for a blank, unused disc?
By the way: I created "coasters" of the blank discs, using 3 different applications: The Windows built-in DVD writer, UltraIso and a 10 year old version of Roxio. In the end I found UltraIso worked when setting the write speed to a minimum.
I probably need a fresh batch of DVDs. 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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 I have to smile at this post.
The last time I was looking for a writable DVD to burn some software so I could install it - my boss looked at me really weird and handed me a 4GB usb drive. I just sat there looking silly.
I can't comment on the shelf life of non-written discs, but I do recall that NASA went to great lengths to study their storage reliability. They weren't happy with the results - they wanted reliability past 20 years.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Yeah, I realize I am old school. But DVDs are the ultimate air-gapped storage for backups. Especially if your backups are just a few GB in size.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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My problem with DVD's as a backup medium is twofold: they don't last that long (easy to damage, and prone to plastic fatigue if badly stored), and dependant on a compatible drive. I've had DVDs where they write fine, read fine, but stick 'em in a different machine and they are unreadable because (I think) the head alignment is slightly different. Doesn't seem to matter with pressed DVD's, but I think the track width tolerance is wider there.
Big USB / external HDD is a better solution for me at least, as well as considerably faster to write!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Yes, I also back up on an external hard drive, but what if that drive fails? I suppose I consider my backup dvds as a backup for my backups!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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I have multiple external drives which I cycle through so if one fails I have the previous backup set to fall back to.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I’ve used NAS units for my backup for 10-15 years now. Disks are RAID-ed and when one dies I just plop in another. Every once in while I have to copy the whole lot when I upgrade my NAS. Currently using a Synology 418 and I love it. Offsite backup for really valuable stuff on an external hard drive in a bank safety deposit box.
So far, I’ve lost only what I erased myself but there is no backup system that fully protects you from gits.
Mircea
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I am not sure, but I don't think that backing up to a NAS will protect you from Ransomware attacks. Ransomware will probably encrypt the NAS as well.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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True, but general hygiene practices (updated antivirus, a good firewall, common sense while browsing) have kept me safe from viruses and ransomware so far. Besides, I’m too small a fish to fry for a targeted attack. Offsite backup also helps.
Mircea
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Cp-Coder wrote: I don't think that backing up to a NAS will protect you from Ransomware attacks
If you can ensure that the credentials needed to access the NAS are different than the ones used for logging onto the potentially-infected machine(s), it shouldn't be a problem.
Not that I don't still prefer a completely offline backup. And then an offsite backup to the backup.
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Just curious if some of you ever considered cloud as offsite solution for critical data. What scares me about home solutions is that if the house/office gets damaged all data is lost forever 😱
Almost every cloud provider has a cheap price tier for archive (write once, access rarely). You benefit from top security, both physical (Geo redundant archives in data centers protected by military level security) and IT (encryption, best attack surveillance and best security experts in the world)
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Okay, I buy a LOT of USB devices. You can bulk buy them.
If your storage needs are that small. It's easy.
But simply get a MicroSD USB device. Buy the MicroSD cards you need. They take up NO SPACE.
I have clients who keep a few of their encrypted backups in the trunk of their vehicles. They
swap them out every friday. that is the "off-site" disaster recovery for a few dollars!
With a little effort you could make a 12hr fire rated block of drywall "safe" to keep them in.
They store nicely in the normal SD card holders, and are still small.
And WAY faster the DVD. [I get data delivered via DVD every month, and WISH they went to SD cards,
it's almost faster to DOWNLOAD than to access on the DVD, LOL]
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I disconnect the one backup drive when not in use. So. far, so good.
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There are a second kind of DVD (and blueray) disk called "M-Disk" where M stands for Millenium. They do require a specialized burner (which really burns them unlike the normal type). They can be read on any player.
M-DISC - Wikipedia[^]
I actually own such a burner - for archiving valuable photos, for example - but the problem falls back to the "ancient" problem of having any sort of suitable player down the line. I already have a problem with VHS tapes I want to digitize but have no working VHS player.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Quote: I already have a problem with VHS tapes I want to digitize but have no working VHS player.
Yes! I have several VHS tapes that I want to burn to dvds, and I have a Toshiba VHS player that can copy VHS to DVD, but the stupid piece of cr*p committed suicide. I suspect it is in the power supply, and I have been planning to climb into the unit with a soldering iron to cut solid state fuzes out of the circuit and so force it to obey my commands, but haven't gotten so far yet.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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FANTASTIC! Thanks for posting this. You reminded me that I had a small stack of M-discs bought some years ago, that I couldn't use with my old DVD drives. So I tried it in my newer Dell desktop bought a year ago and the regular DVD drive that Dell shipped with the machine, does write to M-discs no problem. Go Dell!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Maybe you don't want to spend the $, but if you take your stuff to a shop that does VHS transfers to digital, they'll have the VHS machines.
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I've also struggled to write DVDs under W10.
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I currently favor UltraIso. I found it simple to use, but it won't work if your writer cannot write to an old DVD disc.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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To be fair, it was an external USB DVD writer as the laptop doesn't have a drive, so that could have been part of the problem as well as the cheap disc I used. I think I used ImgBurn (which used to work very well on W7. Also to note is that the installer may contain unwanted extras according to a post I saw).
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Have you checked the lifetime of your writer?
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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My writer is in a year old machine and has just about never been used.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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I read somewhere that if you're DVD drive has power, it's writing/reading LEDs will be degrading with time. They'll eventually wear out and you'll not be able to read or write DVD's reliably. I've had a few old DVD drives that seemed to fail this way.
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My limited experience: I can still read CD-Rs I made in 1998, and have just tested one of the 100 DVD-Rs bought in 2011 (10p each on a spindle): burned fine at x16 using Imgburn, verified OK, now stored for posterity.
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In my experience it's not the age of the discs so much as it is the age of the DVD writer. We back up our source control and all of our product builds, so we write 500-800 discs a year. Most writers are only good for 200-300 discs before you start getting increasing write failure rates like you describe. My practice now is to replace the writer if it fails more than 1 disc in 10.
Software Zen: delete this;
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