Which DVD Media to use and how to burn Data

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 02:01:04 GMT, Roy L. Fuchs

So far I've personally had more of a problem with Hard Drives than media like CD-R or DVD-R.

In my lifetime so far I have owned four hard drives, and one of them I got stung pretty badly with when the drive heads crashed and I lost about 33gb of data. I have still kept hold of the drive in case one day the price of data recovery comes down to reasonable levels, then there is a small chance I might be able to recover some of the data from the drive.

That's why though I have always been cautious since with data and have always made backups to other drives and media. I have always been more wary of Hard Drives though because of percentages alone I have suffered more. For me personally reliability with Hard Drives is 75% with one in four of the drives I have had crashing.

If I also include the computer systems I use at work the figure is a little worse. One in three of the hard drives I've had in different systems at work have crashed on me. In total that is 2 out of 7 hard drive failures. And that's 71% reliability overall that I've personally experienced with hard drives.

I think as far as internal hard drives are concerned you definitely need to have other drives to back up to. Perhaps hard drives are more reliable as an external drive that you only connect once in a while when you want to make a backup, and for the most part sit on a shelf, powered down in a protective enclosure.

Maybe once I have had 100 hard drives I would be able to get a better picture of reliability compared with CD-R and DVD-R. So far though for me personally CD-R and DVD-R have been more reliable.

I will probably still get an external hard drive to use as a backup device simply because of the space that so many DVD-Rs would take up, and also for the convenience and speed factor. I am still very cautious of hard drives though. Once stung twice shy.

John