[mythtv-users] Options for Backing up Myth data

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Thu Dec 9 17:04:39 UTC 2010


On Thursday, December 09, 2010 09:43:45 am Raymond Wagner wrote:
> On 12/9/2010 11:27, Brian Wood wrote:
> > On Thursday, December 09, 2010 09:16:59 am Raymond Wagner wrote:
> >> On 12/9/2010 10:03, Brian Wood wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, December 08, 2010 08:56:35 pm Raymond Wagner wrote:
> >>>> On 12/8/2010 22:30, Brian Wood wrote:
> >>>>> On Wednesday, December 08, 2010 06:07:20 pm Dave Badia wrote:
> >>>>> Or folks are using some other option
> >>>> 
> >>>> Flash drives are simply more convenient, and while smaller than
> >>>> BD-Rs, still offer plenty of space for most people.  The fact
> >>>> that they are read/writable on just about any computer also
> >>>> makes them far more useful.
> >>> 
> >>> Flash drives are OK for documents and photos, but they are pretty
> >>> much useless for any significant amount of video, especially HD.
> >>> The amount of data you can store on a flash drive is about what
> >>> is practical to store online.
> >> 
> >> To be fair, bulk storage of HD video isn't something 'normal'
> >> people generally have to concern themselves with.  Personally,
> >> the amount of data you can store on a Bluray disk just isn't
> >> practical for bulk storage.  For a couple home videos, it's fine.
> >>  If you intend to back up your entire, multi-TB collection, there
> >> is a time component involved that you're not considering.  With a
> >> hard drive or tape drive, you tell it to copy, and you come back
> >> half a day and several TB later.  With Bluray, you're going to
> >> have to keep coming back every 20-30 minutes to swap disks, and
> >> you have to do that 80+ times to equal one large hard drive.  My
> >> time is just worth more than that.
> > 
> > That same argument would apply to flash drives, since flash units
> > larger than 32GB (or even 16) are prohibitively expensive, and
> > need to be changed as well.
> > 
> > The problem with hard drives is once removed from a system they are
> > extremely fragile, as was pointed out earlier.
> > 
> > Tape systems are beyond what most consumers want to spend,
> > especially if you include a SCSI controller.
> 
> My point was that most people who aren't doing video are perfectly
> content with the 4-16GB of commonly available flash drives.  People
> aren't using BD-Rs because the average user doesn't need that much
> space.  Flash drives are much easier, and in the volume they need,
> much cheaper.
> 
> Just because you can drop an optical disk without risk of damage
> doesn't mean they're reliable.  I've tried recovering from CDs and
> DVDs before. At a couple years age, DVDs were somewhere around
> 75-80% readable, and CDs were something far less.  I don't expect
> BD-Rs to be any different. The organic dyes fade over time, and
> that's assuming they haven't died already from a seal breach.  If
> you want a reliable archive, you're going to need multiple copies,
> and you're going to need to cycle in fresh media at some interval on
> the order of a few years.  Burning that volume of BD-Rs repeatedly
> is not a proposition I'm interested in.  I'd rather take my chances
> that I don't drop the hard drive.

So no matter what method you choose, you must put up with a serious 
potential problem in some way.

Risk dropping a drive, risk media degrading, do a lot of media changing 
(ie: time) or spend a lot of money. Each method seems to have some sort 
of fatal flaw, or more than one.

I guess the experience with tape drives in the past has shown backup 
devices to be a hard sell to consumers, most of whom would rather have 
some new toy that gets used *now*, and not just potentially needed in 
the event of a problem that might never happen.

The result is that manufacturers don't concentrate on consumer backup 
solutions, but on enterprise level backup solutions, those people having 
both the money and the motivation to pay for a good backup answer.





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