Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

Hi everyone, so i have been backing up data/movies to DVD for years and
it's served me well, i know many will say optical drives and media are
dead but i'm in the camp that does not agree. I still back up to HDD
(both internal & external) and vital images and docs get uploaded every
24 hours (about 1GB) but i know full well one day a HDD will work fine
and plug it back in a week later and clcik of death so backing up to
optical media and just another safety net, so now i have that lot off my
chest on to the reason for the post.

What kind of burner to go for, but please bear in mind that reliablity
of the media is high up on my list, i think i have heard of something
called "M" but hear the media is rare as rocking horse sh1t and it ain't
cheap but i'm confused by drive type and media types, for example i see
some media goes from 25GB to 200GB, the drives themselves Blu-ray BD-RE,
Blu-ray BD-RE Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R and the
usual RW formats which i doubt i would use much but i guess could come
in handy sometimes, i also see 4k versions coming online now.

I have done some googleing and found a few articles but none mention the
media side of things and was hoping some of you folks could help me out
a bit.

TIA

Jim

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

On Sat, 05 Jan 2019 01:53:40 +0000, Jim
wrote:


I have done some googleing and found a few articles but none mention the
media side of things and was hoping some of you folks could help me out
a bit.

You want CRC datasum checking software to periodically test burnt
media against a source you're backing up. You also want a similar
optical media software checker for evidence of error handling counts
from test writes.

I was using exclusively DVD erasable rewritable, which I still have,
although the price on HDDs came down to where a backup on data
quantities over time constraints, that become unmanageable on DVD,
were affordable on multi-Terabyte HDDs. The transition to BlueRay was
also not unaffected at the same time from HDD pricing.

DVD burner units are as much a quarter of the price of a BlueRay,
depending on your needs. There's reviews for comparing to brand
buying skews from such as Amazon.

The software for testing your backup discs is more involved than a
HDD, as at the very least there will more discs, in the case either,
from one day to the next, ceases to read or quintessentially exist.

You may dollar cost average megabyte per cents for whether an extra
HDD(s) are cost viable at your expected usages. Time constraints, not
so, there may be as much as a factor of, offhand, fifty times longer
to write and verify optical media.

Optical media testing procedures doesn't happen overnight, you'll need
to read and look for solutions. My really old NERO, often featured
and bundled with drives, aren't what drives may be now. But it did at
that point have a better optical test routine.

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

Jim wrote:
Hi everyone, so i have been backing up data/movies to DVD for years and
it's served me well, i know many will say optical drives and media are
dead but i'm in the camp that does not agree. I still back up to HDD
(both internal & external) and vital images and docs get uploaded every
24 hours (about 1GB) but i know full well one day a HDD will work fine
and plug it back in a week later and clcik of death so backing up to
optical media and just another safety net, so now i have that lot off my
chest on to the reason for the post.

What kind of burner to go for, but please bear in mind that reliablity
of the media is high up on my list, i think i have heard of something
called "M" but hear the media is rare as rocking horse sh1t and it ain't
cheap but i'm confused by drive type and media types, for example i see
some media goes from 25GB to 200GB, the drives themselves Blu-ray BD-RE,
Blu-ray BD-RE Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R and the
usual RW formats which i doubt i would use much but i guess could come
in handy sometimes, i also see 4k versions coming online now.

I have done some googleing and found a few articles but none mention the
media side of things and was hoping some of you folks could help me out
a bit.

TIA

Jim

Without getting techie, a review of media availability (compared
to last year), suggests this industry is dying.

Last year I could see more entries for BD-XL, and the prices
seemed better last year.

Do you want to hitch your wagon to a dead technology ?

I can see one popular optical drive model number on Newegg, is unreliable,
with the last couple of reviews being of the "died after three months"
type. That sort of thing would be important, if you expected
a drive you put in a cardboard box, to have a reasonable chance
of working 20 years from now.

Even hard drives soon, by design, won't have "longevity". The
industry seems to be headed towards an "all-Helium" future.
My favorite air-breather is discontinued, and I seem to be
seeing a stack of Helium drives with linear pricing. The
Helium is guaranteed to stay inside the drive for (5) years.
If I wanted to dig a hole in the back yard, drop a Helium drive
in the hole, what would I find 20 years from now ? Whereas
with an air-breather drive, you'd still have something.

I think the general signal here is, you cannot plan to
"burn and bury" archives in the traditional way. But
will have to "juggle" them, bouncing them from one
kind of media to another, as the need arises.

Paul

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

On Sat, 05 Jan 2019 01:53:40 +0000, Jim
wrote:

Hi everyone, so i have been backing up data/movies to DVD for years and
it's served me well, i know many will say optical drives and media are
dead but i'm in the camp that does not agree. I still back up to HDD
(both internal & external) and vital images and docs get uploaded every
24 hours (about 1GB) but i know full well one day a HDD will work fine
and plug it back in a week later and clcik of death so backing up to
optical media and just another safety net, so now i have that lot off my
chest on to the reason for the post.

What kind of burner to go for, but please bear in mind that reliablity
of the media is high up on my list, i think i have heard of something
called "M" but hear the media is rare as rocking horse sh1t and it ain't
cheap but i'm confused by drive type and media types, for example i see
some media goes from 25GB to 200GB, the drives themselves Blu-ray BD-RE,
Blu-ray BD-RE Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R Dual Layer, Blu-ray BD-R and the
usual RW formats which i doubt i would use much but i guess could come
in handy sometimes, i also see 4k versions coming online now.

I have done some googleing and found a few articles but none mention the
media side of things and was hoping some of you folks could help me out
a bit.

TIA

Jim

I was doing what you are talking about until a year ago. Reason I
quit was I went through 3 differnet drives within 4 years. Different
brands and not the low rated ones, and using different media brands.
All would work great for about 11 months and then start burning
coasters 2 out of 10, and get quickly worse. My opinion is that the
tech never fully matured enough. Oh well.

The one redaeming thing was I could use the discs in my bluray player
hooked to the TV and watch downloaded videos on the 50" screen in the
front room.

You should consider doing as I do now; get a USB HDD dock (actually I
have a swap tray on my computer) and look on craigslist or offerup or
even local thrift stores for used harddrives. I see 500gb ones for
very cheap (~$20) quite often. I always check the SMART stuff before
use, and have several that are many years old and still work fine when
I plug them back in.

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

On 05/01/2019 17:48, Plasspec wrote:
I was doing what you are talking about until a year ago. Reason I
quit was I went through 3 differnet drives within 4 years. Different
brands and not the low rated ones, and using different media brands.
All would work great for about 11 months and then start burning
coasters 2 out of 10, and get quickly worse. My opinion is that the
tech never fully matured enough. Oh well.

The one redaeming thing was I could use the discs in my bluray player
hooked to the TV and watch downloaded videos on the 50" screen in the
front room.

You should consider doing as I do now; get a USB HDD dock (actually I
have a swap tray on my computer) and look on craigslist or offerup or
even local thrift stores for used harddrives. I see 500gb ones for
very cheap (~$20) quite often. I always check the SMART stuff before
use, and have several that are many years old and still work fine when
I plug them back in.
Oh dear this thread is not going the way i wanted.
I have read elsewhere about problems like this so may stay with DVD for
a little while longer and look at HDD in about 6 months when my new
build will start

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

On 05/01/2019 08:33, Paul wrote:
Even hard drives soon, by design, won't have "longevity". The
industry seems to be headed towards an "all-Helium" future.
My favorite air-breather is discontinued, and I seem to be
seeing a stack of Helium drives with linear pricing. The
Helium is guaranteed to stay inside the drive for (5) years.
If I wanted to dig a hole in the back yard, drop a Helium drive
in the hole, what would I find 20 years from now ? Whereas
with an air-breather drive, you'd still have something.


Paul

Paul can you explain this a wee bit more for me or point me in the
direction of some reading regarding "all-Helium & air-breather"? Most of
my spinners are WD Blacks and Greens and about 70% being Blacks

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

Jim wrote:
On 05/01/2019 08:33, Paul wrote:
Even hard drives soon, by design, won't have "longevity". The
industry seems to be headed towards an "all-Helium" future.
My favorite air-breather is discontinued, and I seem to be
seeing a stack of Helium drives with linear pricing. The
Helium is guaranteed to stay inside the drive for (5) years.
If I wanted to dig a hole in the back yard, drop a Helium drive
in the hole, what would I find 20 years from now ? Whereas
with an air-breather drive, you'd still have something.


Paul

Paul can you explain this a wee bit more for me or point me in the
direction of some reading regarding "all-Helium & air-breather"? Most of
my spinners are WD Blacks and Greens and about 70% being Blacks

Ordinary disk drives do not have a vacuum inside.

They're filled with air.

There's a hole in the HDA, that lets air in and out.
Underneath the hole is a disc made of fibers and it's
a hepafilter. It keeps dust from getting inside the drive.
Even though air is freely exchanged through the hole (slowly),
the inside of the drive is still "Class 10" on cleanliness.

The ordinary hard drives actually have more than one hole.
There's a hole for the servowriter arm to be shoved inside
the drive and write a servo pattern. After the pattern is
written, the arm is withdrawn and a sticker covers the hole.
You might not have noticed because of the color they
selected for the stickers, but they're relatively
flimsy compared to the milled box used for the base
of the drive.

The stickers could not afford to be pressurized, so instead
the drive is allowed to equalize pressure. The drive is rated
to work, up to 10,000 feet or so. (The heads won't "fly"
quite as well in Denver.)

*******

The new drives are sealed. No more servowriters. No more
stickers. You might even see a lack of screws. The drive
is filled with Helium gas. Air filled drives hold four platters.
Helium drives can have seven+ platters. (They're even making
thinner platters for those drives.)

Helium is less viscous. The motor doesn't have to work
as hard to spin the platters with only Helium to provide
"air friction". And Helium is a slightly better conductor
of heat, so the HDA gets the heat a bit easier. That might
make a difference to the microscopic conditions around
the head assembly while it's flying or something.

On the one hand, the drive is in less danger of getting
dust inside. With no breather hole, there's no easy way
for the breather to be compromised (when your house floods
and your desktop computer is flooded with water). The
Helium drive has that covered, except dirty flood water
can still short out sensitive circuits on the
controller board. But at least you don't have to
worry about the HDA "flooding".

Will there still be Helium in the Helium drive ten
years from now ? We don't know for sure. Accelerated
life testing tries to answer that question, but then
it's a question of whether the test case is "representative"
or not of real conditions and how the materials will "age".

The secret to sealing the Helium in, isn't the welded cover.
There is a separate cover with a wide adhesive edge finish.
The adhesive is deep enough from the outside of the
cover inwards, that the Helium "has trouble escaping".
It's the depth of the adhesive that keeps the gas in.

I presume any welded covers you find, are for mechanical
protection. A weld would likely leak, as it would be
difficult to make a liquid metal seam that was gas tight
after it cooled off. Such a metal cover can be "transparent"
to a gas like Hydrogen, but Helium is big enough that
it's possible to hold it with regular materials. I think
metals leak Hydrogen around 500C or so (goes through
pretty easily then). Helium is still a bitch, but
not nearly as bad as some of the properties of
Hydrogen. (Exploding is just one of the properties
that matter for Hydrogen :-/ ) The adhesive holds
the He gas, but other solutions "help keep the cover on".

You can't very well put screws through the cover,
because the adhesive would have to make a wide
swath around each screw.

Like everything disk drive companies do, it's pretty crazy
stuff. But the change in the product lineup last year,
suggests they'll give up on air breathing drives entirely.
If they'd kept my favorite drive around, I would have
continued to believe the low capacity drives would use air,
and only the more expensive high capacity ones would use
Helium.

With the air-filled drives, there's nothing to escape, so
20 years from now it's just a matter of whether the motor
still has lube in the spindle bearing. Everything else in
the drive should hold up well. As long as the two drops
of oil stay in the FDB motor, it's frictionless.

Paul

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

Jim wrote:
On 05/01/2019 17:48, Plasspec wrote:
I was doing what you are talking about until a year ago. Reason I
quit was I went through 3 differnet drives within 4 years. Different
brands and not the low rated ones, and using different media brands.
All would work great for about 11 months and then start burning
coasters 2 out of 10, and get quickly worse. My opinion is that the
tech never fully matured enough. Oh well.

The one redaeming thing was I could use the discs in my bluray player
hooked to the TV and watch downloaded videos on the 50" screen in the
front room.

You should consider doing as I do now; get a USB HDD dock (actually I
have a swap tray on my computer) and look on craigslist or offerup or
even local thrift stores for used harddrives. I see 500gb ones for
very cheap (~$20) quite often. I always check the SMART stuff before
use, and have several that are many years old and still work fine when
I plug them back in.
Oh dear this thread is not going the way i wanted.
I have read elsewhere about problems like this so may stay with DVD for
a little while longer and look at HDD in about 6 months when my new
build will start

I don't think anyone here wants to spoil your fun.

I buy tech goods here for their "toy" value, and I don't
want to deprive you of that opportunity. If you had some
critical function for this stuff though, I want to set your
level of expectations accordingly.

But if you just want to screw around with 100GB recording
media, have at it. You might still be able to buy a few XL
discs.

I have a 250MB ZIP drive here. I bought a grand total of
"one pack of cartridges" for it :-) That's $100 for five carts.
I loaded them up with materials once. I haven't read them since.
Not ever... :-) How embarrassing. See. I like toys too. Now
I have a 1.25GB archive that cost a small fortune. A $5 USB stick
would more than cover that today. At the time it didn't seem
foolish - it seemed cool. But today it looks pretty bad.

I do DVD burning here, but that's because I use those
for boot media. I must have around a hundred of those
now, scattered all over the place (four or five "stacks").
A BD would be a bit big for a boot disc.

Paul

Advice on BluRay burners and media
 

On Sat, 05 Jan 2019 20:48:01 +0000, Jim
wrote:

Oh dear this thread is not going the way i wanted.
I have read elsewhere about problems like this so may stay with DVD for
a little while longer and look at HDD in about 6 months when my new
build will start

DVDs used to be rated. There's special software to read the embedded
codes, normally inaccessible, a given Pacific Rim factory uses for
product identities.

That's the initial and prime source. Where it gets interesting is the
middle or "jobber" stage, for brand distribution purposes. First bear
in mind not all identities are equal: some discs may exhibit
substandard or uncharacteristic errors. What happens is that major
brandnames will buy such discs, indiscriminately and falsely to
advertise them within whatever "graded tier" product they choose.

You buy x-brand's Ultra disc one day, by way of example, turn around
the next, and a superior disc lot may have been substituted, as the
same Ultra-disc grade, by an inferior "coded" disc during the jobber
stage.

And then there's the writers, themselves, their firmware support,
based for these codes, at presumably some consequent optimal write
adjustment to account different branded discs.

The name of the game, briefly to "cut to the chase", is you need a
reference, specific to those factory codes, for known test results;-
you go to the store, then, buy your brand based on your research, open
the package and immediately determine the factory origin code: If the
ID codes do not match for predetermined test results, the discs are
false and a return trip for your money back is indicated. Repeat as
necessary or buy from a trusted source that's reputable.

The burner units are less tedious because there's only a three or four
brands to consider for their integrity, i.e., a closer focus on
testing means a narrower and discrete band of determinable results.

The sources for optical media reliance may not be now as contained, as
when optical media was in during its prime, although a market is still
there, and grade-test result should still be obtainable.

For many, whatever is in the Microsoft organizational scheme of a GUI
OS -- My Pictures directory -- is just fine and peachy for endeavoring
laser-writing skills. Much less a My Cat, or Dog, subdirectory, or
multiples of gigabytes in excess of a single 4G DVD, a 600-megabyte
"boot CD" to supplant a 1.44 floppy or BIOS boot-dependencies. All of
which were significantly supplanted, anyway, by *nix Android
derivatives -- a photocentric cloud media dependency to handheld
devices -- when the Microsoft "OS market" [to emulate these trends]
turned stagnantly south a few years back.

It may seem borrowed time, but it's still time computing on optical
media computer hardware, nonetheless. You have a choice, either to
write effectively to rust with the magic of magnetism, or a layer of
dye beneath plastic from a laser. Both are unique according to their
applications.