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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Blu-Ray for Archive

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Harky Jewett

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I have a couple student shoots coming up where budget is a big concern and going to a post house is not an option.

So my question is, can I recommend putting the files on Blu-Ray for storage. I know it's not as secure as tape, but wouldn't this be better than leaving them on a hard drive?
 
This isn't much help to you, but holographic discs are on the way which store 300GB a disc, estimated to rise to 1.6TB by 2010. For big-budget Red productions this could be ideal, backing up an almost full Red-Drive to a single disc/cartridge. At $18,000 though, the InPhase Tapestry holographic drive will cost more than a Red-Body, with discs estimated to be priced at about $180 each with a 50-year life span.
 
I've been looking around for anyone reporting test results for data longevity on recordable Blu-Ray. So far, nothing. Many DVD burners will report pre-correction bit error rates on playback to assist you in judging the quality of a burn. So far as I know, no Blu-Ray drives can do that at this time.

Hard drives have moving parts and may stop working at any time, but I'm not sure any data exists yet to suggest that Blu-Ray is any better.

Note: various kinds of holographic media has been in the works for at least 10 years, so I wouldn't hold my breath for that particular product.
 
Harky said:
I have a couple student shoots coming up where budget is a big concern and going to a post house is not an option.

So my question is, can I recommend putting the files on Blu-Ray for storage. I know it's not as secure as tape, but wouldn't this be better than leaving them on a hard drive?
Click to expand...

yes. Blue ray is absolutely perfect for that. in fact i've been advocating this for a looooong time.

do not misunderstand what i'm talking about here.

i'm not recommending blue-ray backup for people who shoot 50 hours per week. Than you have to go a tape based backup. Blue ray (backup) is for indie projects like student films.short film, corporate videos and stuff. A backup which is easy to store, fast and cheap which you (indies) can do it in the desktop environment at your own comfort.

if one do not agree with me,tell me what is the next best solution for a indie,without breaking the bank!
 
Data longevity with Blu-Ray is going to be about the same as with DVD+R/RW. And we're not quite sure what that is, but disc makers are claiming 30 years. As long as the disc is properly written and verified and stored properly, it's not going to go bad before something better comes along to transfer it to.

My only concern with Blu-Ray for archival is the cost per GB is pretty high. But it may make sense for student applications though... Within the next year or two, BD media will be commonly readable on most any newer computer. And if the students are not archiving much, it could be a more user friendly and cost-effective way for each student to have 2 or 3 discs at $15 each vs. having them supply hard drives.

All depends on the quantity of footage being stored and if Blu-Ray fits in the budget I guess. For most any RED owner that will be archiving any significant amount of footage, Blu-Ray just doesn't make sense when comparing costs. LTO-3 is the current cost per GB leader and probably the safest bet for archival right now too. But you have to do dual archives of 25TB or more to start seeing the cost benefits vs. HDDs.
 
Archive in general is a huge issue - there is also a concern about a BD disc of today being readable in 30-50 years by a system? I have phase change opticals from 10 years ago that are impossible to mount on any system. So it is not only the disc, but the drivers, the reader, etc. Of course that is for long term archive. BD for now for small projects is fine. I would stay away from FireWire drives they have a high failure rate over time compared to other formats. LTO is always a solution for now as well.


Michael
 
Bluray on set R3d back up is great. Do multiple copies with 2 BR burners. Confirm before leaving set.
Take your drives and cut your projects. Outsource a LTO backup at an IT vault shop at completion. Store final project in LTO and blu ray in multiple locations.
Transfer as new media becomes available. Maximum 5 years.
 
"Transfer as new becomes available"

There can be a lot of costs associated with that as well depending on how much media was shot, archived, etc. There is no easy answer for long term. The AMPAS study on archive was very interesting where they compared archive for film, digital and other formats for long term archive with all costs involved. It was done across the film and television market, government, medical, etc. MovieMaker magazine this month has a good overview article on it as well as several articles in the Hollywood Reporter over the past several months. Especially since the Universal fire.. lots of attention on the issue right now.

Michael
 
Yes... how much time are people spending right now copying old CDs to newer DVD backups, and old DVDs to newer Blu-Ray backups? And if the time / personnel / money budget isn't in place to do this now, I'm guessing the future will be similar.
 
I wouldn't consider organic-dye-based writable discs "archival" at all. Not even for a few years. I had a bunch of CD-Rs (name-brand) that were totally unreadable in well under a decade.

I would guess that backup tape and hard drives are more secure. For my media, I buy hard drives, put them in carriers to use with FireWire enclosures, and make two copies of everything. They're cheap enough now to store on a shelf.

MichaelP said:
I would stay away from FireWire drives they have a high failure rate over time compared to other formats.
Click to expand...

What is a FireWire drive? Drive mechanisms don't vary with the interface. For example, my enclosures have both FireWire and USB. The drives are just regular SATA drives.
 
I agree 100%. Made the same experiences, except with the Kodak Gold CD´s. They are still readable after 10 years. My choice for 8Gb would be DVD archival gold (Delkin) if it would exist. Now I´m using Hard drives: cheap, easy to change and fast.
 
I was using "FireWire" as a generic term. You are correct. Drives with spinning discs I what I meant to say... like wine that needs a quarter turn when stored for many years from time to time, those drives need to be spun up. Maintenance costs to do so, as well as pliability are the major issues with these types of archives.

Michael
 
I would trust a writable disc (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R) over a hard drive for storage purposes anyday. I regularly retrieve data from discs that are 10+ years old; it's rare that I've had a hard drive last with regular use for more than 3-4 years.
 
given the characteristics,isn't SSD a good bet for long time archival? so in a few years when the next-gen SSD comes along,you just transfer the file to new SSD technology.

- we could set a raid 6 in SSD too. and must keep a new,empty, SSD's on the shelf, so in lets say 5 years time,we try mounting a drive and 2 drives fail, we just slap in the empty drives, let the raid build the drive again and transfer the media to next-gen raid 6 SSD technology.
 
Just to let you guys know that Sony finally announced the release of x6 BD media today.
 
Blu-ray disk will good for your purpose since it's low cost and relatively reliable. Remember to use high quality disk if your footage are for long term storage or archive purpose. I have some CD-R disks that was burn about 13 years ago and they're still working very well, they're the cheapest brand i can afford at that time! Keep it well and it will work well. So my own article of 20 years ago is still accessible! (very first media was floppy)

Hard drive will be reliable too if you take great care of it, I bought a hard drive of 340MB back in 1994, and all my data is still accessible.

Pls note both the above CD-R disk & hard drive are not used often, maybe one or two times a year or less, since they're for archival purpose.

Tape backup is the most reliable method and is used in bank & military. Even a tape of 20 years ago can still find a device to restore (my oldest tape was 1995, backed up on HP server).

That's my own experience in IT field for 20 years and it may vary from person to person, but it's a good REAL example of how reliable those media is.

In short: use the best media you can afford and store them properly and use with care, transfer them to new media when the old format is out of market. Then they will work for you well.

Good luck.
 
This is all well and good but where can you go and find definitive information on what brand and version of blank media is the best? I have been using CD-R, DVD-R and DVD DL for years and have no clue as to which ones will last longer... so far all is well but for how long?

It's hard to believe that tape is more archival than optical storage as tape seems to soft and magnetic media is susceptible to stray fields - right? Is there good evidence to back up those claims?

This is a very very important issue and I would love to find good research and answers.
 
Redray is going to be the way to go!

By the way I have no idea if that statement is true but it is a nice thought!
 
There is a blu-ray & DVD-R media from a company (sorry I don't have the name here but will find out that for you all if anyone needs), it's for archival purpose and more expensive, they claim it will last 100 yrs.

Technical speaking optical disk will last longer than tape if stored properly and you don't need rewind it after 5 or 8 years. However tape has PROVEN life time of over 30 years as it was born ealier than optical disk, so we can only estimate optical disk's life time based on experiment.

In one word, store them properly will make their life time much longer.

And of course, remember to transfer them to new technology when old media fading off market.

If you don't want to worry about those backup terms and have enought money, find a media storage company and copy all your data to their server and they will take care for you forever, what you will need is MONEY to pay them. :)
 
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