Hello,

I am just thinking about backing up my music collection on optical media, thus DVD. I did this the last time 2 years ago and back than I chose NERO. However, this procedure is very slow as I have a 200GB collection and I would have to fiddle around with every DVD to match exactly the DVD size.

I am looking for a solution that where I just enter the folder and the individual contents of the DVD are generated automatically, occupying as much space as possible on a DVD. Preferably I only need to swap discs without further intervention. I would like also to keep contents directly accessible on the DVD thus no archives or whatsoever.

Any ideas for a solution?

Cheers.

I believe Burn to the Brim does that.

Probably more time efficient to buy a 250GB HDD and copy the archive to that.

Wouldn't one have to worry about the hard drive becoming defective over time? From what I read, the longer a HD sits not used, the more likely it is to die.

I dunno. If it's an external unit, all you need to do is plug it in every 6 months or so and run a md5 check on everything.

Remember that in a couple of years he'll have more music, and the price of storage will keep plummeting. So, like me, he'll be moving everything to another bigger cheaper drive in 2 years or so, so the long-term storage reliability isn't an issue.

@ seanyseansean:
True that. However, par2 would be recommended here, no? First create file hashes to ensure integrity of the file and then par2 redundancies to recreate any damaged files. If this avenue is chosen, some other nifty (windows) tools I have are Rehash to automatically create (and check?) hashes, and Hash Tab to view file hashes myself in the windows properties dialog box.

My suggestion: Use Burn to the Brim (it can sort folder based, i.e. treating folders as cohesive items, keeping all files of an album together in one place) and create 3.2GB-3.4GB DVD images (for ~20-25% error redundancy and so that there's no half empty DVD left of course). Then augment those with RS02 ECC using dvdisaster. IMHO the most user-friendly and least head-ache causing approach.

Is Burn to the Brim only for backing up to CDs?

yeah get an external harddrive and create par2 files for each album...i think someone here created a batch script for this ?

When you look at the prices nowadays, I would also recommend buying an HDD.



I've seens some CD-R/DVD+/-R which can't be read after a few years (especially when using cheapo blank CDs). So are you shure that all your previously created disc can still be read without errors? When these backups are meant to last over years, I would rather trust a good hard drive.

I wouldn't bother. With all my drive failures, they've failed hard - i.e. completely not working, it's not like a couple of bad sectors appear here and there if they're not being regularly powered on. Just my experience, if you want to create par files then do so, and put them on a seperate drive (or even dvds)

I am trying to get Spoon to create a library backup tool which would ideally be designed to do all of the things discussed here and more. dBpoweramp's suite of tools would fit well with a music library backup tool and I have been unable to find a professionally developed alternative.

For those that are interested or think you may have useful ideas please join the discussion:

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=16447

is there a 'modern days' replacement for burn to the brim?

From the original creator Nero AG: ftp://ftp6.nero.com/NeroASPIdt.exe or ftp://ftp6.nero.com/wnaspi32.dll


You can create new profiles for any image size you want.

edit: formating error


Why do you ask? Is it not working on your system?

Fandango: it wont create iso+udf isos.

Well, personally I'm quite pleased it doesn't do that. I use ImageBurn for that, because this great tool gives me more options for DVD filesystem creation anyway.

Of course, using another tool for creating the images is a problem when you have several hundreds of GB. But ImageBurn has a queue function or you could write a batch script...

Unfortunately ImgBurn doesn't have spanning capabilities and according the creator, it never will (how can he not be interested in the concept!). If Burn to the Brim can create images of any size then there is still one problem as I see it: where does one get the extra space to create ISOs and keep the files?

EDIT: there is one solution, very tedious- save each ISO to a location and have ImgBurn write it, and then delete it manually...

Tedious.

Ok, BTTB is quite old and not being actively developed anymore. And it's a pain to use. But AFAIK there's no alternative with the same fucntionality around.

my solution is expensive but much more convenient and reliable: buy 2 300/400/500... GB SATA2 HDDs and build a RAID 1

It shouldn't be that difficult to write a little program to rearrange the files as needed for backing up. Then once they have been backed up, put them all back into the original file structure.

Ideally though a backup system should know which songs/albums have been backed up. Then, when adding new material to the collection you can easily only burn the new stuff.

A HDD is going to be much more reliable than optical media.

pdq: its not that trivial,

- 1st thing would be to leave my files intact
- 2nd do a virtual burnme sandboxes (without using additional diskspace)
- 3rd allow user to rearange them before burning
- 4th export to various formats, like ibb for imgburn
- 5th remember what was allready backed up somehow
- 6th have in mind different scenarios, like by alphabet, how to do folder splitting if any, how to split large files that wont fit on one disk, ect

I little trick I used when editing my REACT image scripts was use 7-Zip to create ZIP archives of all new media that I rip into a separate folder. That way when I need to backup my new music, I only need to burn that folder.

p.s. i know there was a *nix cli utility for folder splitting using different scenarios, anyone remember the name of it?

Thanks for all the hints.

I tried Burn to Brim but personally I think that it's not a very feasible solution as I would need to create roughly 60 images before I can burn. For this I'd need an additional hard disk anyway

Thus I will go for an USB Drive

Any Burn to Brim was not exactly was I was looking for - I was looking for a solution where you could burn to disc directly.

Another question has anyone tried Acronis True image for this purpose. This would allow constant backups but the drawback I see would be accessibility after some years as with every backup solution.

I decided for my use to back up to hard disk.

Optical media is far too slow, has insufficient capacity, and no convenience compared to simply using one of the many programs to copy from one drive to another.