I have a very large collection of flac files. Well about 1.5 terrabyte spread amongst 4 usb hard drives. Since I basically have no form of backup right now. I've decided to pick the albums I can't live without/would be really hard to replace on dvd. Cause I really don't have money for a few hard drives right now. How do you all that back up to dvd do it easily? is there some software where I can list all folders I need backed up and it can split them up using the least amount of dvd media? Also I find that I can't seem to burn reliably at 16x because my buffer runs out with usb (burn-proof doesnt seem to be very burn-proof). Is the burner really faster than usb 2? is there any settings I can change to make them faster? it would suck to have to burn and verify 8x thats almost 30 minutes for each disc. I hear some of you use par files. does this actually help? everytime I've had a disc go bad... windows says crc error and deletes the file. Is udf and iso the same as far as error correction? is the only difference in length of filenames?

Now I was also thinking I could maybe just buy one 500gb or 750gb drive to use as a main drive and convert everything to a good lame vbr file or similar. then I would put the externals away in a safe place. But I figure this might take a whole month to convert everything running 24/7. What typical encode times for say a 5000 x2? I only get around 8x with my 2.4ghz celeron

1) There are many options for backing up to optical media. I'm not going to list them here, there are plenty of threads about it.

2) Your failed burns are more likely due to burning at 16x on poor media or with a poor burner than USB transfer speed (Unless your drives are extremely fragmented or your USB is bogged down with too many devices vying for bandwidth).

With 16x you're really pushing the limits. From my experience USB harddrives have read rate of 20 MB/s. 16x is almost 22 MB/s.

When making a big archive the "x"-es are not the main factor to consider anyway. Labeling, cataloging and handling each disc takes more time.

I suggest you to backup everything on affordable optical media, such as Verbatim.
Personally, I have 700GB of mp3s on two harddrives and everything is backupped up on Verbatim DVD+R.
My Backup Strategy is to create a folder gerarchy like this:

/Music/mp3dvd_001/Artist1/(Year) Album1
...
/Music/mp3dvd_001/Artist45/(Year) Album45
...
/Music/mp3dvd_002/Artist1/(Year) Album1
...

etc
Every mp3dvd_xxx subfolder of "Music" is 4.3 GB and it's exactly backupped on dvd 1 or 2 times (I periodically check my optical medias and when I find at least 1 reading error, I do another copy of the disk).
Every dvd has a nice .xml file, made with iTunes, that contains all the ratings, so I can import em when I need. My strategy is up and running from 4 years now and saved my ass many times.

Remember: hds fail, sooner or later, and suffer of random filesystem bugs (on NTFS sometimes whole folders disappear, well known bug I dealed with..).

So my suggest is to backup everything until u can, it's worth the money. 100 Verbatim dvds cost 29€ here (Italy) and they contain 100x4.3=430 GB -> 430x4=~1.6TB -> 4spindles=29x4=120€.

So spending just 120€ or a similar price, u can easily backup all your collection, a lot cheaper than buying 1.5 TB of additional hd storage (1 TB disk cost here 190€).



It's your burner that suck or you use crappy medias or medias that are uncompatible with your burner or it's your burning software fault. I have a Lacie external 16x burner (inside is a NEC) and it works flawlessly at 16x via usb. I use DVD+R by Verbatim with it, but I tested both Sony and TDK medias and they work at 16x too. My setup is usually:

burner -> USB 2.0 -> pc/mac <- USB 2.0 <- hd with files to burn,

so, as u see, USB 2.0 bandwidth is capable to handle very well all those datas.
Buy affordable media brands and you will be not disappointed

My 2 cents.
-eldino (iTunes, Music 2.0, netlabels, freea albums and more: http://eldino.wordpress.com)

How do you verify bare DVDs stored in cakeboxes? Else the price is much higher than EUR 29.

Also due to human factor and manufacturing errors disks will enivetably produce coasters.


Me too have everything backed on Verbatim DVD. But the process is nothing but easy due to number of media required. Situation might be different in Italy, but here the price of DVD and HDD is about the same. I consider HDD for backups in the future. Without the USB box a HDD is quite cheap and can be reused.

Verbatim is 97% affordable as far i read on dedicated forums. This means that, in the worst case, u get 3 faulty dvds for every 100dvds cakebox, that sounds very reasonable to me. I usually do the verify after every burning and just recently I got a reading error on 1 dvd, that i immediately burned again. But, in my experience, it rarely happens, so I guess they are more than 97% affordable.

Using good optical medias is not enought btw. u have to keep them in the darkness, coz light affect em, and take care of em. I treat em better than i treat with my gf I keep em inside PVC sleeves and inside those nice Ikea cd/dvd containers called Lycklig. Inside the 3.90€ Lycklig i can keep more than 200+ cd/dvds: dark, clean and cool.

The one I say is half size of this:



I dont like backupping on HDDS because:
a) i have not enought USB ports and space on my desk to handle those; I have already 3 external HDs for daily use + a Lacie NAS, and I mainly work on laptops (1 mac and 1 pc);
b) i dont feel secure using HDDs for the reasons I wrote in my posts: HDs can be rewritten, yes, but If i backup stuff it means I wanna keep it for life So rewritting feature is useless and potentially damaging.

Ah.. I buy dvds online, on website like Nierle (german reseller), or during some events I take part to (even cheaper than online price + no shipping costs). Buying optical medias in stores is for fools, at least here, coz u pay 120% more of the price coz of RIAA tax.


oh I forgot: backupping on dvds is more secure than HDs also because if your HD fails, u lose every data on it (imagine losing 500GB of datas at once..). If 1/100 or also 3/100 dvds fails, u lose, in the worst case, 4.3x3 Gb of datas, but that it could happen only if u intentionally break the dvd or something brutal like that.

Usually u can recover every data from a faulty dvd using nice softwares like IsoBuster: u will be unable to recover only the datas written over damaged sectors (that will be replaced by zeros).

So I definitely suggest:
- HDs for daily, fast backups (such as personal datas, Firefox profile folder etc);
- DVDs for keeping datas forever.


My 2 cents
-eldino

Be aware also that DVD media may "dy", i.e. at one day they become unreadable. This day might be next year or within 30 years, depending on how you store the disks and on good luck.

Added to this, with the mass of data you need to backup, the task will be a pain. Only for the convenience, it might be worthy to spend a bit more on removable drives.

In order to be a bit constructive as well if you must go for DVD backup, you might consider using a tool such as dvdisaster http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.php. This allows you to store, at the expense of some storage space (and even more hassle to backup), additional error recovery information. It allows you to recover the data fully even if the DVD has become unreadable in some spots and thus provides a bit more reliability that your backup will be usable the day you need it.

The better idea might be to just keep your original pressed CDs in a safe place as your backup: these will likely outlive your own burned optical media.

Unfortunately there are no good tools I have found for this. Im actually trying to get spoon / dbpoweramp to make a tool for backingup music libraries. Hopefully it would include dvd archiving and some form of parity. I have a thread for these ideas over there:
http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=16447

I wouldn't call original CDs a backup. But I hope to be around in ten or more years, to reject (or prove) this asumption once and for all.

I can support this with anecdotal evidence.

I've been buying audio CDs since 1986 and they all play back fine, including those that are now 22 years old. Some of the self-burned CD-R backups I made of them in early 2003 for safe-keeping on mid-priced discs aren't readable at all after just 5 years. Both sets of discs were stored under identical dark and cool conditions.

My downfall may have been in not using top-notch media for my backups, although that doesn't alter the fact that I had my originals to fall back on as 'backups' for my backups.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

My oldest CD is a Verbatim "40x Crystal" burnt in 2001. Only time will tell the truth because all of the accelerated tests are based on assumptions about the storage conditions. But we have went quite offtopic.

To the original poster: If you want to backup just a handful of discs, just select a low speed and use Verbatim media. While using NEC-NEC, NEC-Optiarc, or PX-760 (RIP), I experienced no degraded quality on the contrary to some claims that 16x media should always be burnt at this speed. This proved to be true only with RW.

You're not interested in the speed of USB 2.0 (~40 MB/s) or Ultra ATA (~30~60 MB/s). Both are faster than 16x DVD. However ATA connected over USB may be quite slow (~12~25 MB/s). See how fast can you copy files to a fast defragmented internal drive.