Msg: RE: imaging software--disk dupers/MDISC etc

Take a look at this media wrap-up. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/cd-rw.html . Some of it seems problematic, but the basic info is useful. For everyday use, I use Taiyo Yuden. I’ll likely archive to MAM-A Gold or Gold Silver when I’m finished with the project. I looked at the M-Disk, tempting. At the moment, don’t feel like taking the PC apart to install an M-Disk optical drive, which one needs to burn those disks.

Interesting point about file corruption, which is to say continually backing up a file you do not know is corrupted. You’d never know till you tried to open that file. I have hundreds of data files – mp3 interviews, docx transcriptions, img photo documentation and so on. I only know they are good at the time I create them and at the time I test them before I back them up to a 2TB redundant NAS (Synology), then to desktop G-Tech, finally at night to the cloud, SOS bare-metal. Most files are produced by PC, though for field use I sometimes work on a MacAir (nice little machine). At all events, backup and storage are always on my mind.

Michael Norman

From: xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx [mailto:xywrite-bounce@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bill Troop
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 8:33 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: imaging software--disk dupers/MDISC etc

At 29/10/2013 02:55, you wrote:

Are you still using a Mac platform to run Windows?

No, and that's the problem.

I wonder. Robin Harris in his Storage Bits column for ZD has been warning about HFS instability for years, e.g.

The Storage Bits take Apple designs fabulous hardware, but their reluctance to invest in a modern file system bodes ill for Mac power users. Adopting ZFS would have put them ahead of even ReFS, but that isn't in the cards anymore. The best we can hope for is that someone - Greenbytes? - offers ZFS as secondary storage for the Mac. But at least our data at rest will be safe.

Not that NTFS doesn't have problems:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/how-microsoft-puts-your-data-at-risk/169If you google the string /robin harris hfs ntfs/ you will get a lot of interesting hits.

He also has interesting material on failure of SSDs, which most of us assume are vastly more reliable than HDs. Apparently, you really want to avoid power failure of SSDs! (with an uninterruptible power supply, for desktops)

For users with a lot of crucial personal, business or creative data, there is always the risk that a file will become corrupt without being reported. This has happened to me more than once over the years.

I think the best solution is to do periodic snapshots that are never updated. That way, if years later, an old but important file is discovered to be corrupt or lost, you can go back to (say) a ten-year-old backup and get the file back.

But what storage material is good for ten years?

Robin Harris was one of the first to publicize

http://www.mdisc.com/which is producing the world's only archival recordable DVDs, with archival blu-rays on the way.

Maybe it's a mistake to believe in anything, but mdisc seems the only sensible choice now available for those of us who are serious about preserving our data indefinitely.