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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 September 24

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September 24

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DVDs as Backup Medium

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Have recent increases in the capacity of flash drives made Digital Video Discs (DVDs) obsolete as a medium for backing up one's hard drive?

(Flash drives are also easier to use, because the steps of burning DVDs are complicated and error-prone. Flash drives have the disadvantage that they can be accidentally overwritten, or overwritten by malware, but only if they are kept in the computer after being dumped to.)

It appears that the maximum capacity of a DVD is 4.7 GB, and that flash drives are available for a little less than 32 GB and a little less than 64 GB. Does this mean that DVDs are essentially obsolete as a backup medium?

Robert McClenon (talk) 21:57, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We do have such a nice article on this topic, even with a separate section about the media. --84.190.198.88 (talk) 23:05, 24 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The real problem with flash memory is durability. I've read there have been some improvements lately but unlike my CD-Rs, all my 10-20 year old flash drives are long dead. 93.136.81.90 (talk) 00:08, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Short answer: Yes. it is generally obsolete, expensive and inconvenient. The lifetime of both dvd's and flash drives aren't accurately predictable. But having a proper back-up means that you have the exact same data in two separate places and shouldn't worry if one copy is compromised. If one copy is compromised (by accident or malware) you should have another copy somewhere else to recover it. If you don't have 2 copies of the file then you dont have an actual backup. The best way to backup data in my opinion, is by mirroring\synching 2 hard drives (or SSDs) of the same capacity. - Daveout(talk) 01:28, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
M-DISC are supposed to be very good for long-term archival. I bought a drive that can use them a few months ago, but I haven't gotten any M-disc media yet. (I intend to.) Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:32, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
DVDs with gold metal recording layer are more resistant to corrosion, than silver alloy or alluminium, and are used in archival CDs/DVDs..also much prettier than blue rays or micro SD cards? Gfigs (talk) 03:45, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever medium you use for backup, if your backup is in- or along-side the computer it's not really a good backup. In the case of fire or theft you will have no backup available for the subsequent recovery. Backups should be stored in a secure location, preferably fire-proof and offsite. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:20, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See also Digital dark age.--Shantavira|feed me 08:21, 25 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My setup is:
  • Laptop does incremental backups to NAS
  • My archive (photos, movies etc) is a directory on my NAS
  • NAS has RAID 1 setup so that you can lose a disk without losing work
  • NAS mirrors itself to my old NAS at my parents home
  • My parents NAS mirrors its own contents to my NAS
A lot of work to setup though, gotta know what your doing and its not cheap either. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:13, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nice! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:05, 29 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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