20,000 little files to a DVD+R: Is zipping a must for long-term data life?

[anikk]

I was sure to find it here at the forum, but no discussion about that so far. I have the following problem:

I have to archive (long-term) around 3.2GB of data which consists of 50kB to 150kB files only. It's 20,000 little files or something like that!

Can I do this as I do my other, more normal stuff, namely simply burn as UDF 1.02 to an MCC004 without any packing to a zero-compression zip file?

Compressed zips are not even an option for me personally in any case, and normally I don't use non-compressed zips for archiving either. For some reason I worry about my data when packing them to archives. I don't know why.

Is there any danger/risk to not pack the files to a non-compressed .zip? Or is it in this case an absolute must for long-term data life because of the huge and complex FAT or anything else? Would there be a real technical advantage for long-term data life if I made one or a few uncompressed zips?

It's very important and this time I don't know how to handle this special case. Thank you so much for reading.

[Whappo]

No need to compress anything. Just burn them to DVD as is. The longevity will depend on the quality of DVD you use and how it is stored, not on whether they are compressed or not.

[anikk]

Thanks a zillion, Whappo! OK, I will do it that way. I never ever burned 20,000 files to one single DVD. Can’t wait to try it. Thanks again!

[Hemispasm]

Actually i think that zipping them might be even worse, since a reading error that would probably affect a small part of a file will affect more of it or even more files when compressed, increasing the chances the file(s) are unreadable.

[mciahel]

Hi,[quote=anikk;2215460]I was sure to find it here at the forum, but no discussion about that so far. I have the following problem:

I have to archive (long-term) around 3.2GB of data which consists of 50kB to 150kB files only. [/quote]Then you should really have a look at http://dvdisaster.net/

Michael

[DrageMester]

As others have said, you can burn the files directly without putting them into an archive first.

I suggest that you do NOT put all of the files into the root directory of your DVD, or you might have to wait a very long time when opening the DVD in Explorer.

[anikk]

Thank you so much for the answers :). I’ll answer separately for regular and dvddisaster archiving from now on.

[U]Regular burning[/U]:

@Everybody who replied: I have burned the DVD! There’s no problem. It works fast and OK. I can’t see any difference to a normal DVD+R with 1, 3, 10 or 20 files on it. So that’s really great so far. The disc is also a great burn with PIF max. of 1 and PIE max of 4 after an ECC1 scan. So if nobody sees any problem in that huge and complex FAT for data life security, I’m a huge step forward now.

@[B]Hemispasm[/B]: Yes, exactly. Even if the zip file had no compression at all, a little read error would effect the unzipping functionality of the whole data or bigger parts of the whole data. The only reason I thought about making an (uncompressed) zip was the huge and complex FAT.

@[B]DrageMester[/B]: Thanks for the warning :). The files are in many folders and there are many deeper folders in many outer folders again. I guess the problem you mentioned didn’t occur because of that. But it’s a very interesting point you mention. Just to know it for eventual future cases: If the 20,000 files would ALL be in the root directory ALONE, would it be a bigger risk for data life as well or just an annoying but otherwise harmless problem?

[U]dvdisaster way[/U]:

@[B]mciahel[/B]: Well, this is a very interesting thing you mention there. That I already burned one disc, does not at all mean, that I won’t do that dvdisaster disc as well. I will look closer what that actually is later today. I’m very thankful for your link, since this seems to be a great data life security solution for all my data, not just this current disc. I will come back and report.

[DrageMester]

[quote=anikk;2215700]Just to know it for eventual future cases: If the 20,000 files would ALL be in the root directory ALONE, would it be a bigger risk for data life as well or just an annoying but otherwise harmless problem?[/QUOTE]I imagine it might increase the impact of damage to the TOC to have every file listed in just one directory, but to be honest I’m not sure.

[U]dvdisaster way[/U]:
If you want to go the DVDisaster way, you first create an ISO image containing all your files and folders, and then you expand the ISO image with DVDisaster to add redundancy before burning the ISO image to DVD.

[RichMan]

To help clarify, The TOC does not contain any information about folder or file names. It doesn’t even contain information on if the disc is FAT, FAT16/32/ NTFS, HFS etc… So, it will not be affected no matter how many files you have.

The program area on the disc contains all the information about the folders, files etc… I doubt UDF has any limits on the number of files but I’m not sure about ISO-9660. Good luck.

RM

[anikk]

@[B]DrageMester[/B]: No problem.

@[B]mciahel[/B]/[B]DrageMester[/B]: DVDisaster: I tried it and it’s one of the greastest tools ever invented. I wil stay with the regular way of burning however, since I scan all my media all the time and I re-burn everything much much earlier than unreadable sectors! I keep my burners alive with constantly using them. (I don’t know why I have this crazy theory that burners that are constantly used like mad never lose precision/never die. But fact is that before I did that all my burners became worse in burning quality and started to be inconsistent in noise-wise. Since I do that all stood precise, fit and smooth like on the first day. )

@[B]RichMan[/B]: I see. I didn’t know that. Thank you for sharing the fact. And no file amount limitations in the UDF system is a great thing in this case. So I’m really lucky about how everything worked out.

[anikk]

[B]MANY MANY THANKS to EVERYONE replying in the WHOLE THREAD for helping me when I really really needed it!

:)[/B]