Questions about Archival DVDR and BDR Media

#1

Ok. I moved over to hard drive storage with a USB3 docking station
some time ago. Reason is that most of the stuff i have, like 80-90% is none
important data. I have it indexed with a program (whereisit) but moving
to wincatalog soon. If I loose data it is not the end of the world as most
of the stuff I have you can buy if you wanted to.

But I have some pictures, videos and other things I would like to stor
on a secondary optical media as backup, if the dedicated backup
hard drive does fail. Of course I will get a new hard drive when the
current one becomes to old.

I have been looking at archival media, DVDR and BDR for storage
of mostly personal data, video, pictures etc. Not sure if
storing pictures on gold CDs would be a better and more secure
option.

Is it worth getting Verbatim DVDR Archival grade media, is
that better than say, regular good quality Verbatim DVDR media ?

Is it better to burn important data to archival grade DVDR
or even good quality regular BDR. Even if there are more
discs.

I worry that BDR can fail at least what I have been reading
in the forums here over the years, that media quality is
problematic and also hardware when it comes to BDR or burning
bluray. I guess the move from CD to DVD was not problematic
in terms of media and technology. But with BluRay it is another
story.

Is there any problem with burning CDs and DVDs on say a modern
panasonic bluray burner or is the quality the same across
the different media, when using good quality media ?

This is a place I could get media from but they do not seem
to have any panasonic any more, but they do have kodak gold cds

http://www.totalblankmedia.com/

#2

This seems to be a frequently asked question around here. The discussion normally boils down to:
Use M-disc DVD-R or Panasonic made BD-R (sometimes sold as Verbatim for DL disks) with a Pioneer burner. M-Disc BD-R has uncertain benefits, at this stage there is no concensus compared to HTL BD-R especially given the price premiums.

Gold CD-Rs have been debunked as not being the best due to relatively lower reflectivity layer although they do have a good track record when there was no M-disc and no HTL BD-R. Problem would be sourcing recently manufactured Gold CD-Rs to offset any deterioration over time.

#3

Just a note about Gold CD-Rs: From my testing they have better reflectivity and therefore function better on older CD players then the standard Falcon CD-Rs which have basically replaced TY CD-Rs. The TY CD-Rs were better for older CD players but the Falcon CD-Rs last longer.

Just like the older TDK CD-Rs worked better in older CD players then the newer ones. Different recipe. Falcon uses the TDK CD for their foundation. You can also tell the difference by looking at the burn side right away. Newer CDs, you can hardly, if at all, see the burn. While the older ones you can.

#4

I’m new here, and I"m no expert in disc burning in general, but if you read articles/reviews on the Web, it seems to me that M-Disc is the way to go for durability and logevity. The only downside seems to be the the price of the discs.

Seeing as one company boiled M-Discs in a pot of water and they still came out readable, I’d think that M-Discs are the way to go.

#5

Yeah, it is almost like FAQ I know.

When it comes to DVD-R and CD-R I assume that buying good quality media is enough to be confident that the disc will last a minimum of 10 years or more when stored in a optimal way. And even after that you would expect that there might be some CRC errors and so on, but you would still be able to read the whole disc. Also these discs have been around for a long time, proven technology and it works.

I recall my older discs I did read back, I had no problems with any CD-R, be it cheap silver, or expensive gold, worked just fine. The issues I had was with a few verbatim discs, but again it was only CRC errors that prevented some larger .avi where damaged. If I had regular information like photos documents and so on, it would only have been a few files damage. All the discs and the other files on them I could read back.

I am aware of that M-Disc thing, but how proven is that, and you need specific hardware to read that. I am looking for reliability and stability of media for archiving. Should I then stay away from BluRay and M-Disc and stick to DVD-R as I assume they are just as safe as CD-R. I will still maintain my archive and have the files stored on offline hard drive that I will eventually replace in case of failure, I doubt my personal pictures, videos etc will exceed 500Gb in the near future so nothing to worry about on that front.

The problem I have with BD-R is how reliable they are, lots of information in the forums and problems people have had or have. It is also hard to get hold of media compared to DVD-R or CD-R and issues with quality of media and hardware problems. And also the problem that when BluRay came around the interest in burning optical media has dropped like a stone, there are few people now that I know of that even have a burner unit. Most (morons) stor it in the cloud etc, but sure, if you have pictures and stuff that you do not care about, I guess that works.

The only real drawback with DVD-R is storing video, consumes a lot of discs, but I have aluminium boxes and so on from before, so that problems I can work with.

What do you think is the best option for me, you know much more about optical discs and hardware.

BTW, thanks for talking time to post a reply, this forum is not as active as it once was. Kind of sad as optical media is the most safe way to stor information for archiving.