Blu-Ray disc or 2,5" HDD for archiving ?

[LOGiC]

@all

it may be a little off-topic, but in my opinion it's still related in this topic, so I will try. If it is fully off-topic, I apologize for this.

I use a HTPC for the playback of my movies. I've a Sharkoon Quickdeck in my working room and one in the living room and I am using a 3,5" Western Digital GreenPower 1TB HDD for the data. It's being filled in one room and brought to the living room. I think it's not the best thing to move around a 3,5" HDD very often and it's lifetime may be shorter as for a HDD which stays in the PC.

Normally I delete most things after I've watched them, but I would like to archive some of the pearls. I have two options for archiving :

1) Buy some 500 GB 2.5" HDD i.e. WD My Passport
2) Burn some of the things to Blu-Ray discs BD25.

I would like to have your opinion about the longevity of HDD's vs. BD-Discs. Which of them do you think can store any data safer and longer ?

Thank you very much in advance.

[TinTime]

I guess it's probably too soon to comment on the durability or otherwise of home burned BDs.

But assuming that they are both equally durable my vote would have to go with HDDs. Purely on cost I would think that you could get two 500GB drives and duplicate the data for a similar cost to 500GB worth of blank BDs. They'd be much more convenient and faster than burning disks too.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Oh yeah...

BD-R discs are stupid expensive at the moment, and who knows about long-term storage?? DVD+R DL discs are bad enough!

Archive on hard drives. Two copies if you must.

~MiSfit

[Shinigami-Sama]

just make a nice little raid array with cheap 1TB or 500GB drives and you're set :)
reliability, speed and very space efficent(not to mention sanity saving!)

[LOGiC]

Thanks for your advise Guys. I will use HDD's for archiving in future. Does it matter if these will be 2,5" or 3,5" HDD's ?

[Ghitulescu]

The more compact a device is the more difficult is the heat dissipation. And heat is the cancer of any electronic. That's why you'll see that huge radiator around the Velociraptor, which is a 2.5".

So, use any of them but keep them cool. Avoid the shocks, especially when they spin.

[MfA]

Just setup a NAS box so you don't have to shuttle drives around.

[Blue_MiSfit]

2.5" drives will be quieter, and easier to transport, since an external 2.5" HDD doesn't require dedicated power most of the time. USB or IEEE 1394 / FireWire will provide all the power it needs.

3.5" drives are much cheaper in terms of $/GB, but of course take up more physical space. They also tend to be faster than 2.5" drives. In short, I'd choose 3.5" drives any day of the week, provided I didn't need to take them with me constantly.

I'd also vote for a NAS, for a number of reasons.

Mainly, I love the concept of a NAS - it's a little device you can tuck anywhere you can run power and ethernet. It runs headless, and usually runs a very minimal Linux distribution, or Windows Home Server (which is effing AWESOME btw). They're usually damned near silent, and they can perform very nicely on gigabit ethernet.

Several companies offer simple 2-4 drive NAS solutions preconfigured, or without drives. I suggest buying your own drives, or (even better) rolling your own NAS entirely!

Look into Windows Home Server though - it's really a nice product, and has lots of features and capabilities other than sharing files! It can handle automatic backup of all computers on your network, provide a remote desktop gateway, and of course handle print services. Its main appeal to me, however, is its very interesting method of distributing drive space. You simply throw drives at it, and it creates a pool of free space that can be allocated to any number of logical disks, with or without fault tolerance (software RAID... kinda...). You then create network shares with permission definitions, and volia!

If you want something more straightforward, FreeNAS is an excellent version of FreeBSD that's purpose built for handling NAS duties. You configure it through a web UI, and it's extremely powerful - and free! It will also run on just about any hardware that FreeBSD will, even very old hardware that wouldn't have a chance of running something like Windows 7.

If you're not into the idea of a NAS, just a couple hard drives works perfectly fine! Either separate external enclosures, a combination external enclosure, or bare internal drives will all work equally well, depending on your available desktop space.

~MiSfit

[SeeMoreDigital]

BD-R discs are stupid expensive at the moment, and who knows about long-term storage?? DVD+R DL discs are bad enough!They certainly are expensive... The speed at which SDHC card prices are dropping, I don't think it will be long before these become a more attractive back-up option ;)

[LoRd_MuldeR]

They certainly are expensive... The speed at which SDHC card prices are dropping, I don't think it will be long before these become a more attractive back-up option ;)

Also the last time I read a test of BD burners, the burn quality was REALLY bad! Freshly burned discs sometimes weren't readable. Definitely not something you want to use for backup purposes!

Well, the situation may have changed since that test (it was roughly one year ago), but even if the quality was more acceptable now, the price would still be too high.

While I agree that HDD is the preferred backup solution (using RAID-1 if needed), I'd also backup the most important data on some optical disc (e.g. Verbatim DVD-R) and store them at a "safe" place.

Lightning strike or PSU failure may destroy all your HDD's at once! It's very unlikely to happen, but if it happens, you are doomed...

(BTW: I'm using that (http://www.vadim.co.uk/images/ex23a02.jpg) HDD rack to keep my HDD cool. It takes two 5.25" slots and offers space for three 3.5" HDD's. Most important it has a built-in fan)

[MfA]

You simply throw drives at it, and it creates a pool of free space that can be allocated to any number of logical disks, with or without fault tolerance (software RAID... kinda...).
Only mirroring though ... I prefer LVM on top of RAID5.

[MfA]

(BTW: I'm using that (http://www.vadim.co.uk/images/ex23a02.jpg) HDD rack to keep my HDD cool. It takes two 5.25" slots and offers space for three 3.5" HDD's. Most important it has a built-in fan)
I'm using the Cooler-Master 4 in 3, slightly less space efficient but my antique towercase has a dividing wall between two 3x5.25 bays so it was the better option (lian li also has 4 in 3 bays, but seeing as it's Lian Li they are of course more expensive).

[Ghitulescu]

2.5" drives will be quieter, and easier to transport, since an external 2.5" HDD doesn't require dedicated power most of the time. USB or IEEE 1394 / FireWire will provide all the power it needs.

According to the German magazine c't, which is one of (if not THE) leading magazine in this field, less than 10% of all tested 2.5" HDDs actually respected the 500mA limit. And they tested like 30-40. Critical is the spin-on, where some disks drew up to 1000mA (for 1-2 seconds, but this can damage the ports). Luckily most ports have an internal protection, but the danger remains...

[Shinigami-Sama]

According to the German magazine c't, which is one of (if not THE) leading magazine in this field, less than 10% of all tested 2.5" HDDs actually respected the 500mA limit. And they tested like 30-40. Critical is the spin-on, where some disks drew up to 1000mA (for 1-2 seconds, but this can damage the ports). Luckily most ports have an internal protection, but the danger remains...

this is why most come with that double dongle to it spreads to draw over two ports
most people however don't even notice it...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Doesn't 1394 have much higher power capabilities? I could be mistaken...

~MiSfit

[LOGiC]

The more compact a device is the more difficult is the heat dissipation. And heat is the cancer of any electronic. That's why you'll see that huge radiator around the Velociraptor, which is a 2.5".

So, use any of them but keep them cool. Avoid the shocks, especially when they spin.

Keeping the HDD's cool is one of my biggest problems. I've just bought one of those neat Western Digital Media Players (WDTV) where I connected the Sharkoon Quickdeck to. It seems to be very difficult to find any 3,5" external cases with fans and the possibility to change a HDD on the fly without the need to assemble the HDD to any carrier before.

I wanted to get rid of the power consumption of the HTPC. I could keep it and keep the HDD's inside there, but then I needed to switch on WDTV + HTPC for watching a movie.

Any ideas to this ? Do the WD Green Power HDD's WD10EADS need to be cooled as well, even if they just spin with 5400rpm in most cases ?

[Ghitulescu]

Keeping the HDD's cool is one of my biggest problems. I've just bought one of those neat Western Digital Media Players (WDTV) where I connected the Sharkoon Quickdeck to. It seems to be very difficult to find any 3,5" external cases with fans and the possibility to change a HDD on the fly without the need to assemble the HDD to any carrier before.


If you're not afraid of tinkering (i think this is the English term for "basteln"), you may buy off eBay (or garage sale) some SCSI enclosures, they have fans. Use then a USB -IDE/SATA convertor and bingo. Most SCSI enclosure (if not all) have better sources than the new casings.

[Dr.Khron]

I'm having the cooling problem as well... my home server box has a nice HD rack that goes right in front of the main fan, but it only fits 4 drives. I have a quality onboard RAID card, so I could easily add another 500 GB HD...

...Except that I'm afraid it would catch fire and/or explode, becuase I don't have a good place to put it. :(

[MfA]

Get something like a Sharkoon 12 case, fill it with 5.25 to 3.5 converters with fans From Lian Li or Cooler Master (hotswap if you like with something like the Chieftec SNT-3141, but it will cost you a bit more). Plenty of room, plenty of airflow ... relatively cheap.

[LOGiC]

@MfA

Yes, I was thinking about this solution as well, but don't you think it's more than oversized to build up a complete new system which draws a lot of power just to watch one single movie on a saturday evening ? I've bought the Western Digital Player to have less power consumption in the living room, so it would not be very productive at all.

I need to look for something different.

/EDIT I really would have thought about buying one of those very neat ASRock ION machines and putting in a hot-swap carrier there, but I think the air flow might be not very good in this little machine.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hard drives can handle a lot of heat, unless we're talking 10,000 RPM or 15,000 RPM monsters.

Seriously though, you don't need a fan for most standard desktop drives in an external enclosure.

~MiSfit

[LOGiC]

Hard drives can handle a lot of heat, unless we're talking 10,000 RPM or 15,000 RPM monsters.

Seriously though, you don't need a fan for most standard desktop drives in an external enclosure.

~MiSfit


Ok, so I really shouldn't be nervous then. I am just using 5400rpm HDD's for my purpose and the average usage for those HDD's will be around 6-8 hours per week.

[Ghitulescu]

Hard drives can handle a lot of heat, unless we're talking 10,000 RPM or 15,000 RPM monsters.

Seriously though, you don't need a fan for most standard desktop drives in an external enclosure.

~MiSfit

So the processors (CPUs) but nobody really really think of let them without a proper cooling.

A normal use of 4-6 hours a day, in a metallic enclosure (that has a good thermal contact to the HDD) or a plastic one but with a good airflow should suffice for avoiding heat problems. Unless of course you're in one of these countries where 35°C means cold ;).

[MfA]

@MfA

Yes, I was thinking about this solution as well, but don't you think it's more than oversized to build up a complete new system which draws a lot of power just to watch one single movie on a saturday evening ?
It wasn't really aimed specifically at you ... you already have the WDTV and that doesn't support network streaming.

I don't really understand why you would want an Ion machine though ... you don't need it for archiving, you don't need it for playing. You simply don't need it. You buy a lot of expensive stuff to make very weird setups to be frank. I'd just stick to what you have and put 2 mirrored TB drives in your work machine for archiving.