DVD's vs. Hard Drives

G

GamezBond

New member
Why do people back up their projects on Hard Drives instead of DVD-R's :confused:

assuming each songs sssion files are from 500MB-1GIG, then that means you could fit a whole album worth of material on Two or Three Disks...

Currently, a PAck of 10 DVD-R's is only about 10$....so that about 40 GB of total storage....a Hard Drive of that size would cost 20-30$...

DVD-R's are more smaller and compact than a hard drive also...
 
Well, the final project may only have 500MB - 1GB of audio files contained within it, but I have projects that can occupy 5 - 10GB or more (including all unused takes, etc.), even at 24/44.1. Backing these projects up all at once to a hard drive is much more convenient than spending the time to burn everything, all split up, to a bunch of DVDs.

On the same note, backing up to hard drive is SOOOO much faster than waiting for a DVD to burn. I'll back up to 3 different hard drives before going to writable media. Additionally, I can run a session straight from my hard drive, and save changes on the fly. With a DVD, you have to copy the session files over to a hard drive if you want to run the session, and then if you make any changes, there's another DVD to burn.

That said, I do think it's a good idea to back things up to DVD at some point. We've probably all experienced hard drive failure at one point of another, and if anyone hasn't, they will all too soon. The more backups you have the better, and I definitiely would suggest backing up your final session files to DVD for archival sake. In truth, the more backups you have, the better. I'd always suggest having 3 backups (3 hard drives, 2 hard drives and a DVD or two, hard drive and a DVD and an iPod, etc. etc. etc.) for all work.

Me, I just prefer the convenience of a hard drive, despite the stability issues. With enough backups, I don't worry about it, and don't mind the added cost.
 
A 160gig usb drive will caost you 120-150us dollars at radio shack. That's one hell of a lot of dvds you would have to store. The best thing you can re-use the hard drive.
 
I agree that Hard Drives are generally better. However, it isn't a bad idea to use both. As they say: if you don't have at least 2 copies of digital information, you don't have it at all.
 
Short answer: Quality DVDs have only fallen below the cost of hard drives in the last year or so. Two years ago, I did the math, and hard drives cost half as much as a DVD.

Also, DVDs are more fragile than hard drives, and provide MUCH, MUCH lower density. I can stick 250 gigs in a package that's about 4"x1"x5.75" or so, which is 23 cubic inches. It would take about 56 DVDs, at a dimension (including spindle of 4"x5"x5", which is 100 cubic inches.

Finally, even today, DVD-RW media is almost twice as expensive per gig as hard drives and probably won't last as long. DVD-R media is write-once, so you end up paying every time you make a backup. It doesn't take many backup cycles for a spare hard drive to become cheaper.
 
I agree with having 2 copies of your backup...one goes bad you're not fubar.
 
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