Saving files to DVD-R ? DVD as data storage?

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chessrock

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Just curious if anyone is burning files to DVD?

Was talking to a friend who's a graphic designer working on a Mac who suggested I might look in to backing my audio files up to DVD. Says theirs hold up to like 4 gigabytes per disk.

I could live with that.

Does anyone know how one might go about upgrading their system to accomodate such a thing ? Working on a PC right now -- is this just one of those "mac things?"

Thanks in advance!

Chessrock
 
Just buy the drive, install it, get some DVD burning software if it didn't come with the drive and get some DVD-R/RWs and you're set.

PC/Mac, doesn't matter.
You can get them internal form, external.

After I do some audio equipment upgrading, I'm going to buy myself a DVD-R/W Drive. Because CD-Rs don't cut backing up projects that are 1+ GB. And I HATE spanning data over multiple CDs. I'd rather beable to fit a whole project on a DVD or be-able to back up multiple projects on a DVD. and not have 12 CDs of projects that I could have put on 3 DVDs, or what not.

so, I'm all for the DVD backing up.
If you have the dough now, go for it.
You're going to be looking at around $200 on eBay for a decent one, look at least another $100 if you don't want eBay.
 
Nosferous said:
After I do some audio equipment upgrading, I'm going to buy myself a DVD-R/W Drive. Because CD-Rs don't cut backing up projects that are 1+ GB. And I HATE spanning data over multiple CDs. I'd rather beable to fit a whole project on a DVD or be-able to back up multiple projects on a DVD. and not have 12 CDs of projects that I could have put on 3 DVDs, or what not.
Click to expand...

Hey, thanks, Nosferous.

Actually, I was thinking anything below $400 would be extremely cheap, so this looks like a no-brainer.

I was checking out the DAT- based storage, but it just seems like DAT is kind of on the way out already . . . or at least I can see it going in that direction, while DVD is still pretty much in it's infancy, and I can see media costs dropping significantly in the coming years.

I know what you mean about the whole CD data storage issue. Most of my clients -- I'd say 90% -- are doing 3-4 song demos at the most. I'm usually looking at burning about 6 to 8 CDs, in succession, when my clients request copies of their initial tracks.

That's a lot of time spent looking at porn . . . or at homerecording.com. :D

Granted, I charge them for my time burning the disks, :D but it just seems like all that time spent changing disks out for every 10 tracks could be better spent.
 
Yeah, $400 was about the minimum for DVD-R/W drives a year ago.
I was expecting the decent ones to be about $200 retail now, but apparently not from what I've looked at so far.

I'd much rather fork over the few hundreds to back up with DVD than CD. Choose what CD is going to get what part of what project, burn, 5 min pass, change CDs, add more parts, ah! It's madness, especially if you're a save-crazed person like myself that feels the need to save after pretty much any tiny alteration.

Well, if you get a killer deal on a DVD burner let me know.
It'll probably be a few months before I get to make that wonderful purchase.
 
i got my dvd-rw drive off ebay for 199..
its nice.. i wish it was faster though.. when i back up a atist that has more than...5 song with me(8+gig).. i use my DLT.. i just backed up a 25gig project
 
what drive was that?
and how long does it take to burn a full DVD?

I'm so used to seeing "52x burn" and blah blah, and I look at DVD burners and it's like when I had my first Burner 4x and 2x. Though I know that's in DVD speeds which is considerable faster than CD-ROM read and write speeds.
 
I don't mind slower writing speed.

As long as I don't have to constantly change disks every 10 minutes, I could start saving an entire project before I go to bed, and have it all done by the next morning.

Or have it done by the end of lunch and so on, and I'd be happy.
 
chessrock said:
I don't mind slower writing speed.

As long as I don't have to constantly change disks every 10 minutes, I could start saving an entire project before I go to bed, and have it all done by the next morning.

Or have it done by the end of lunch and so on, and I'd be happy.
Click to expand...

I think 2x it takes about 20 min to burn a full 4.7 (think 4.7)GB DVD, that might have been 4x, but I'm more than sure from recollection it was 2x. I could be wrong, I'm going on day...I think 21/2 of no sleep.

Music, Midi, eBay, message boards and Nick@Nite it'll be the death of me!
 
Nosferous said:
what drive was that?
and how long does it take to burn a full DVD?
Click to expand...
i picked up a SONY DRU-120A DVD-RW/CD-R/RW off ebay.. 199

Nosferous, i'm not sure who told you it takes 20min to burn a 4.7gig dvd but they lied to you.. 4x is 600kb/s. just to burn 600mb its just about 20minutes. mine says its a 2.4x.. i've never burned a full dvdrw.. but when i burned a little over a gig it took about 45min to an hour give or take. i left it after 30minutes and went to burger king :D
 
that's interesting. I know 4x is 600kb/s for CD-ROM, but from my understanding DVD is on another scale.

Like a 16X DVD-Drive, it says 16x but it's DVD speed form factor. So, it reads faster than that of a 16X CD-Drive.

Therfor I was under the impression that the DVD 2x Burn factor is different of that of CD-R/W.

Some reading:
"The second-generation Sony DRU-120A, like the HP drive that uses similar underlying hardware, is rated to burn to both DVD+RW and DVD+R 4.7GB media at 2.4X (3.31 MBps).

In our informal tests, the performance of the Sony was comparable to that of the HP: In the PC World Test Center's evaluations, the drive took 5 minutes, 20 seconds to back up 500MB of data to a 4.7GB DVD+RW disc, not counting format times."
- http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,103517,00.asp

So that means it's the 4x drive that burns a full 4.7GB DVD in about 20 min. Since according to their test it'd take the 2.4x drive 20min to burn half a DVD (approx 2.3GB of 4.7GB)

Are you sure you're burning at 2.4x and not 1x?
So, I was right...the DVD speed factor does take shape regarind DVD-R. They also used DVD-RW disc which has additional formating, which they did not include in their time.
 
damn i must have fuc$ed something up.. b/c it took forever to burn.. 500mb in 20sec.. thats sexy... i gotta figure out how to work this think.. i've only had it 4 days
 
that was 500MB in 5 min 20 seconds
in other words, 2.4x in DVD speed is equivilent to about 12x CD speed.

Because it takes me 5 and a half min to burn a full 700MB CD-R at 16x

I don't think you screwed anything up, I just think when it asks what speed you want to burn at you chose "1x" and not 2.4x, OR your DVDs aren't compatible to write at 2.4 so it's only writing at what the DVD can handle which is probably 1x. Just make sure your DVDs are compadable with your drive's write/re-write speed and that you have 2.4x selected for the burn speed...if that still fails then yeah, something must be wrong.
 
well i had some buffers and stuff that wasn't set and overall my computer was running likesh!t so i rebuilt it..the dvdr's that i have i'm sure are the problem.. i'll be getting some dvd-rw+ disc in a few days and i think they handle 4x... i want to play some of my 24/96 tracks in my car this weekend... love having 2 dvd's in my car
 
Well, let me know if you get it burning as fast as it should, I saw one of those units go just over $100 brand new the other day on eBay.
 
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