Data Archiving

Several years ago I 'archived' a TV series onto DVD-Rs.

The series was split into two disks each with twelve episodes (no points for guessing which series

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

). However, upon playing the episodes back I found episodes 12 and 24 were corrupted. I presume that the files were written onto the disks in the order they appeared in Nero and therefore the episodes damaged were the ones physically located near the outside of the DVD-R (more exposure to light, somehow?).

Which methods of data retention do does the readership suggest? I would like to keep my data on a medium that will survive at least 10 years. DVD-Rs have failed me in 2-3 years, although they weren't necessarily the best quality.

Taiyo-Yuden DVDs kept in the dark? RAID array of magnetic disks? Printout of base-64 on non-acidic paper?!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Proper storage conditions assumed.

Nothing beats Magneto Optical.

Enterprise grade tape.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I'll hand-scribe base-64 onto papyrus. Maybe even 'RAID 1' the scrolls.

I think my answer may well be magnetic disk drive, copying the data every few years.

 

Sometimes it might not be down to data corruption, I found if you take a bunch of files, compress them into a compressed format like ZIP or RAR and burn them to a disc, you will apparently have data errors if you attempt to unzip/unrar direct from the disc. This is caused by the fact that the drives only use one head to read with, so the only way around it is to copy the entire ISO (This means a virtual instance of the disc, not just the zip file) to your drive and then unzip if from your hard drive.

The same could be said for the series you copied, copy the ISO to your drive then attempt to view it. You might find it negates the errors.

 

They're divx avi's and the CRC failed. I can only assume, since the dye is photo-sensitive, that the SNR gradually became too low and now the data is now lost. (Yes, I could take my time with DVD recovery software but cba... I'm only interested in what to do 'from now on')

 

Seriously put them on your drive, you won't even need recovery software. It's just how compressed formats are read, doesn't work to well with single head readers (At least with the older burning programs that didn't do something similar to a defrag)