[AMKassirMD]

I have almost 50 hours of DV, mostly invaluable and nonreplaceable movies of our kids. This number is growing. I need a good way to store all this video for future editing.

I would prefer storage in a format that is not as perishable as the original DV tapes. For example, my Canon GL2 camera "ate" one of my tapes and damaged the data on the tape. Luckily I had imported the data to hard disk before the camera failed. Also, I don't want to "exercise" 50 tapes every year if I can find a reasonable alternative.

What I've been doing is importing the video into iMovie, then saving the hour-long iMovie projects to external firewire drives. I have been using 2 of LaCie's 500GB drives, filling them up to 85% capacity. My concern is that these 500GB hard drives actually have two 250GB drives in each of them, and the drives are RAID 0. 2 drives means twice the risk of losing data if there is a hardware failure. One such failure could cost me half my video library, a horrific scenario. Worse, what if there is a house fire and the whole library is lost? Also, I don't really know what the natural life of a hard drive is.

So I need to make a backup copy and take the backup off site. But I am reluctant to spend another about $1000 to buy another terabyte of storage. (Also, LaCie's terabyte drives have 4 individual disk mechanisms inside!)

Bottom line is this: I need to backup my video in a way that is ideally:

- Very reliable and durable, resistant to hardware failures and other damage = MOST important
- Cheap = INTERMEDIATE importance
- Fast = SOMEWHAT important

MicroMat Tech3 (at MacFixIt.com) recommended Magneto-Optical disks a while back on this topic, but I haven't seen too much of this technology and obviously I need a medium that will be accessible years in the future.

I would appreciate your views on this. Thanks in advance.

[msuper69]

I back up all my video to DVD-R disks (2 copies of the raw DV files) and save the original miniDV tapes. Contrary to what many in these fora recommend, I would never rely on an external hard drive as my only back up media. Anything with mechanical moving parts can fail at any time; ok for a backup of a backup but not safe as the only backup.

Ideally, a tape backup solution using systems specifically designed for data archival is the way to go but they are expensive and not within reach for most non-business users.

[AMKassirMD]

Okay, I've been doing a lot of reading around the web on the topic of archiving large amounts of data (DV files). Unfortunately, I have not found an ideal solution. I'm still looking for a way to archive large amounts of data, in a format that will last for decades with minimal risk of data loss, at a reasonable price.

Much of the discussion has been about hard drives and DVD-R media, but both of these are prone to failure.

Hard drives may last 5-10 years or perhaps more, but will eventually fail and their data may deteriorate before the drive itself fails. Some people say drives that are filled up then not used last longer, while some people say storing drives on the shelf can lead to frozen mechanisms.

DVD-R (and CD-R) is the cheapest option but it appears that the quality of media varies widely. Some DVD-R media may fail in as short a time as 5 years, while some may actually meet archival quality. The problem is consumers cannot easily tell the difference. (See the link to the pdf file for more on this, below.)

Some proponents suggest using tape media, but apparently this can be both slow and expensive, and again there is the risk of data loss with magnetic media. I don't know much about this option.

From what I've read, Magneto-Optical is the best option in terms of longevity, but the cost is prohibitive. It would cost about $80 to store an hour of digital video, or about $3000 in media costs for my DV data. I wish I could afford this... it's the safest option.

I will provide links for related discussions that I've found, and I invite you to peruse them if you're interested.

MacFixIt Forums discussion
XLR8YourMac forums - one of the more helpful discussions
MacWorld forums discussion
Stability Comparison of Recordable Optical Discs (scientific article, pdf file)
MacNN Forums discussion
SlashDot discussion - lengthy and very detailed, some of it not entirely on topic
MacOSXHints forum discussion

This must be a very common problem for people who film a lot of DV for any variety of purposes. There has to be a reasonable solution!

Please help! Your continued suggestions and thoughts are most welcome.

[AMKassirMD]

I did some more digging on the net, and found this information.

Mitsui, now called MAM-A, has made well-rated archival CD-R media in the past. Now I've come accross this MAM-A Press Release regarding DVD-R archival media, and this MAM-A store page showing price & availability date ($3/disc, July 15, 2005).

To quote from the first link:

MAM-A Inc. Announces the release of their newest product,
Gold Archive Grade DVD-R

Colorado Springs, CO – May 17, 2005

In order to meet consumer demands for large capacity, long life data storage, MAM-A Inc. has developed a Gold Archive Grade, recordable DVD media. The media is capable of storing any type of data or video content and is available in "-R" and "+R" formats for 4.7 GB of total storage space. Either of these formats can be recorded in DVD+/-RW drives for playback on any DVD player.

The product uses 24 karat gold as the reflective layer, offering maximum resistance to chemical breakdown -- one of the major causes of disc failure. The MAM Gold Archive Grade DVD is offered as the long awaited companion to the MAM Archive Grade Gold CD-R which has earned a reputation for the best longevity of any storage media.

My search may be near the end!

[neilw]

Though I've only just started with DV and don't have nearly enough to represent a storage problem yet, I've been lately wondering the exact same issue. My plan is to use hard disks as working system backups, but to use DVD-R as archival data backup. When the amount of data gets large, though, you start to need an awful lot of DVD's. Maybe when HD-DVDs come out, they'll be an answer, at least once some longevity tests can be run on their media.

The Mitsumi Gold DVD's do seem to be the most archival media you can get right now. Their silver DVD's should be quite long lived as well, probably good enough for personal archiving, but I could only find 4x speeds supported. I was, for myself, possibly planning to use silver Verbatim disks with azo dye as cheap everyday, and maybe get some of the Mitsumi's for the real important stuff that I'll be taking off-site.

Reliably backing up these monster quantities of data is a strangely difficult problem these days. I tend to assume that any digital media we use now for long-term storage will one day, long before they're at the end of their life, be transferred to something newer and (hopefully) better.

[subego]

One possibility in the tape department is to get a Sony DVCAM deck and just dub your Mini DV tapes. DVCAM is made for broadcast, so it's way more robust both in terms of dropout as well as physical construction.