Blu-Ray

[johnbarry]

I have 8GB DVD blanks I have 4GB DVD blanks and 700mb CD blanks, these I can use in my PC Multi DVD Recorder / Player.

I don’t know about blu-ray.

1) Can I use these with the Multi DVD Recorder / Player.

2) Or do I need to purchase a Blu-Ray recorder.

3) If so can I still use (up) my blank DVDs CDs as well as Blu-Ray discs in a blue-ray recorder.

4) Do I need special software capable of burning Blu-Ray or can I use my Nero 7 software.

Cheers
John

[blacklion1725]

Hello John, your DVD drive in the PC won’t play or record to Blu Ray. Can I ask why you want to do it – its possible (Blu-Ray) but time consuming and needs hardware and paid for (the easiest way) software. A Blu-Ray ROM drive is cheap and ripping Blu-Ray to a file rather than a disk is achievable at little or no cost – aside from huge amounts of storage space -. Physical Blu-Ray media is a real chore – if you can give a clue what you want to do there may well be a better and cheaper solution.

[johnbarry]

Thanks Blacklion

huge amounts of storage space is the main.

I am backup mad I cut down a lot of DVDs by using 8GB I have often thought blu-ray to cut down more.

My backups are already backed up to USB Sticks + 2.5″ HDD + 3.5″ HDD + 8GB DVD

My main backup is by using 3.5″ HDD in a caddy (USB) I just like to have a backup of a backup on disc stored else where.

Cheers
John

[blacklion1725]

John if you are backing up your own data the optical media is not the best bet for me. At least 2 physical locations and at least one cloud (e.g. OneDrive, GoogleDrive, Drop Box etc). To be honest even if you are just backing up music/video I’d still forget optical media. I’d use HDD/NAS and online (cloud). Optical Media is  not a great back up solution – not even much of a media solution these days – its on its @rse.

[Ed P]

+1 to BL. Unfortunately optical media’s longevity is a myth. Try opening something you burned 5 years ago. Unless it was burnt on a ‘gold’ CD then good luck!

I tend to use my remaining stocks of DVD/CDs (mostly the blue dye carp) as boot disks e.g. recovery/anti-virus stuff. It just does not have either the capacity or longevity to be very useful today.

[The Duke]

I’ve not used optical media for a good 5 years. My pc’s don’t e en have a drive. I have an old USB dvd drive that services all the pc lap top needs. As I said it must be 5 years since it came out the draw.

[Bob Williams]

I still have a drawer full of CD’s, DVD’s, dual layer 8GB stuff. Don’t recall when I last used one, but I do remember finding some old CD’s and DVD’s last year that I recorded some good stuff on. Most were kiddy videos for grandchildren, but also some comedy stuff and films recorded from the old Panasonic TV. Every single one was cream-crackered, laminations peeling away and brown stains across them, meaning moisture had got in somehow. I save my video stuff to NAS now using VLC. My son has loads of 80’s music cd’s from when he was a DJ and a Roadie: they are all mostly shot, but he cannot bring himself to chuck them.

Makes me wonder what the next medium will be like: I started recording vinyl music from a (4th-hand) old Grundig open reel recorder, via microphone with a blanket over it, in front of the speakers on an ancient radiogram. VCR’s were a revelation until played too many times. Cassettes were OK for a few years, CD’s didn’t last either. Streaming is the biz now, what next I wonder?

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[johnbarry]

Thanks Blacklion

I have had problems with optical media (as Ed says), cloud is not a good backup if especially if
I end up having no ISP.

stay with HDD then.

Cheers
John

[blacklion1725]

John cloud is a good additional backup – if all your physical media got destroyed or stolen the online version would still be there. Reasonable amounts (for documents etc) can be had free and won’t expire. So as long as you upload a backup you don’t need a permanent ISP – only when you need to retrieve the backup (which is hopefully never). No good for huge media files but those can normally be replaced.

[johnbarry]

Thanks Blacklion

Come to think of it, I do have files on dropbox and one drive, it’s for large files (folders) 8GB worth then there is my Windows backups 20GB.

Cheers
John

[Bob Williams]

JB I use Google Drive, a NAS box and an external 2TB Hdd for all backups, giving me triple security. A new NAS is expensive, these are some available used items on Gumtree:    http://tinyurl.com/yxr5y7ds

A NAS would also allow you to stream stuff to other devices.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

Even a 64Gb USB flash drive at <£10 is cheaper and better than optical.  I’d be shocked if your individual files or projects exceed the capacity of one. A 128Gb flash costs around £15 and will do a full system backup.

Spend your pennies on USB3 rather than optical.

[The Duke]

I’d use an sd card over a USB thumb drive. I don’t think I’ve ever had a sd card fail, maybe once, maybe. But usb drives, seem to die often for me.

 

I munched prefer a micro sd card and a USB adapter. or full sd card adapter. They usally come with most micro ad cards anyhow. The USB adapter is cheap, and more flexible.

[Richard]

I have some suspicion about the cloud services since many of them have folded and even the big boys have sometimes decided to pull the plug on services. With the EU currently so keen on attacking Google and other digital services, nothing is really beyond the threat of loss. However, optical had a promise that has never really been fulfilled, perhaps it was sacrificed by the greedy paws of the Intellectual Property protecting studios? They have been outfoxed by on line services, which I think have devoured optical’s breakfast,  lunch and dinner. At the more personal level spinning rust appears at least as stable and more likely to be available while solid state devices claim to be more immortal, is anything really immortal? Diversity is a key in my opinion, with good old paper being the standard fall back suggestion from archivists. The latter is hardly useful for many pictures or for films of any type.

[blacklion1725]

I did go through a phase of uploading fill windows image backups (as John mentions) to OneDrive when it briefly went unlimited with Office 365 (1TB now). A local image makes sense but even then, as long as the important data is safe and backed up I’m happy for a single version of the Windows System Image. Windows reinstalls are so easy now, my data sits on a separate partition to Windows so a reinstall , Ninite, Office  and a bit of tweaking gets you back where you were very fast. For music Google give you 20GB free (you can buy more) and unlimited photos (if you accept their extremely good and to me un-noticable) compression.

[Dave Rice]

I agree, full system backups are very wasteful unless you have a program that can deal with deduplication (not backing the same thing up more than once). Windows backup is particularly horrible and doesn’t deal with disk space management as it purports to.

As BL says getting a system back from scratch is now less than half an hour. I use EaseUs ToDo backup for a daily incremental backup of data only, retaining 30 versions. It will fit on a 64GB stick easily.

[johnbarry]

I am happy with my present backup method.

I have over 500GB of backups and I was considering of all eggs in one basket.

I was just wondering about Blu-Ray.

 

 

 

 

Cheers
John

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