I got my first digital camera 14 years ago. At the same time, the problem of storing photographs arose. Fortunately, at that time she decided quickly and unambiguously - to burn it to disk, period. External HDDs, and internal ones too, were expensive back then. In my opinion, there were no SSD drives at all, and if there were, then they probably cost an order of magnitude more expensive. Storing footage directly on memory cards and buying a new card every time is wasteful madness. In general, at home, there was simply no reasonable alternative to DVDs. In addition, a lot of games came out on discs, and a DVD drive was always present in the computer. I immediately had a writing disk drive.
At some point, and this was about 2-3 years ago, I came to a friend with a car simulator recorded on a DVD-RW disc for him and discovered that his new computer did not have a disc reader at all. I was a little shocked. A friend laughed: to come with a disc is like coming to a car race on a horse and cart. And then I realized that the era of CD-DVD is leaving. Then I had to buy a large flash drive to transfer data.
But to store my photos, I still could not refuse DVD. I just don't see a viable alternative. Some argue that disks are very unreliable storage because they start to "crumble" after 3-5 years. Let's see if that's the case. It's been 14 years since my first photo shoot. Let's get those old disks out of the desk drawer.
Actually, here is my entire archive. These are 82 DVD+R discs, which is approximately 360 GB in size. A few CD-Rs in boxes - they don't count, I just put them next to me because they look cool - they are in the form of old records, I once bought them, but I never recorded anything on them.
Why does the archive take up so little? Well, I used to have the simplest camera and the pictures "weighed" very little. Also, I am not a professional photographer and never store RAW. The entire archive is just some family photos, moments of various trips, events and feasts. All this does not pretend to be some kind of high art, it is just such a βhome photo albumβ, something that is expensive, like memories. Well, before recording, photos are subjected to strict censorship (just kidding): only those pictures that turned out to be more or less interesting, and without duplicates, are allowed on the disk.
Let's try to read old disks. I've had a few DVD burners, but they were all NEC, Sony or Sony-NEC or something like that. In any case, I only remember these two brands. And I did not skimp on disks for my photos and always bought expensive ones: usually Verbatim and sometimes TDK.
Disc 1
So. The first disc of the archive is bike rides.
The disk was read without problems. The photos on it date back to 2007-2010, and it was recorded in April 2011. It wasn't that old, either.
I even remember sorting those photos into folders, and then immediately burning them to disk and deleting them from the HDD. I think they were previously stored on several CDs, but unfortunately I threw them away.
Disc 2
Let's try to find something more ancient. The next disc is the first of a series of trips: "Trips 2005-2007".
It is logical to assume that his recording was made no earlier than 2007. We open the disk. Folders from December 2008. Yes, I remember how I then created them and rolled them onto a blank.
Well, okay, 11 years is also not bad. Apparently, earlier these photos were also stored on CDs. For this DVD: 11 years is a normal flight.
Disc 3
And here is an interesting example. These are videos that were recorded by friends. I was not on those trips, I just asked for the disc to be rewritten.
This disc is definitely from 2005, because I absolutely could not afford to store such a volume on a hard drive at that time. The disc was copied for a long time, about 20 minutes, but still copied!
Might be time to back it up. However, I remember that even then, immediately after the recording, it was read somehow not very quickly: apparently, it was with some kind of defect. But I could borrow these videos from friends again at any time, so I did not spoil another disc.
10 more discs
Unfortunately, I did not find older discs. I tested another 10 random discs from the archive, trying to take the oldest ones, which corresponded to 2007-2010. All of them, without exception, were read without hesitation or errors.
I must say that I have always recorded discs at 6x, because I heard that at higher speeds the grooves can be poorly burned: more sloppy and at a shallower depth.
Storing photos on DVD
What are the downsides to this?
- Low access speed. However, for an archive with an average access frequency of once a year, this is not critical.
- carrier degradation. Here - depending on the quality of the disks and the drive to take and at what speed to record. My discs are more than 10 years old and can be read without problems. Maybe someone has older ones? Share your experience. And I'm not at all sure that, for example, the magnetic recording used in all other types of media is better than the physical burning of depressions in the surface. Manufacturers of SSD drives give a guarantee of data safety from 10 years. And DVDs are up to 50 or even more years old. But here we mean, of course, high-quality DVDs, not "three-penny". Just at a price of 40 rubles, you should not save some miserable 10-15 rubles on future memories.
- Small disk space. To record photo shoots from one or two trips, this is enough. And in my case, trips and other reasons for photographing happen no more than once a month. In addition, there is a rule "do not put all your eggs in one basket." Breaking one of the 82 disks is not as bad as burning down the entire storage.
- Fragility of the carrier. And, in fact, why test them for strength? I always keep my discs in a box with a spindle that sells them in packs of 10, 25, 50 or 100. Actually, they are recorded and sent to the same box. And she's strong enough. I sat on it and stepped on it, it fell to the floor, and there was nothing for the discs.
- A clear advantage: the DVD media itself is a blank without any electrics and moving parts. Recording is done by physically burning holes in one of the disc layers. More reliable - only rock art. And if the DVD drive breaks down, then you can simply buy a new one, that is, I mean that the storage medium, unlike a hard or SSD drive, is not tied directly to the reading device in any way.
- If the disc starts to read poorly, then there is still a chance to completely copy it, even if it takes maybe 20-30 minutes. Which does not always work out with a dead "screw".
- Finally, I often hear that DVDs are obsolete. Oh, don't just do this, okay? For me, the fact that someone said that this thing is no longer fashionable is not a reason to immediately abandon it: it has undeniable advantages, and I want to use them, why not?
Photo storage on HDD/SSD/memory card
Why not store all photos on HDD/SSD? Yes, I understand that today even a much larger SSD is cheaper than all my DVDs combined. But, firstly, my disks were bought gradually, as needed. And, secondly, a whole HDD or SSD exclusively for photos was always an expensive one-time purchase anyway. And, even if such money appeared at some point, it was always spent on something else, such as a new video card, additional RAM, and so on. I wonder if there are others like me? Moreover, at some time I generally switched from HDD to SSD due to higher speed and stopped recognizing HDD altogether. Well, since my HDD was already old, I did not dare to use it even for archive. And a new kind of drives, that is, SSDs, cost more and again seemed like some kind of expensive purchase, just like HDDs used to be. It also became unrealistic to buy them purely for the archive: to fit everything you need that used to be on the HDD ...
But if we put aside financial difficulties and look at storage from a technical point of view, then the disadvantages of storage on HDD / SSD, compared to DVD, include:
- Possibility of accidental deletion of files.
- Possible damage to the electrics of the device, and even information along with it, when turning on / off / power surge.
- The impact of viruses.
- Low durability of storage, as the recording is based on the magnetic principle.
Storing photos in the clouds
Perhaps these are my prejudices, but for some reason I do not trust cloud services in terms of long-term storage of archives. Disadvantages compared to DVD:
- An account in a cloud service may be blocked or the service may be completely closed.
- Some services may require some kind of rights to your photos, such as using them for their learning algorithms or for something else.
- Annual payment can be 4000 or more rubles.
- The fall of the server can also be written down as a small minus, although, I hope, all the information is duplicated many times there. But you can't be 100% sure of this...
- If there are any photos that are too personal, then it is not very pleasant when they generally leak somewhere on the Internet.
Storing photos on your own RAID array / your own server
By controlling the process yourself, you can be more confident in the safety of information. But - the cost of replacing failed media, wasting time on software configuration. And, again, the type of media is fundamentally the same as in the cloud.
Storing photos on paper
Actually, I don't see any special advantages over DVD here. Paper also degrades over time. But, in the case of paper, when printing a photo, an unnecessary data conversion occurs. Digital images are converted to analog. Unless, of course, you store them digitally on punched cards...
Conclusion
In general, I have not found a worthy replacement for DVD. And itβs not even that I donβt like magnetic media in terms of long-term storage of information, but that working with them requires more effort than recording a disc: you need to register somewhere, pay or raise your own server, or spend money on some additional devices to keep multiple copies, and then connect them and periodically make these same copies ...
Meanwhile, DVD drives are disappearing from the market, as well as the discs themselves. It is a pity that such dinosaurs, more reliable than which only rock art, go down in history. After all, it was basically a good idea. However, Sony produced cassette audio players right up to 2010, so there is hope that this whole DVD story will not sink into oblivion for a long time. And there - you look and they will invent some new removable media without built-in electrics and not tied to the magnetic principle. Although, perhaps it is still worth saving photos in several places, using all modern tools at once?
Source: habr.com