Plextor optical drives

[pctech]

After getting my fingers slightly warmed after an external archive drive failure which thankfully only contained soms Steam game archive files I've fallen back on DVD for backup but as I have limited storage I have to regularly destroy my backups as just don't have the physical room.

I'm thinking that Blu-ray might be just the job as I have aboiut 4 gigs in total of data.

I'm thinking about investing in one of these http://www.plextor-digital.com/index.php/en/External-Blu-ray/px-b950ue.html which are about 150 quid but from what I can gather Plextor have a reputation for building reliable and accurate drives (I seem to recall one of our machines having a Plextor DVD-RW drive in it and being to use that if I had to burn anything to send out to a customer as we would occasionally do that)

Anyone got any thoughts?

[Technical Ben]

Raid with paired drives for external backup? Tape backup (actually good, but way over budget as it's corporation grade stuff. ).

PS, that might be the sleep deprivation talking.

[armadillo]

I used to use Plextor optical drives (mounted in the PC tower case) and found them very reliable back in the days when other drives were not. NEC rapidly caught up and I have used those with no problems for many years.

I know nothing about BluRay but if you need to destroy backups to save space, you would presumably be either:

1) using rewritable optical discs
2) using a writing mechanism that can add to an existing partly full disc without closing it
3) using non-rewritable discs of around 4GB capacity, keeping a couple of generations and then discarding them.

I use 3) as a last stop backup mechanism for critical data to support a strategy which uses an internal backup HDD and an external HDD.

1) and 2) can very easily fail. Rewritable discs suddenly become unreadable and so do unclosed discs.

But if you have only about 4GB data to back up, surely the easiest and safest thing is just to back up to two separate external HDDs.

Separately, not with RAID. Unless you use industrial and very expensive dedicated RAID controllers, RAID seems to be just a more sophisticated way to lose all your data. IMHO, the only place for RAID is when you need to maintain on-line access to your data, eg for an enquiry database or a control system. But it is a risky data backup mechanism.

Over a USB 2.0 connection, it takes about 4 minutes to write 4GB using a utility like FastCopy. It can even write to two (independent non RAID) external HDDs simultaneously. If your computer supports USB 3.0 or eSATA, it could be faster still.

[Lance]

If its only about 4gb, just get some 8gb USB memory sticks. Cheap, small and reasonably reliable.

[Niall]

It's cheaper to buy extra hard drives than spend a fortune on plextor. Plus if you look on Scan, if you have to have a burner, you can get them for under £50. Same goes for hard drives. I have two hard drives, my mums PC, and her laptop plus an external hard drive to backup my stuff. Much cheaper, and the reason I do this is that I found that some old DVDs and CDs I burned, after a while they couldn't be read. Plus if you manage to damage them you've lost all info on them. Multiple backups is a cheaper option with extra hard drives I've found.

[Technical Ben]

If its only about 4gb, just get some 8gb USB memory sticks. Cheap, small and reasonably reliable.

Ooops. Sorry, I thought it was the entire drive (some are around 500GB now). Hence the idea of raid etc. Did not realise it was just 4GB. I'd stick to a couple of DVDs/Mem stick for that.

[pctech]

The USB memory stick is indeed probably a better idea and or a small SSD.

I think that if hard drives aren't used regularly they seize up which I think happened in my case.

[Technical Ben]

True. I currently have everything mirrored in the pc for quick recovery of software crashes on a second drive, and then a "personal files/documents only" external drive. Really I should have both backups on the external drives. Plus one stored above the flood level just in case. 
To save space I tend not to backup things I know are easily replaceable (like software I still have the DVDs to) and stick to the settings/saves/pictures that are not.

[nowster]

I think that if hard drives aren't used regularly they seize up which I think happened in my case.

There's even a term for it: stiction.