Barely functioning HD, and seeking advice re: how to successfully record in blu-ray

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 12:59:59AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Sad.  Lot of disk stories end like that :-(

I hate disk failures, and always use RAID 1 when I build a machine.

Not a substitute for backups, just saves a lot of grief.

> I've bought a BLuRay burner (SATA) and will eventually install it.  One
> trouble is that I suspect that BluRay will be no more reliable than
> DVD.  One reason that I bought the drive was that it also
> burns a new kind of archival DVDs (Millenniata M-Disk).  I don't
> actually know how good M-Disks are; they are not cheap.
> 
> The chatter about burning BluRays under Linux looks worisome.  As
> usual, cdrecord folks slag the forkers.  For previous fights, I've
> found the cdrecord proponents quite over-the-top.  They may well be
> right this time.

Hmm, I haven't tried it yet (although I have a blu-ray drive in one of
my machines).  I was thinking growisofs would be the tool to use.
Not sure.

> Anyway, blank BluRays are a similar cost/byte as hard drives:
> 
> BluRay: one 25G disk for $1 (may not be the best brand; what is the
> best brand?).
> 
> Hard drive: 3T USB 3.0 external for $109 most weekends ($90 last
> boxing day; may not be the best brand).

So get two and store two copies in different locations.

> Hard drives are a lot easier to deal with.  But a lot more eggs in one
> basket.

Hence solution: Two baskets.

> I've worried that a decent external BluRay drive ought to be USB3.0 vs
> USB2.0.  But I haven't done the bandwidth math.  Lennart has often
> pointed out that USB2 is very CPU-intensive.

USB3 on the other hand is amazing.

I just replaced the 500GB drive in my laptop with a 1TB this weekend.
It had 325GB of data on it, and it took about 30 minutes to clone from
the internal 500GB to the new 1TB in a USB3 enclosure.  I was having a
hard time believing the estimate it gave.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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