Questions About Burning a Blu-Ray Disc?

I have a great deal of stuff backed up on my external and I was wondering perhaps this is a good time to just burn the really important stuff to a blu-ray disc via my blu-ray drive (Panasonic UJ-220). I think it was one of the first blu-ray players in a laptop because I can't even find any type of documentation on it.

However, there are so many discs out on eBay and I'm not sure which one will work with my drive. I know that BD-XL discs will not play or be recognized in my laptop at all. Up on til now, all I've done is watch movies and tv shows via my blu-ray drive and haven't really done anything related to burning.

So if anyone can tell me what type of discs I can use because I know there are 25gb and 50gb (DL?) or something to that extent and a few others. I know my laptop is capable of burning a blu-ray disc but I don't know what format I need.

 

Forget optical (fragile, rot-ridden, definitely unpermanent storage) solutions and get an external HDD (preferrably two) to backup your 'really important' stuff to.

The price of the optical disks plus the time to burn them will easily be worth the 2 external drives price.

Not to mention your quandry already: which ones will work (now) and which ones will actually have your data (and not some corrupted version of it) in a few months/years?

No business uses optical backup solutions. At least not as their primary or only one. Neither should anyone else.

I vote for a WD External for your needs (and if you are moving, instead of just copying the data to the external: two of them - at least - with the first being a 'copy' not a move to the new 'unproven' drive).

Good luck.

 

Thanks mate, yeah, I was looking at some of these discs and it seemed like it was worth more trouble than it really should be. I am actually moving that's why I wanted to be careful, but the thing is I'm not doing my own moving, several workers are coming to take my stuff to my new apartment (as I don't have the time).

I just recently got an 256gb SSD but didn't know what to do with the 500gb 2.5" HDD I have. So I am thinking I will turn that into my external HDD via an enclosure. That way, I won't lose stuff. However, I did order a single BDRE disc to see what the fuss was about, but I doubt I'll have time to use it.

 

I think we both got confused from your post. loling...

I meant 'moving' files from one HDD to another (the 'source' being your notebook - my mistake!).

If these files are already on an External HDD - and this is your only copy of these files, I highly suggest you get another one (that will be a backup of your data - a single HDD with the original files (not copied and saved elsewhere) is not a backup.

Depending on how old this External HDD is, two more (larger capacity, of course) would not be out of line, imo. The second that one of them 'hiccups', you stop using/trusting it and go and buy another drive to copy your files from the drive that is running normal - that is what a backup system should look like 'in action'.

Glad I could help!

 

According to my research all the blu-ray technology is backwards compatible. And BD-XL disc and player/burners are still pretty rare. At the time, the 100GB disc were pretty expensive too.

That doesn't mean you won't. I did all my backup disc before I got my Pioneer blu-ray burner. If I had it then, all that loading and unloading of discs could have been accomplished in one pop.

Hmm, there's no way to tell unless someone is familiar with your burner. From what I could learn when I was researching my burner, it that for the most part, the burner differ mostly is the speed at which they can burn a disc.

 

another thing to consider is that you are burning 20+gb of stuff, its going to take a loooong time...

 

I do a backup on Blu-ray every now and again. I'd recommend using single layer BD-R discs. They're the least expensive. I've used re-writeables before, but they're flaky.

 

ZaZ, please don't consider optical media as Back Up media - unless you can 'press' CD's/DVD's/Blu-Ray media like OEM manufacturer's do - any disk that is actually 'burned' with a laser is drastically sub-optimal with regards to longetivity and dependability. Especially when done with most commercial optical writers - commercial versions are much more robust 'burners'

Of course, if your Blu-Ray backups are in addition to at least two other methods (HDD's, much preferred...), then all you're doing is at worst wasting your time (the time it takes to burn the Blu-Ray disks) or at best you have a third version of your files possibly available.

 

Thanks man, I don't have a great deal of stuff, most of it is just school work, presentations and web development, at most it's about 12-15 gigs. At the very least this should be a good way if anything happens to my laptop, I will have the most important stuff.

The reason I ask this is because I'm not taking my external drive to where I am going to Medical School (Caribbean) and if I do, there's a good chance it'll be stolen. So at the very least I'll be able to have the most important stuff if my things do get stolen..

 

That's an optimal scenario. You take for granted that as consumers, it isn't even more critical for us to balance optimal usefulness with price. Given that, his system would be a viable alternative.

 

Krane, when the questions are of Backup solutions - anything less than optimal is simply a waste of money - you may as well throw it ($$$) away.

If by a 'viable alternative' you mean burning optical disks (any kind: CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) and taking a chance that some or all of your data will not be available (at all) or simply, randomly corrupted in 1-5 yrs, then you are saying that the data is not worth saving in the first place.

When backup is the question, yes - price is still in the drivers seat - as long as the price point/method chosen is 100% reliable until the next migration to the next/new backup media is done again.

With how you state it and with what I know of optical media used for backup purposes; the 'savings' along with the cost of the 'cheaper/balanced solution' is thrown away - along with some/all of your data - given enough time from when you burned your data for safe keeping and when you need that data back because of some catastrophe.

If I'm going to go to the trouble of backing up my data - I want to be able to rely on getting to that data (intact) for as long as possible. You suggest that gambling a little with that data availability is okay - as long as we save a few pennies.

 

I was using bd-r for the longest time to burn my backups. Since then I've switched to flash drives with a hardware write protect switch. If you're concerned about infections and don't mind the initial investment, this might be up your alley. It will pay for itself over time.

 

So I should just bring an external hdd w/me out there then? The thing is it's a pretty much a third-world living place, I don't know how properly the stuff is grounded or if it's grounded at all. I remember my cousin telling me that his roommate's girlfriend had a fuse that blew and it knocked out her entire floor and most of that rendered some of the people's laptops useless.

I'm not sure what to do, perhaps I should do both? Because I can't be in the week before my final thesis is due and have a power outage erase all of my material...

 

Yeah, in your case, I would do both and also the flash based backup too as suggested by Roger.

 

Yeah, it's no joke man. I'll probably take my currently retired 500gb Seagate Momentus w/me after I clone my existing SSD on to it, as means of still having my an accessible HDD outside of my external out there.

I thought that having it on a BD-R would be more permanent than say having it on an HDD or USB. Hmm...I guess this might not be a bad idea, you mean as in Micro SD cards?

 

No, like this. I have one and it's been totally reliable in the several months I have owned it. It has a hardware write protect switch, so when you're done moving files over, just flip the switch and it's protected.
The advantage to that is, you can add new stuff later on without having to "burn" a new disc. I got tired of going through a lot of bd-r's because of it.

 

Oh nice, but I can see why it's so expensive though. I guess this is a good step in the right direction, what is the lifetime of these drives? Perhaps you can enlighten me to what the difference is between that drive's 128gb version and this.

Aside from the price of course, but I mean there has to be a reason that the flash drive is worth an extra hundred as opposed to it's SDHC counterpart, right?

 

The "lock" switch on SD cards is not a true lock. It can still be bypassed. The spec calls for that. With the hardware write protect switch on USB flash drives (which are few these days), it's a real hardware lock that nothing can bypass.
In fact I even have some Imation Clips that have a write protect switch also. I just wont buy a flash drive these days without one.

 

For example?

 

For example, the Imation Clip, and the Kanguru that I already linked to.