back-up options: external HDD or DVDs

what is people's opinion about back-up options? I've always used DVD but when I have to go through some of them to find something it's painful. But they last forever and they are more safe.

I always avoided external HDD because they are bulky to carry around and they could fail at anytime.

Another option is to have 2 external HDDs with the same data on them, but then you would have to copy data two times.

What do you guys prefer and why? I am debating if I should stop using DVDs.

 

You could always have the best of both worlds, make a DVD backup occasionally (with critical data) and back everything up constantly to your HDD.

 

I use my external HDD for data that I may need more frequently and DVDs for less frequent data (or when I actually run out of HDD space).

 

DVDs rot and hard-drives fail.

pick your choice

I have a 640 GB back-up hard-drive; holds the same amount of data as 140 DVDs.

now, pick again.

bleh, I do the same thing as Hirohata anyways.

 

it is true that you need a lot of DVDs compared to one HDD. I am thinking about a RAID enclosure with two 2.5 HDD to have a smaller size. Otherwise I could do 3.5 if they are more reliable. Definitely eSATA. any suggestions?

I usually make two copies of each DVD.

 

iam no expert but i think RAID 1 will allow two separate HDs to act like a mirror image, its like whatever u copy on one will also be on the other,
so if one fails then u can just take that one out of the casing and replace it with a new one, and the other working HD will copy everything on the new one.

say hello to WD
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=466

 

I do both. Back up onto external HDD (2) and regularly copy to DVD (archive grade) or DVD+RW.

 

I do the same as goofball. I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB that I do all of my backups on, and then I use DVD's for critical data. The fact that HDD's are mechanical, and could fail at anytime for any apparent reason makes me take the extra-precautionary way around and use DVD's for really important stuff.

 

I used to be a CD/DVD guy, but after having found a couple of them rotten, or just unreadable by the Optical Drive, i've switched to HDD.

What i do is, keep my important data on both of my laptop's HDD and on an external HDD. Should one of them fail, i'll just buy a new one and recopy the data. You can, of course, keep a third backup on DVDs just in case.

 

I have an external HDD and use SyncToy to backup data. It runs every morning while i'm sleeping. The recovery plan would be what Estlander said.

 

Both DVD and HDD will fail after a few years. You have to use expensive high quality DVD's with a good DVD burner and you have to store them in a good environment to avoid too many failures after a short time. Don't think that you'll be able to read a normal DVD in four or five years without problems.

I have my main HDD in my laptop which contains all the data I need. Then I've outsourced some archived data, which I don't need any longer on a few DVD's. But I also have an external HDD which contains the informations on the DVD and also the data from my laptop, which gets updated every few days.

You just should try to renew your backups every few years to the current technology.
Flashback:
The biggest mistake would have been to keep the files on a floppy disk, store it somewhere and forget it. Now they are useless because they are damaged. The same with a CD. A CD which was burned a few years ago will have a lot of failures now. The same will happen with DVD's, HDD's, ...
Just keep your files fresh and copy them on a new, widely-used, technology.