Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Data DVD Archival Storage Questions - Best Practices?

Tags:
  • Storage
  • CD-Rom
October 3, 2014 6:03:30 PM

Time sure does fly. I have a TON of CDR's that I used to ensure that various "bug fixes" and "new code and added functions, etc" were stored in case my PC crashed. Nothing more annoying than 8 to 16 hours of coding lost when returning to the PC the next morning! Some of the CDR's are from 2002 and they still do work fine. Always stored in a dark, cool, dry environment.

The goal is to: Copy the data from each CDR to a DVD+R data disc.

Is there a "best practices" standard for doing this?

What comes to my mind is: (1) Using PowerISO to create an ISO or UDF image of each CDR and store it on the DVD+R disc uncompressed. OR, (2) Using a ZIP-type program to create a large archive file that has every file and directory structure from the CDR stored. OR, (3) Just creating a directory for each CDR on the DVD+R, such as "CDR_10_20_2003" for one of the CDR's, and copying all of the files from the CDR into that DVD+R directory (however that leaves open the possibility that I may run into "filename too long" problems as I've seen before - code projects have so many nested subdirs it is sickening).

I always do a "copyback" from the newly burned disc just to make sure that it restores everything to match the copied CDR and without pauses where the drive is having a hard time in a certain part of the newly burned disc. Also, I would be keeping the CDR's just in case.

Thanks for any ideas. The PowerISO method to a large .ISO or .UDF image of each CDR and as many as possible copied to a DVD+R may be the best choice because I could "load-up" that image later on using PowerISO and view it as if it were a real drive letter.

More about : data dvd archival storage questions practices

!