It has been a LONG time since I've burned optical media... and now I wish I had been doing so all along.

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DarknessConcept

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I felt I was in need of some general advice, but I wasn't sure what kind of advice I may or may not need. You see, my work is taking me in a direction where I need to address my current storage solutions for large amounts of data, and I will need to archive it long term. My current method is with a NAS, but fairly soon I will be generating as much as 350GB-1TB of data a day (large, single write uncompressed RAW video file). I have decided that to store and maintain this data long term, I will forgo the NAS enclosure route and instead burn it to blu ray (data discs) daily. Now, I have not burned optical media in at least 10 years. Additionally, I have never burned BD-R media. Through cursory reading, I feel that I have a handle on it, but I am having trouble shaking the feeling that because I am so out of the burning game, there's stuff that I don't know that I need to know. The plan:

I have chosen and ordered the ODD drive and await its arrival.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136250

I have chosen and ordered media and await its arrival.

http://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Blu-ray-Recordable-25-Disc-97457/dp/B00471HK0Q

I (obviously) intend to avoid BD-DL for archival stability.

I used ImgBurn back in the day, and currently intend to use it for this undertaking.

I intend to store the burned media in slim cases. I intend to store these slim cases into these drawers:

http://www.amazon.com/Innovera-Storage-Drawer-Holds-39501/dp/B008YX7S2S/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1451965852&sr=1-1&keywords=innovera+drawer

I intend to store these drawers in a climate controlled storage facility.

After doing some reading, I learned about HTL and LTH BD-R, and chose HTL. I read about file systems and gleaned that I need to be burning in UDF 2.5 + ISO. My intention is to somehow segment the large video file that will be generated daily into <23GB units that will then be burned in duplicate (master, redundant), labeled, cataloged, then stored as stated above. As of the time of this writing, I'm not sure how I will go about this. When opening the master file, I'm not sure how I'll know where to splice to achieve units that can fit onto the optical media. Perhaps there is software for this, or perhaps the software I will be using (Premiere CS6) will have a tool for this.

I am fairly confident in all of my decisions, but I feel that I am in a position where I could be easily missing something. Since I don't know what I'm doing with burning (the step I am unsure of), I feel like I don't know what to search for online. Basically, I don't know what questions to ask, other than:

Does this seem right, or am I missing something (or misunderstanding something) vital? I implore you for help, and thank you in advance for your time.
 
Solution
drtweak
Few things.

1) Some burning software is able to split into multiple disk IF it is able to. if you have one big 50 GB file it won't be able to but if you loaded 50 1GB files it would fill up one drive, burn, spit it out, ask for another until the job is done. I WANT to say Nero can do this but not sure. I haven't burned anything in a long time either but i use Power ISO to make/burn all my stuff.

2) As far as the Disk them self goes. How long will you be archiving this media? Like LONG LONG term or just for a few years? If you want Very long term get the Blu-Ray M-Disk. They are MUCH more expensive but they are designed for extreamly long storage life. Like a 50PK of 25GB disk will be around 200 bucks USD.

3) As far as the whole...
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drtweak

drtweak

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Few things.

1) Some burning software is able to split into multiple disk IF it is able to. if you have one big 50 GB file it won't be able to but if you loaded 50 1GB files it would fill up one drive, burn, spit it out, ask for another until the job is done. I WANT to say Nero can do this but not sure. I haven't burned anything in a long time either but i use Power ISO to make/burn all my stuff.

2) As far as the Disk them self goes. How long will you be archiving this media? Like LONG LONG term or just for a few years? If you want Very long term get the Blu-Ray M-Disk. They are MUCH more expensive but they are designed for extreamly long storage life. Like a 50PK of 25GB disk will be around 200 bucks USD.

3) As far as the whole ISO standards go and file system UDF is how most CD/DVD/Blu-Rays are because it is what it says. Universal Disk Format. As long as you are able to break up your video to the <23GB size you will be fine with pretty much any program that you use to burn. I even think Windows 7 and up can burn to Blu-Ray with just the built in windows burner (Just toss in a blank disk and drag and drop what you want to burn to it) but using a program is more reliable though.

Also I know some people are like BURN AT THE SLOWEST SPEED!!!!! Me I have NEVER burned at the slowest speed and always the fastest and every single CD/DVD/BD i have ever burned at max speed I NEVER had an issue with.

Also most software you can either burn to two burners at the same time or make two copies if you are making a Master and a Redundant backup. If you find yourself taking too much time making multiple copies buy another burner if your PC can fit it. Then just burn to two disk as the same time.
 
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DarknessConcept

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1) I think I will most likely end up doing this manually. Every day of this project will only generate one continuous file that I will need to cut down into parts before burning. Still exploring ways in which I might streamline this "sectioning" process.

2) I will be archiving it for all intents and purposes indefinitely. The current data maintenance procedure that I will be adhering to is reopening archived data and reburning every 10 years. This, coupled with the theorized stable shelf life of blu ray burned data is safeguard enough against data loss and prevents the expense of Mdisc. Once you start getting into those prices at would make more sense to simply migrate this data to hard disks for cold storage.

3) I see. How do you feel about my ImgBurn choice?

I have noted this tendency as well. However, I have read that burning too slowly can cause errors in its own right. The media I have chosen is 6x, so I think I will (to be safe) burn at 4x-6x and see how that goes. In the past I have always just let the software decide its own write speed, but that was for audio CDs and whatnot. I think I will err on the side of caution with this.

Very interesting. I was unaware that software could target different devices at once for simultaneous multi burn. I guess if I though about it though I would have known that because I recall a rash of people making homemade "dupe stations" many years back by loading up the 5.25 bays of a computer case with CD writers. I always assumed there was some kind of controller at work. Very good piece of information, and I thank you. Case space will be a moot point because the ODD will live in an external server style cage mount with SATA running to it from the controlling PC. With this config it would be a simple matter of slapping more ODDs into neighboring bays. I wonder if ImgBurn can write to multiple ODDs at once?
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Yea Alcohol Soft 120% can do multiple burners as the same time. If you were to spit it up, use a program like maybe winrar to split it up if it is one big file, or if it is just video maybe cut it in chunks where they fit on a BR disk, use a program like PowerISO or something and make an ISO and then use Alcohol to burn it to two drives at once.

IMGBurn is a good program but there are so many that are just as good if not better.
 
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DarknessConcept

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It will in fact be one large video file generated daily. The only thing that may change day to day is it's duration (and therefore its total file size). I will be cutting this master file down into smaller (<23GB) segments. These segments are what I will be burning.



What is the purpose of creating an ISO for burning versus just burning the raw data? Each disc will only contain one file (segment of master file).

 
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drtweak

drtweak

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I was thinking the same thing XD

And depending on what you use to burn the disk. Some programs aren't the toss the file in there and burn. they are a give me a .IMG, ISO, etc and then let me burn. Like Aclohol 120 I don't think burns just files. It has to be a ISO or image or some kind. Imgburn you can write files directly to disk as well but doesn't do two disk at once.

But yea as jsmithepa said the time it takes to burn. Lets find out. I found this here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Drive_speeds

BD drive speeds
Drive speed Data rate ~Write time (minutes)
Mbit/s MB/s Single-Layer Dual-Layer
1× 36 4.5 90 180
2× 72 9 45 90
4× 144 18 22.5 45
6× 216 27 15 30
8× 288 36 11.25 22.5
10× 360 45 9 18
12× 432 54 7.5 15
14× 504 63 6.5 13
16× 576 72 5.7 11.5


So lets say you do do max speed at 6x on a single layer disk and keep in mind that most of the time a disk doesn't even burn that fast anyways and this is NOT counting the time it takes to prep and finish the disk and the time it takes you to setup each burn and swap them out when done.

So if 15 minutes per disk, and you have 950GB on 25GB disk that is 38 Disk. Times that by two for your redudant backup that makes it 76 disk.

76*15=1140/60=19 hours not including prep time and what not. Not sure why you need 950GB of footage saved every day for whos knows when. You can cut that time down by getting 50GB disk but still that is A LOT. You will be better off spending like 25K on something like a Dell server with a MD Vault and load it with 12 8TB hard drives but then if you setup the RAID you lose one drive and you only have 88GB or 88 days worth of video.

You will run out of space to store this video while trying to burn it before you can burn it. Now if you had multiple burners. Lets say 4. You can setup one to burn the first 25GB to two disk at the same time and then the other two to burn 2 disk at the same time and that would cut you time down by 4 but that would still be a good 5-6 hours but again that is in a perfect world as well.

Also actually after looking it up burning to a 50GB disk which maxes out at 4x takes longer than two 25GB disk, but I mean you are looking at least 50 bucks of disk a DAY to burn all of this.

Your only other option is to compress the video which of course takes time as well but if you were to build a powerful machine it could eat though it depending on Resolution and how long.
 
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DarknessConcept

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That certainly is a sobering figure, though 1TB is the upper limit for any given day. Preliminary testing suggests that the median generated data volume will be somewhere around 500 or 600GB (still a lot). On site burn time testing (when orders arrive) will dictate how many more drives I have to purchase (so say if it takes eight hours I will quadruple the current number of working drives/computers to make it take 2). So, regardless of time, it will be addressed to make it manageable.



Tell me about it. Unfortunately this is not an option, as this will be a project that will last several years. Not only does this represent an abhorrent amount of hard disks and cost, but space as well. Couple that with the inherent instability of that platform for archival purposes... and you end up at Blu Ray.

There is a reason that both Facebook and Amazon forego "traditional" storage methods and store many petabytes of data onto Blu Ray. Thank you very much for your answers and insight.
 
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