DVD-RAM Backups: Part I

By Rich Eichacker
Vibrance Technology Corporation

I've always been a fan of tape backup systems. However, my opinion changed this past summer when my OnStream USB30 tape drive failed and upon contacting OnStream Data I found that they had gone out of business. Now I was stuck with numerous tapes with data on them that I couldn't access, as well as a couple of newly purchased tapes (at $30/tape). On a friend's suggestion, I decided to look into performing backups on DVD-RAM.

DVD-RAM was designed for backing up data files. On your computer it looks exactly like a hard drive, making backups and archiving easy. DVD-RAM is extremely durable: it can be rewritten 100,000 times, can last over 30 years in storage (in one artificial aging test, the estimated life was 300 years), and incorporates hardware-implemented data verification, error correction, and defect management. Even if the media is damaged, the disk can still be used without data loss. Other DVD formats, as well as CD-R/RW, cannot match this performance. DVD-RWs, which technically can also be used for data storage, can only be rewritten 1,000 times. Furthermore, they don't have the error correction features of DVD-RAM and data is accessed in a sequential mode which is much slower than the random access mode of DVD-RAM. If you've been archiving data on CD-Rs, you may want to shift to DVD-RAM, since CD-R disks have a shelf life of only 10 years.

Compared to traditional backup tapes, DVD-RAM disks have many advantages, mostly due to the fact that DVD-RAM is like a disk drive, which means that files can be archived and accessed like the files on any other hard drive.

  1. No backup software needed. Just drag & drop your files to the disk.
  2. It's easier to search for files. With tape backups, it's necessary to load the tape and search the backup catalog. With DVD-RAM you can use the Windows File Find function.
  3. Quick restoration of files. Drag & drop files off the disk or open them directly from the disk.
  4. Universal Disk Format (UDF) allows disks to be accessed from both Windows and MAC OS.
  5. It's easy to make duplicate copies of disks. Try that with a tape!
  6. DVD-RAM disks are more durable. Tapes can break during use and over time the tape media degrades rendering it unusable. In both cases, it's almost impossible to retrieve data archived on the tape.
  7. Generally, tapes are designed to only work with proprietary hardware and software (this was true of OnStream). DVD-RAM disks, on the other hand, can be used in any computer with a DVD-RAM drive making them accessible on a variety of computers.

Unfortunately, DVD-RAM is not the perfect backup solution. Next quarter, I'll present two situations where DVD-RAM does not make sense. I'll also talk about DVD-RAM drives and the future of DVD: blue laser.

For more information on HD-DVD, visit http://timefordvd.com/tutorial/HDDVDTutorial.shtml

Winter 2004 -Volume 14, Number 1

 

 

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