Ok lost about 6 external hard drives in 2 years. Tired of losing it all and i allready have over 1,000 disk for back up. Well the last 1tb and 2 750 gig hard drives was not backed up and lost everything. Wondering if i can burn all files on blu ray as data files. Example burn like 15 xvid movies , 1,500 docs, just use for reg back up like i do with DL DVD's. I even burn xvid on dl dvd and my set top dvd player playes them as xvid. that way i can put about 8 to 10 movies on disk. Can not send in hard drives since i have all my day trading and stock account passwords and crap on them. just looking for a better way to back up files than reg hard drives since they do not seem stable. Average price for a blu-ray burner i am seeing is about $200 with about $2 to $3 a disk, is this right or is there better deals?
If you're really serious about having stuff online and backing it up, you might consider commercial, rather than consumer grade solutions. A single external HDD is a single point of failure and, as you have experienced, occurs at a higher than desirable frequency. If your needs are 24/7/365, you might considera commercial solution such as a RAID 5 array, which is designed for heavy usage and also has redundancy built into it's design.. If the stuff is offline backup that you don't need immediately available you might consider a high capacity tape drive. Both solutions are in the (low) thousands of dollars, so it depends on how much you want to spend.
Wow.....can u share with us the brand names of the hard drives that are failing you. I recently added 2 1TB hard drives to my PC. One internal and one external. Both are WESTERN DIGITAL (great reliable drives). The OEM 200GB that came with my PC has never failed in the 4yrs plus that I've own my PC. This is the 1st external hard drive I've had and so far I've enjoyed being able to back up my standard DVD's (DVD-9) to that hard drive (The other is for BLU-RAY back-ups). I would hate for that external drive to fail. Isn't there a way to extract or back up the content. I know of a little tool I've used made by Apricorn, It's called a DRIVE WIRE $32.99 and it allows you to clone or back up your hard drive using this tool and installed software. Check it out @ newegg.com and read the user reviews or go to Apricorns website.
1st of i do not have a few thousand to spend. Just backing up stuff i download and vacation pics and videos. (There are a lot of them)HD takes a lot of room, just my vacation video's adds up to over 500 gigs alone before i have time to edit them. 2nd here are a list of the hard drives i have in front of me now the 1tb are not here,(at work) 1. maxtor maxline pro 500 gig 2.seagate barracuda 750 gigs 3. seagate barracuda 400 gigs 4. maxtor diamond max 500 gigs 5. maxtor n56 80 gigs 6. maxtor n56 250 gigs that is the list i made of the burnt hard drives When i was looking into recovery . I will add the other 2 2tb drives when i get home 3rd. My question has nothing to do about software about cloning a drive. hard to clone a drive when you do not have drives to put them on and can not clone it when you have a clicking sound coming from the drive and pc will not find it. Back to orginal question. Can you burn files on blu-ray as data files like xvid video,docs/pics/spreadsheets/avi/mpeg for back up like what we can do with dual layer dvd's? I want a blu-ray burner so i can use the disk as mass storage device. I can put 25 xvid movies on 1 disk. Will this work.
You might want to try a WESTERN DIGITAL external Elements 1TB drive. They work. Hey, I'm just inquiring about your issue...no harm intended. I have a BLU-RAY burner too but never stored data to BLU-RAY media. It's possible NERO 8 with plugin allows you to back up VIDEO or DATA to BLU-RAY media......good luck.
Beef101, the answer to your question is yes. You can burn onto a 25 gig blank BD-R about 22-23 gigs worth of data. This is probably your best bet. I have been purchasing blank BD-R 25 gig disk for about $3.00 each. So for about $250 you will have 625 gig worth of data backed to 25 discs. $170 for the BD Burner and about $80 for a pack of 25 BR-R blank discs. I have all my movies back onto disc that way when the External HD craps out, I get a new one and reload the movies from the discs. RAID and all the other solutions mentioned are great and hassle free but can be costly if you have Terrabytes worth of data. Get you a BD Burner and back your stuff to discs.
Oh BTW, stay away from Maxtor and Seagate externals cause they are all crap. Stick with Western Digitals. All my Maxtors have crapped out and my WDs are still going strong.
