Anyone here do the same? Although many do laugh at the concept of doing this in 2022, there are advantages (and of course disadvantages) of archiving important material, whether it be pictures, videos or documents, to high-quality physical disc. Using a quality burner and proper burn settings (and stored properly), I find DVD+R to be great for backup copies in addition to hard drive storage. I mean, I have consumer grade 'fun colors' (lol) Memorex DVD-R discs that are 20 years old now that still work and discs cannot become erased by magnetic fields. I'd like to store on tape, too but those systems are really costly. Anyway, I thought this could be an interesting discussion, and perhaps helpful to those who don't realize the 'dangers' of storing only to hard drives. Also if not, what are your redundancy storage methods?
file-related Anyone here archive important materials to physical disc?
- Thread starter Ven
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Screenplay drafts I store in email files, on my laptop, in my google drive, in dropbox, and final versions I also print out.
Copies of my features are on multiple hard drives stored in different places as well as in the cloud.
I haven't used a disc for anything (including to watch a movie) in at least 5 years.
Copies of my features are on multiple hard drives stored in different places as well as in the cloud.
I haven't used a disc for anything (including to watch a movie) in at least 5 years.
I wouldn't say I archive to disc, but I have recently started making discs again. When I released my last movie (self distributed), I only did it on DVD, but I have an HD master so I recently made a blu ray just for myself so I could watch the movie and the extra features on my TV in the living room. I've also bought all of Robert Rodriguez's movies on disc. I'm a fan of his ten minute film schools, so I ripped them all and made a compilation disc that just has those on it. It's nice having it all in one place. I also recently made a blu ray of latest short films. It was great watching something I made on my TV. Previously, I had only seen them on a computer screen. Watching them on my TV really instilled a lot of excitement in me again.
A few years ago, I wanted to archive all the features I had written (about 8 at the time), and going through e-mails was the only way I was able to find some of the really old ones. I was thankful I had emailed them to my actors!
Yes! I've found stuff that way too
What works for backup depends a lot on the size of your files. I would like to archive to disk, but the burner drive for the disk I need costs $9,300, and I've just never been able to buy one. Even if I had that burner, backing up 30 TB of footage to 100gb blu ray discs would be a really long and expensive process.
What I've had to do for backup is just to keep buying 16 TB hard drives, and each year I put all the most critical files onto one, and then just disconnect it, and store it in the attic. Hard drive life expectancies are mostly determined by write cycles, rather than actual time, so you can just seal one in a ziplock bag, and it will probably be good 20 years from now. To be safe, I buy a brand new drive, write to it once, and then bank it.
Bottom line, I did a full analysis of backup to media as an option, and unfortunately, hard drives are still exponentially cheaper for large scale storage.
I envy the script people, lol, just go down to wallgreens and buy a 7 dollar thumb drive, and you're set for life. I think if you got an amazon glacier account for 10 dollars a month, it would literally hold every script ever written in history at once.
What I've had to do for backup is just to keep buying 16 TB hard drives, and each year I put all the most critical files onto one, and then just disconnect it, and store it in the attic. Hard drive life expectancies are mostly determined by write cycles, rather than actual time, so you can just seal one in a ziplock bag, and it will probably be good 20 years from now. To be safe, I buy a brand new drive, write to it once, and then bank it.
Bottom line, I did a full analysis of backup to media as an option, and unfortunately, hard drives are still exponentially cheaper for large scale storage.
I envy the script people, lol, just go down to wallgreens and buy a 7 dollar thumb drive, and you're set for life. I think if you got an amazon glacier account for 10 dollars a month, it would literally hold every script ever written in history at once.
Can I tell you how many of those I've lost over the years? Storing a script on a thumb drive & losing it is my ultimate in frustration.
Thus electronic storage in as many places as I can think of, thinking/hoping that at least some of them will survive.
All cloud accounts are on RAID backups, so if you put a script on two different cloud services, it will probably withstand a nuclear war.
Another smart idea would be to just bank a 32 gig thumb drive of scripts in a safe deposit box once a year.
I do the same thing with my music output, just store a copy anywhere I can, knowing that one of the copies will survive. Sometimes I think I'm overdoing it, but once you loose something you worked on for a long time a few times, you start really doubling down on the security.
Another smart idea would be to just bank a 32 gig thumb drive of scripts in a safe deposit box once a year.
I do the same thing with my music output, just store a copy anywhere I can, knowing that one of the copies will survive. Sometimes I think I'm overdoing it, but once you loose something you worked on for a long time a few times, you start really doubling down on the security.
Cloud is a muddled buzzword and can simply mean hosting on one machine instead of your computer, like some SaaS. You just have to be careful when you choose cloud solutions. But yes. I use AWS (Amazon) for image hosting on one of my sites.
AWS is insanely reliable, if you compared it to any form of storage that has ever existed. I feel for the people that had to record their life's work on a stack of papers, which could only be read by holding a candle near them.
cloud is the safest.. particular something like amazon or google, really huge data software companies are not going to get robbed or lose your data in a fire.
But if you keep physical storage discs? could absolutely get burned in a fire, lost, stolen, or even just corrupted.
I had a really, really cool looking website that i designed when i was in highschool ( i worked full time during summers ) and I took it with me to college to show off and the blasted disc got corrupted and it was my only copy. after i backed it up on a disc i had formatted the old hard drive and so i lost my slick looking website forever.
The way the menus would animate is something that would look cool as hell to this very day. rip.
But if you keep physical storage discs? could absolutely get burned in a fire, lost, stolen, or even just corrupted.
I had a really, really cool looking website that i designed when i was in highschool ( i worked full time during summers ) and I took it with me to college to show off and the blasted disc got corrupted and it was my only copy. after i backed it up on a disc i had formatted the old hard drive and so i lost my slick looking website forever.
The way the menus would animate is something that would look cool as hell to this very day. rip.
Imagine losing your film's SOUND. Yup. Film was edited at a pro post production house. Sound was put on disc to be sweetened at a pro audio house. Took it there, dude loads it in from disc, looks at me and asks if I still need the disc. I foolishly say no. Few days later the session is corrupt. Disc is now in a landfill.
What happened to the film - bring everyone in for Foley?
..the horror stories 
I had some experimental ambience horror-themed tracks made years ago - not very good quality or mixing or anything, but still - my work. I thought they were gone forever after a HDD crash many years ago. I was a lot more careless then. I thought the tracks were gone forever, but as I was going through old DVD-R's last year, there they were, plus the "Cool Edit Pro" save files, haha. 
Heck, I may still use those rough-sounding tracks, if it matches visual material. sfoster - I use a version of Nero that writes data parity to disc, and always verify the burn (also anything higher than 4x for me has always been a disaster). Nate, that's a very expensive drive - may I ask, what kind of drive is it? But yes, the idea is to have copies on more than one device. Thanks all for backup ideas I may use in the future.
I had some experimental ambience horror-themed tracks made years ago - not very good quality or mixing or anything, but still - my work. I thought they were gone forever after a HDD crash many years ago. I was a lot more careless then. I thought the tracks were gone forever, but as I was going through old DVD-R's last year, there they were, plus the "Cool Edit Pro" save files, haha. Heck, I may still use those rough-sounding tracks, if it matches visual material. sfoster - I use a version of Nero that writes data parity to disc, and always verify the burn (also anything higher than 4x for me has always been a disaster). Nate, that's a very expensive drive - may I ask, what kind of drive is it? But yes, the idea is to have copies on more than one device. Thanks all for backup ideas I may use in the future.
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This is the way I remember it: Dude doing the sound mix was an intern so I got it for free but at this really legit place on Broadway in NYC, legendary even. Acted like I didn't need the disc back and was holding over the little trash can in the studio so I was like yeah go ahead and toss that. Mixed a few days (2-3?) and the session crashed and I freaked out as he did no backups. Went home thinking it was gone but the owner said there was a clean backup from when he loaded it in. Owner offered to do the mix for me free, and I went in, and it only took a few hours (was a short). Bam! lol.
That's great it worked out
I lost an extremely expressive sample of high quality work at the very beginning of my career when i needed it most, a loss that still hurts me a bit to this day. come to think of it I never again in my life made a webpage menu system as visually stunning, it was a lot of work and i created an entire font - with each individual letter animated, moving, color changing in a way that worked in unison with each other to create the effect. rip.
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I don't use google drives or the cloud. Only archive HDD and Blu-ray.
You don't see it as a problem, Google and the cloud, but what you're doing is quietly giving up your privacy. In theory it all sounds so wonderful, storing your personal pictures, original stories and artwork on storage space that never runs out, but since when has mankind every done anything wonderful for mankind without having an ulterior motive?
You don't see it as a problem, Google and the cloud, but what you're doing is quietly giving up your privacy. In theory it all sounds so wonderful, storing your personal pictures, original stories and artwork on storage space that never runs out, but since when has mankind every done anything wonderful for mankind without having an ulterior motive?
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This is like telling someone not to flush their illegal drugs down the toilet bc someone might look in their septic tank and see it.
Nobody is looking in your fucking septic tank, it's full of shit. nobody cares.
It's true that google's main business is data mining, and they may know that a 44 year old from Montana uploaded 2000 photos shot in Colorado. Yes this may be true. As an informed individual you are welcome to utilize their service or not, and I choose to use it. For me the pros outweigh the cons. Price, speed, space, etc.