For those that have been reading my articles for some time (this is Rich, by the way, better known as "Not Dave"), I can’t stand optical discs. They’re slow to write, scratch easily, have inferior life span compared to USB sticks and the list goes on.

However the one thing I absolutely can’t argue with is that it currently is the absolute cheapest way to back up your stuff. Being the frugal guy I am, that’s why I use them.

The one thing I can’t stand more than optical discs are jewel cases. You know these as the "plastic case that always has the flap fall off at the hinge, rendering it useless."

I absolutely will not use jewel cases. Instead, I use paper sleeves and you should too.

Here’s why:

1. You can write on them with a regular pen.

Pen or pencil, actually. No labels required. No Sharpie marker required. Very convenient.

2. They stack easier.

Paper sleeves are, obviously, paper thin. So you can stack more of them at a time while still protecting the discs.

3. You can buy a lot more of them at any given time.

They come in 50-packs and stay in a nice tidy little box.

4. You don’t mind giving them away.

Situation: A friend comes over. You show him or her the latest version of some freeware you just downloaded and they want a copy. So you burn a copy on disc. The friend asks for a case to put the disc in. You have a few, but really don’t want to part with them because they’re so scarce.

With paper sleeves you simply don’t care. Pop in a sleeve, give to the friend with a smile because you’ve got a ton of them.

5. Cheap!

Self-explanatory.

Crafty tip: You can make your own paper sleeves. Impress your friends. See video below.

So yeah, if you’re just that cheap, you can grab a piece of paper out of your printer and make your sleeves that way.

Something interesting to think about is how long data will last, because as everyone knows, nothing is forever.

Here’s a rundown on how long you can expect the media you use to last.

"Media" defined: Data storage on something physical that you own, be it hard disk, optical, flash or tape. I don’t list floppy diskettes because nobody uses those anymore.

Assumptions:

• You are using the media a minimum once per week and when not in use is disconnected and/or unpowered from the electronic mechanism it uses to write data to and stored (ex: you take the DVD out of the drive, put it in a case and store it).
• You are physically storing your media in a dry place at room temperature (72° F / 22° C).

Hard Disk

A production-use hard disk usually has a life span of 3 to 5 years. Some last longer, but trust me there is a reason why most hard drive manufacturers usually do not have hardware warranties that go beyond 5 years.

A hard disk used for backup purposes lasts longer because it isn’t used as often. You can assume the HDD will last at least 7 years. But bear in mind that is an assumption.

As a short-term backup solution, hard disks are a good choice. As a long-term solution, not so much given their relatively short life span.

For more information, this really old (but still relevant) post from our own PCMech forums will give you tons of useful info concerning the life span of a hard disk drive.

Optical

Optical media that you use is CD, DVD, the now-defunct HD DVD and Blu-ray.

Assuming you have a decent CD/DVD burner drive, the life span of optical media almost exclusively depends on how well the disc was made.

Premium-grade media can easily last 10 years. And no, you won’t find it at Wal-Mart. The best possible writable CD/DVD media you can buy is manufactured by Taiyo Yuden. A Google search will reveal where to get some if so inclined. It is lauded as the best of the best. That’s because it is. And yes, you’ll pay good money for it too.

For the rest of us, there’s name brand and generic optical media. You can expect name brand (Memorex, Verbatim, etc.) to last about 5 years. Some of you out there will get 7 to 10 but I personally wouldn’t put that much faith into this type of media.

Concerning generic, the plastic may separate from the aluminum in less than a year. Not a good choice.

With optical media, yes, you get what you pay for concerning life span. No question.

Tip: It is better to store optical discs in jewel cases instead of books. Natural problems (like pages of discs sticking to each other from sitting there too long) can happen with those fold-out books.

Flash

It has been speculated that flash based media, such as a USB stick, will last 8 to 10 years easily. This is because there are no moving parts, the heat it generates is minimal and the way it connects and disconnects to a computer is nearly impossible to get wrong (and therefore almost impossible to break).

What most people will encounter with a USB stick in the future is expiring the amount of times data can be written to it or erased before age-related failure. Most USB sticks will allow one million write and/or erase cycles before it cannot be used any longer.

If a USB stick is used as backup media where it is only used once a week, it is highly unlikely you will ever tap that limit.

But the limit age-wise for data retention is stated to be 10 years and no longer at present.

Tip: You might want to use a label-maker and mark the stick with a date 9 years from now (this gives you enough buffer of time from date of manufacture). Who knows? You might still have it then. And you’ll know the stick will soon fail when the date marked is reached.

If you’re thinking, "How can I be sure USB will even be around in nine years?" It will be. Even if it is replaced by another technology, you will still be able to access the data on it somehow.

Think of it this way: Right now nobody uses floppy diskettes any longer, yet you can still buy a floppy diskette drive and disks easily. At worst, USB flash drives will end up like that. Woefully obsolete, but still accessible.

Tape

This is probably going to surprise a few of you, but premium grade tape backup can last 50 years. Sound ridiculous? It’s not. This method of backup is usually only used by large enterprise and government IT centers.

Tape is one of those things that is about as old-school as you can get when it comes to data storage. True, the technology has advanced, the cartridges are built better and the media can store much more and is more reliable, but the method of the way it works is still essentially unchanged.

Tape media is still readily available, but for those looking for the "big guns", what you would want is certified 30-year tape media. The one notch after that is the premium 50-year. Yes, it’s overkill for most people (and wickedly expensive), but if you want something that lasts longer than anything else, tape is basically your only option.

For those who think tape backup is dead as a doorknob, I beg to differ. Maybe it’s dead as a consumer option, but in enterprise it’s still widely used. Maybe you’re not enterprise, but you can use it. In fact, tape is still the best bang for the buck long-term storage media there is.

If you think tape may be right for you, here are a few things you should be aware of:

First, tape decks do require cleaning. The way to clean is with a tape head cleaner cartridge. The heads will need to be cleaned periodically to ensure proper data writes.

Second, transfer speeds are defined differently but you can assume they’re going to be on the slower side. No, they are not molasses-slow as tape drives were years ago because we’ve got USB connectivity now, but it is true they’re not lightning quick, nor have they ever been.

Third, tape is very particular to format. There’s DLT, SDLT, 1/2-inch, LTO, 4mm, 8mm and so on. When shopping around for a deck, pay strict attention to format and how easy (or not easy) it is to acquire media for it.

Will there ever be a long-term backup solution better than tape?

The only media I know of that could potentially outlast tape is the internet itself. But obviously the internet is not physical media. In fact it’s not even physical. The storage of the internet is termed as putting data "in the cloud". However there are more than a few out there that would rather have media stored safely in a closet or attic rather than on some distant server run by someone else.

Chances are you’re more comfortable with the "un-clouded" way.

What’s the most convenient solution right now?

Tape may be the longest lasting, but USB sticks are the most convenient.

You can most likely fit every digital photo you’ve ever taken on a 4GB stick. And that’s under $15 to acquire.

You can most likely fit every email you have on a 2GB stick. And those are under $10.

As long as you remember to swap the sticks out once every 8 to 10 years, you’re in good shape.

That is unless you leave one in your pants pocket and run it thru a wash cycle while doing the laundry.

What do you use for backup media?

Do you use CD/DVDs? USB sticks? Tape? The internet itself? A combination?

Let us know by writing a comment.

The days of linear format camcorders are dying. Linear as it relates to camcorders is anything using slack that requires rewinding or fast-forwarding. And to be honest I’m not sorry to see them go. This is more or less the last in line of tech products to get "off the slack", so to speak.

There are many of you out there who still have MiniDV videocassette format camcorders. Since day one I have always hated MiniDV. It’s not the cassette itself I hate, it’s the fact the decks in camcorders that use them are notoriously unreliable. This is partly due because of the cookie-cutter style method of manufacturing that goes into these things (even the expensive ones).

For those that remember VHS camcorders, those things were built like tanks and lasted a good long time. You could pop in and out VHS tapes to your heart’s content and it wouldn’t bust.

MiniDV on the other hand is something you have to treat gingerly. It’s almost as if you have to say a little prayer each time you load in a cassette. "Oh please, don’t break on me. Pretty please. I treat you well. You know I do." Your prayers won’t matter because your MiniDV camcorder can and will break at the worst possible time and is very subject to Murphy’s Law.

Fortunately it’s relatively cheap to ditch the slack, say buh-bye to MiniDV and go with non-linear flash, optical or hard disk camcorders.

For the vast majority of you that do non-pro video recording, a Flip will work. I personally have one of these things. The fact I can get 60 minutes of very decent quality record time on a unit powered by two AA batteries is nothing short of miraculous. Granted, the zoom feature sucks and it can’t do close-ups very well, but the convenience more than makes up for it. And it even has a tripod mount. Currently they sell for just under $130. And yes, you should get one. By the way, the USB port on it is built in.

"But I need better quality", you say. Then go with optical (or more specifically, the 8cm DVD disc format). For under $300 you can get yourself quite a nice Canon.

"But I hate discs", you say. Then go with hard-disk based units. These aren’t cheap. The lowest price is just a tick under $350. From there they spike over $600 easily. Do they have the super-awesome quality you’re looking for? Absolutely. It is for all intents and purposes a pro-grade unit.

Ditch your MiniDV and step into the modern age. It’s time.

Situation: You’ve decided that you’re going to build a new computer. You put your part list together (case, mainboard, RAM, hard drive, processor, etc.) and then come to the point where you have to purchase an optical drive.

Seems like a waste of money, doesn’t it?

On the Linux side of things, it has been proven that you can install a full version (meaning not "biz-card") of a Linux distro with absolutely no optical drive whatsoever.

In addition to that the vast majority of Linux apps are download-only territory, so there literally is no need for the optical at all. For backups you just plug in an external drive via USB or Firewire.

On the Windows side you are required to have an optical drive, but only for one thing – the installation of the Windows OS itself. However you could easily get away with using an external optical drive, install your OS then put the drive away until you need it (which will most likely be never).

For Windows gaming there are download options, the best (arguably) of which is Steam. No discs necessary and tons (and I mean tons) of really great games.

Also bear in mind there is a large push by the computer industry to "go cloud" as you’ve heard, such as with Windows Live applications. All that stuff is from the internet and no optical drive is necessary at any time.

On your next PC box build, could you go optical-less? Yes, absolutely. If doing it the Linux way, you don’t need the optical drive at all. If doing it the Windows way, all you need is an external to get the OS install out of the way and that’s that.

And what to do with that empty bay? You’d be better off putting in a card reader where the optical would otherwise go. You’ll probably get more use out of it than you would with the optical.

You may have a disc, be it music or data, that is scratched and will not read in your optical disc drive no matter what you do to it. Can it be saved?

Possibly. There are a few things you can try to save that disc.

Hardware method: It could be just the drive you’re using

If the disc won’t read in your optical drive, try another one that’s close by. If you don’t have one to spare, try a friend’s computer.

Interesting side note: Older optical drives with slower read speeds have a much higher chance of reading a maybe/maybe-not bad disc than newer drives do because they don’t spin up as fast. Being that laptop optical drives are typically slower, if you have a laptop with a CD/DVD drive, try that. You might be successful.

Software method: Using Nero Burning ROM to attempt a super-slow-read copy

Nero Burning ROM (paid application) has been around a long time and is arguably one of the best disc copying software utilities ever made – if not the best.

If the disc you have will spin up but will not read, Nero might be able to save it or at least at a good chunk of it.

When you copy a disc using Nero Burning ROM (part of the Nero 9 suite), it will first try to copy at the maximum speed possible. When it runs into a part of the disc it can’t read properly, Nero will purposely slow down the drive (all the way to 1x if necessary) and try every single possible way to read the data. If it can’t read the data, it will skip that part and go to the next readable portion and move on.

The disc copy make take a really long time – but you might be able to save whatever was on the disc or at least a good portion of it. If it’s just a portion, better to have something than nothing, right?

I have saved discs with Nero Burning ROM that no other app was able to copy, so I can attest that yes, it does work when all others fail. And if Nero fails.. well.. try washing the disc first (see below).

Physically doing something to the disc: Washing it first

CDs and DVDs are made of two things, aluminum and plastic. The outside shell is plastic, the shiny part is the aluminum. The part that is scratched is the plastic.

Plastic can be washed with just about anything, but the goal is to not scratch it any further.

Paper towels and non-scented ammonia-free glass cleaner (like Windex) do work. Why paper towels and not tissue paper? Because tissue paper is an abrasive and will scratch the plastic surface even worse.

Tip on cleaner used: Do not use anything labeled as a degreaser (like Formula 409). "Straight" glass cleaner is what you want.

Tip on paper towels used: Unscented, plain, no patterns such as Bounty or Brawn.

(Incidentally this is the same reason you never clean eyeglasses with tissue paper because it will scratch those up over time as well.)

Can you read a disc that is physically cracked?

Example: You leave a disc on the couch and forget about it. Later on you go to sit on the couch and watch TV, then…

CRACK!

Uh-oh. You sat on the disc. Very cracked but still together.

Is the disc still readable? Believe it or not, yes – or at least with CDs. A CD which has an "outside in" straight crack in it (from the outer edge to inner edge but not to the center) can be read as long as it’s even with the rest of the disc. However there is the possibility the disc might shatter when in the optical drive. Chances are this probably won’t happen – but it might.

DVDs when cracked usually cannot be read at all. If this happens to you, toss the disc out because there’s not anything you can do about that.

Tip to avoid this scenario: Don’t sit or step on discs (duh).

[Cracked CD photo by hermanturnip]