Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?
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This recent escapade with missing CDs (and their backups) has me prepared to do another round of triple backups whenever they reappear. Most of this software is old enough to be on CD-ROM but CDRs have become really difficult to find locally. I do have some around here but there are far more DVDRs available. It's been a long time since I used a disc burner so have a stupid question:
Is it possible to duplicate a CD to DVD (assuming no DRM)?
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Assuming no DRM, the obvious way would be
Copy contents of CD to your computer's hard drive
Burn to DVD
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Depending on raisins...
Get the CD as an ISO, burn a bunch of ISO's to a single DVDR.....
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I would recommend against optical media for long term storage. For at least one of my 10+ year old CDs and DVDs regardless of brand (Verbatim, Sony, TDK, lots of Polish stuff like esperanza) the metal layer has gone bad, some more have read/seek errors because raisins. They were being stored in covers, in a box, in a quite dry place and still it happened. Could be that I had a shitty writer, of course...
An older hard drive would be better perhaps (or a triple set of the same model, but from different retailers, if you fear controller failure). Bit rot, even if it happens, is far more recoverable.
If you're really serious, a second hand LTO tape device might be another way.
: I asked about CDs!!!
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@TheCPUWizard said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Get the CD as an ISO, burn a bunch of ISO's to a single DVDR.....
Or get the CD as an iso, and put a whole bunch of ISO's on a high-capacity USB flash drive. (I have a ruggedized/waterproof USB drive I keep in a firesafe for backup purposes)
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@mott555 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@TheCPUWizard said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Get the CD as an ISO, burn a bunch of ISO's to a single DVDR.....
Or get the CD as an iso, and put a whole bunch of ISO's on a high-capacity USB flash drive. (I have a ruggedized/waterproof USB drive I keep in a firesafe for backup purposes)
I do that with my DVDs too. And I have a USB drive that can present an ISO to the system as tho it's really a CD drive that's plugged in.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
An older hard drive would be better perhaps
For the ultimate (Albeit slow and bulky, but durable all all get out) - Mylar paper tape.
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@TheCPUWizard Very long term storage of data is certainly a problem to what AFAIK no marketable high speed and sufficiently compact solution has been offered so far, is it not?
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@Applied-Mediocrity Did you buy the archival grade line or whatever they had at Best Buy? Verbatim specifically has something called "M Disc" that they're selling as having a lifetime of hundreds of years. I only plan to be around another 20 or 30 tops.
I may use a flash drive or hard drive, in addition to burned discs. Question was, though, if I could feed something like Nero a CD and a blank DVDR and receive a working DVDR. These are installer discs for Windows, SQL Server, Office, etc. Most of those probably could work from an ISO after Windows was installed.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Windows, SQL Server
both of those are available for download from Microsoft in ISO format for free
not sure about Office, but it's probably in a similar situation
might be easier to skip a step and go straight from ISO to DVD
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@ben_lubar Not the versions I have and Windows requires a key that's in the case with the DVD I can't find right now.
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CD-Rs degrading over time
Back in the early 2000s my friend had a really cheap CD-R where the metal layer flaked off while it was in the drive, destroying both the CD and drive.
On topic: I think those CD-Rs probably wouldn't last a decade
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@Zenith the ISO still requires the key, but it contains all the files needed to install
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As has been suggested above, I would also simply make ISOs of the discs and keep those around on a hard drive or other medium with sufficient capacity of your choice. On Windows you probably need an extra bit of software to be able to mount them, on Linux or macOS you just mount them like any other drive and you can use them, and same for a VM.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Did you buy the archival grade line or whatever they had at Best Buy? Verbatim specifically has something called "M Disc" that they're selling as having a lifetime of hundreds of years. I only plan to be around another 20 or 30 tops.
Ah, no. Those gold plated things were reeediculously expensive and had to be backordered, too. My stuff was far from that important. In fact I miss pretty much none of it
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@Gurth said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
On Windows you probably need an extra bit of software to be able to mount them,
Not on Win10. Just double-click. Auto mounted. (r-click and Eject to get rid of it)
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@Applied-Mediocrity Did you buy the archival grade line or whatever they had at Best Buy? Verbatim specifically has something called "M Disc" that they're selling as having a lifetime of hundreds of years. I only plan to be around another 20 or 30 tops.
I wouldn't trust their claims. They know very well that you won't sue them when those discs go bad after 10 years.
The longest lasting discs I found, that didn't have suspiciously low price, were gold plated TDK, I think. They had advertised lifespan of 12 years and they cost an arm and a leg. That was some 15 years ago, but still.
Cheap SSD makes a lot more sense today.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Is it possible to duplicate a CD to DVD (assuming no DRM)?
If it's just a data CD then sure, no problem. If it's an audio CD, you're gonna need some special tools or just RIP the disc to FLAC files and then burn those.
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I didn't want to say it but I need to make copies of the installers for:
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 2000 Professional
Visual Studio 2008 Professional
Visual Studio 6
Office 2000 Professional
SQL Server 2000 Developer
Source Safe 6
WordPerfect X4I'll be putting this stuff on a PC I deliberately bought with USB 2.0 ports, so it's not something I can load up on Lightning Wifi BluRay Dilithium Chips :/
@MrL said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Cheap SSD makes a lot more sense today.
I just read Flash chips won't hold data for more than 10 years either.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
I'll be putting this stuff on a PC I deliberately bought with USB 2.0 ports, so it's not something I can load up on Lightning Wifi BluRay Dilithium Chips :/
So long as the device is capable of mass-storage presenting (which, ya know, pretty standard for a bog) a USB hard drive would be a no-brainer. I personally like my IODD disc drive emulator unit, which can present ISO files and vhd files as USB storage. Sadly, not all ancient computers are capable of USB booting, but for that there's always plop on a floppy...
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
... need to ...
Visual Studio 6
Source Safe 6:shudder:
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
I would recommend against optical media for long term storage.
Agree.
I abandoned CDs/DVDs years ago. A hundred DVDs will fit on a 1TB hard drive that will cost you less than $50. Buy two if you're extra paranoid like me.
And if you need to access any of that material, it's all in one place instead of having to shuffle though a hundred disks.
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@dcon Look, I spend most of my days staring at a wall in a building where they conducted shock therapy in the basement and 2/3 of the bathrooms don't work. Nothing Microsoft did, does, or will do in the future scares me.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 2000 Professional
Visual Studio 2008 Professional
Visual Studio 6
Office 2000 Professional
SQL Server 2000 Developer
Source Safe 6
WordPerfect X4I see you're in a timepod. Say hi to Lorne for me.
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@mott555 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@TheCPUWizard said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Get the CD as an ISO, burn a bunch of ISO's to a single DVDR.....
Or get the CD as an iso, and put a whole bunch of ISO's on a high-capacity USB flash drive. (I have a ruggedized/waterproof USB drive I keep in a firesafe for backup purposes)
Never trust a flash drive. They'll work just fine until they don't, and then it's totally gone.
That being said, flash drives are fine; just don't let one be your only copy. It's always better to have two copies, anyway; keep them in separate places, and if they really matter, check them occasionally to ensure that they still work.
@dcon said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@Gurth said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
On Windows you probably need an extra bit of software to be able to mount them,
Not on Win10. Just double-click. Auto mounted. (r-click and Eject to get rid of it)
It's built-in on Windows 8.1 and onward.
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@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
That being said, flash drives are fine; just don't let one be your only copy. It's always better to have two copies, anyway
I think I have 3 - 4 copies of anything I consider important. The flash drive in a firesafe is just one such place.
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@mott555 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
That being said, flash drives are fine; just don't let one be your only copy. It's always better to have two copies, anyway
I think I have 3 - 4 copies of anything I consider important. The flash drive in a firesafe is just one such place.
I have them WITH hardcopies in a firesafe.
That said, I really don't need to keep anything for more than 5 years so I'm not so worried.
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@brie I like the 3-2-1 rule: Three copies on two different media with one at a different location.
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@Rhywden To be honest, most of my "important" digital stuff is stored in Dropbox. It's synced to two different computers, I can access it from my phone on the go, and just in case anything seriously terrible happens I do have a full copy of the whole folder on a third computer that's not linked to Dropbox. I'm not at all religious about keeping that one updated, though.
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@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
To be honest, most of my "important" digital stuff is stored in
DropboxOneDrive. It's synced to two different computers, I can access it from my phone on the goThis is what I do, although it's only selectively synced to my laptop.
I use it to keep Keepass synced between my phone, laptop and desktop too.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
If you're really serious, a second hand LTO tape device might be another way.
Another way to lose data?
Tape devices can be extremely unreliable. We won't touch them anymore. I would say a 10-20% failure rate on restores in my experience.
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@Polygeekery See the skit by John Cleese above ;)
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@ben_lubar said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
both of those are available for download from Microsoft in ISO format for free
Not older versions. They can come in handy at times. If he originally had them on CD then he isn't talking about any version of Windows past XP, IIRC.
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@loopback0 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
I see you're in a timepod. Say hi to Lorne for me.
The likelihood of running in to him went up substantially when he mentioned electroshock therapy.
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@Polygeekery said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@loopback0 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
I see you're in a timepod. Say hi to Lorne for me.
The likelihood of running in to him went up substantially when he mentioned electroshock therapy.
Hey, I thought us inmates stick together?!
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@mott555 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
The flash drive in a firesafe is just one such place.
Not likely to be very safe.
Fire safes work by blowing off their insulation as a way to keep the heat from passing through to the safe. That insulation burns (or sublimates? I can't remember) at a low enough temperature that it can protect the contents from heat damage.
They assume that those contents are paper, and paper fails at a much higher temperature than magnetic or flash media. Either will be destroyed in short order inside a fire safe. Unless it is specifically designed for data media it is not much protection.
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@Polygeekery said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Not older versions.
I had a need for Visual Studio 2005 last year and ended up downloading it from archive.org where it had been uploaded by Microsoft.
A surprising amount of the old stuff can be legitimately downloaded without faffing about with discs.
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@Rhywden said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@brie I like the 3-2-1 rule: Three copies on two different media with one at a different location.
Never heard that version.
I go with "Three copies of data, in two locations, one being off-site" or "Three copies of data, two on-site and one off-site".
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@loopback0 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
This is what I do, although it's only selectively synced to my laptop.
Unless you have a local backup that isn't tied to Dropbox (a script plus VSC should be sufficient for most personal purposes) then you just put all of your data in the hands of others and it can be lost at any time.
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@Rhywden said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@Polygeekery See the skit by John Cleese above ;)
I will check it out right now.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@TheCPUWizard Very long term storage of data is certainly a problem to what AFAIK no marketable high speed and sufficiently compact solution has been offered so far, is it not?
To the best of my knowledge, the "best" approach is to have redundant copies and regular rotation on to new media. [I have archives going back to the very early 1970's]
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@Rhywden okay, that's pretty good. Saved to a playlist for later usage.
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@Polygeekery said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
Unless you have a local backup that isn't tied to Dropbox (a script plus VSC should be sufficient for most personal purposes) then you just put all of your data in the hands of others and it can be lost at any time.
It's Good Enoughâ„¢ for what I need. OneDrive lets you undelete files and has version history.
There was a script to copy to my NAS - I might resurrect that.
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@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
To be honest, most of my "important" digital stuff is stored in Dropbox
And if one copy is corrupted, Dropbox now syncs that corruption to all the others...
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Turns out, if I want to burn M discs, I need to buy a special drive, similar to the situation with LightScribe and LabelFlash. Really sucks that LabelFlash crashed and burned. Anyway, in the short term, I ordered a small number of Verbatim gold archival grade CDRs and DVDRs, so I can duplicate the handful of discs I've found so far. By the time I've found the rest, I should have a solution in place to put ISOs on an external SSD as well.
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@Zenith said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
LightScribe
I have one of those. I like it. But they no longer exist... (Haven't looked for media for a bit. I wonder if it's still available... later...)
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@dcon said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
To be honest, most of my "important" digital stuff is stored in Dropbox
And if one copy is corrupted, Dropbox now syncs that corruption to all the others...
Dropbox does version history.
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@loopback0 said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
It's Good Enoughâ„¢ for what I need. OneDrive lets you undelete files and has version history.
Yeah?
Read your EULA. Read it carefully. They don't guarantee any of it and depending on what you pay for it those backups only go back 30-90 days.
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@dcon said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
@brie said in Can I backup a CD to a DVDR?:
To be honest, most of my "important" digital stuff is stored in Dropbox
And if one copy is corrupted, Dropbox now syncs that corruption to all the others...
There ya go. Good man.
