I'm interested in finding out if anyone uses blu-ray media for backup purposes?

From a per-gigabyte cost perspective, I think external HDDs would be a little less expensive, but as I plan to create multiple copies with the intention of storing at least one off-site, I think optical media would be better suited for this role.

I used DVDs for quite some time, but they just don't offer enough storage these days (digital photos are what I'll be primarily backing up). In the interim, I've been using a couple of internal terabyte drives.

I think external HDDs would be a little less expensive

A lot less expensive.

A 2TB hard drive is about $75 or 3.8 cents per GB. I think a blank 25GB Blu-ray disc is about $5 each (when bought in a spindle of ten) which is about 20 cents per GB.

When I can buy brand name blank blu-ray discs for a $1 or $2 each, then I'd be interested.

When I can buy brand name blank blu-ray discs for a $1 or $2 each, then I'd be interested.

While I agree that HD is less expensive it is not always practical. BD-R discs prices are lot lower than many people think (as soon as you start looking beyond Best Buys and such). For example, newegg sells spindle of 15 Maxell BD-R discs for $15.99, Memorex 30 for $29.99, etc. Even most coveted Verbatims are $27 for 20 discs. So, we are in realm of $1 per disc (which turns out to be about $0.04-$0.05 per GB).

@Tezster. I use BD-R discs for exact same purpose you want it. Moved from weekly backup on DVD-R to BD-R about year ago. Using only brand name discs (Verbatim and TDK, made in Japan). So far, not a single coaster. I made first BD-R about 3 years ago and it's still fully readable (not that 3 years are anything to write home about, but it is best data I have).

hmm, I guess its been a while since I looked at blank media pricing!

I've similarly noted the media cost being in the range of ~$1-2 per disc for a spindle, which definitely makes it a viable option.

If your data is small (e.g. small enough to fit on a BluRay) then I'd consider a offline backup solution (http://www.carbonite.com/en/) because automation is worth a lot.

If your data would require multiple discs, I'd favor using two hard drives (if you can fit your data on a single 2TB drive) for three reasons: cost, performance and "the future".

The hard drive solution would work like this: have one drive plugged in to a hard drive dock (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066), and the other drive off-site. Week 1, put "drive 1" in the dock and backup to it and "drive 2" is stored off site. Week 2, reverse the drives. Or, you could change the procedure to daily drive rotation. Whatever.

Cost: the cheap BD-R discs that people are talking about are not re-writable so you'll always be buying new discs. This will impact the overall cost.

Performance: The time required to write data to a hard drive is significantly less than the time required to write to a BD-R.

The Future: I believe BD-R is one of those formats that will not really catch on (like magento-optical). CD-Rs and DVD-Rs both caught on because their "parent" formats caught on. I don't know many people with a BD-R drive, and if you believe Apple, then you shouldn't be wasting your time with optical media anyway.

If I were you, I'd just drop $59/year on something like Carbonite because my time is worth something and I like "seamless solutions".

I use Microsoft SyncToy to backup my pictures and documents to a 1TB external eSATA/USB drive. But, I still keep "snapshots" of my documents and my downloads folders on DVD. It's handy if I need an older driver or software installer.

I would not use optical media for backup if you can avoid it.
(I haven't used BD-R, but I don't think the main reasons for failure have changed much since DVD-R)

Burnt discs just don't have the lifespan of stamped discs (e.g. movies). If it's only a couple years or so, I'd say go for it. But if you want to hang onto something for a long while, I'd use an external drive (or even just internals filled with data and stored in static/moisture proof bags or cases)

And even if you find discs that guarantee a certain timespan for retention, they're going to be expensive, and still dependent on burning properly and storing properly.
Hard drives just make the most economical and long-term sense in the here-and-now.
That being said, I would avoid hard drives with extremely large densities (e.g. 3TB).
It's still new tech to have such a large density and I wouldn't want my backups on there if they were to fail.
At least with the 'old' 1-1.5TB drives I know they've proven reliable.

New tech would be fine for day to day use - if it fails, oh well. But I wouldn't want my long term data on one (I'd have multiple instances, but still.)

Thanks for all the input :)

Just to add some clarity - I'm not looking to maintain a backup image or snapshot of my data: I'm looking for an offline storage solution when I say that I want to "back up" my files. Once I'm confident the data has been safely copied, it's going to be deleted from my PC. And as long as I have one copy within reach, and another copy off-site, then it's all good!

To that end, I can see how using dual external drives would work for redundancy (but I wouldn't be 'syncing' to my machine, as the drives would need to mirror each other instead).

Carbonite, however, seems to offer a pure backup service from what I gather reading their FAQ, so that wouldn't work for me (files deleted on your PC are deleted from their servers after 30 days) - I'm also not comfortable relying on my internet connection as the sole gateway to my data.

I guess I'm leaning towards blu-ray because backing up to optical media is the workflow I'm most familiar with. The data is all static (RAW camera files and post-processed JPGs), so using write-once media isn't an issue.

SyncToy has a contribute mode, that will add changes from the left folder to the right folder. New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions. Folder creates and folder updates on the left are repeated on the right.

So, files I deleted from my HTPC are still in my backup because they aren't "synced". For that, there is the "Synchronize" and the "Echo" modes

if you are going to offsite storage and BD discs at 25Gb each would be sufficient, could you not use flash drives and use a grandfather...grandson system. My data backup needs are small enough that I could do this but I do not archive photographs.

Buying most brand names is key to longevity from my experience.

In 1999 I burnt a goodly number of 2x Maxell CD's of audio files. These play just like the day they were burnt.

I then got a batch of BASF disks (still 1999) and for the most part, these were OK, except some had factory label printing that bled through the lacquer (label side) to the green reflective layer. Errors became plenty on those with bleed-through.

Verbatim, TDK, Sony, Imation, Kodak, have all stood up really well from 2000 onwards. Memorex, tended to coaster from time to time, but degradation hasn't been a problem oddly enough, as I expected it to happen with that brand.

I have an early CD player that also plays .mp3's and CD-R's. With commercial pressed disks and CD-R's burnt at slow speeds, the scan speed (with speeded up audo) would be glitch free and the display would show a smooth progression of minutes. On disks that were burnt at high speeds, the scanning was choppy and the minutes display would be very erratic. Thus on those older disks recorded at lower speeds, the CD player still scans as if the disks were new. No degradation noted.

As to longevity of DVD's and BD-R's, I don't have a similar "test", but data disks burnt back in 1999 on CD-R's still read just fine on current computer drives.

Now, if someone has experience with BD re-writable disks, I'd be very interested in their experiences.

Cameron

I think the cost of flash drives would be on the high side (unless I can find somewhere to buy 32GB sticks for $2 :p), whereas a spindle of BD's could potentially last me 6+ months.

@Michael - thanks for the synctoy suggestion; I'll definitely take a look at it. I've kind of glossed over the software side of things as there's nothing complicated in what I'm doing from a file organization standpoint.