The future of archiving/solid state drives
 

Please move this thread if it should be in another folder. I really have no idea where it should go.

The recent news about Verbatim DVD-Rs, along with Admin’s recent comment about discs outlasting drives in another thread, has left me wondering: will something else, like solid state drives, prove a competent alternative to archiving digital media?

We’re at the mercy of the few companies (which may no longer include Verbatim) to produce quality discs, as well as unrelated companies to continue to produce drives and software to read them. Data loss is rare, but discs have relatively low capacity and there are enough parameters (checking media ID, checking pre-burn specs for playable DVDs, checking completed burns) to make for much legwork when producing dozens of them. And then your favorite blanks can simply disappear tomorrow.

For the long run, can’t (or shouldn’t) there be something better than optical discs? What information is out there about SSDs? Could a next gen hard drive, or any other "solid state" hardware, really be considered - in terms of longevity and reliability - better than a DVD-R?

Drives are still a solid method of backup, especially in RAID configurations (true RAID, with redundancy, not that "RAID 0" crap). I'd suggest that a good 500GB or 1TB drive, in a RAID pair, is an excellent archival solution, for use in an archival policy.

Archival policy means the full method of backups, from timing your backups, to the locations where you store them, to the various redundant medias in use.

Good DVD-R + Good DVD+R + Good hard drives makes for a good setup, for use in your archival policy.

Eventually, flashable solid-state should prove just as reliable as magnetic or optical media. However, for now, it's still best used as temporary space only. Many SSD drives are notorious for data loss, all the way from $1K+ computer drives, down to the $10 thumb drives and camera memory sticks/cards.

Hard drives probably have just as much legwork, in terms of testing the drives for quality. Those scans just take time. Drives come with added baggage of defragging.

I would say there are more and different options from DVD, not better.

This is most definitely the right place for this topic. :)