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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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You will need to double check the specific DVDs you are working with. They can be useful for backups and if you don't store them in sunlight or acid or something they basically last forever. You can copy your important data onto a DVD and leave it in your closet for the rest of your life. Of course, as with all backup strategies, you need to test it very regularly.
Edited to add nitpicks: if you decide to do this back up across multiple DVDs and use encryption. Borg is a fantastic tool for encrypted backups and if you are just mounting your DVDs as cdrom0 and such it can handle that as easily as any other block device.
Not really. After a few years you'll get bitflips, after about ten the organic material will have decomposed to the point you can't trust the backup anymore. It's probably easier to use old HDDs for that which you periodically checksum.
Hmm my experience with DVD storage is mostly negative. They were all put in cases in closed shelves but after ~10 years there were either unreadable or with errors. I know there are DVD-Rs that are specifically rated for archival but most are not.
Here are the most common mistakes people used to make when writing DVDs:
By following these precautions I still have 20-year old backup DVDs that I can read without a problem. In fact most of my CD blanks have survived and are readable โ and the ones that didn't owe it mostly to scratches (CDs were a lot more delicate than DVDs and nowhere near Blu Ray durability).
Check them regularly and mirror them. They are basically only beaten by tape drives in terms of longevity. Do not under any circumstance use 1 copy of a DVD for backups. Consider this to be a RAID system. They stand the test of time but not the test of being in a moving box or under a hammer.