Best way of putting 400gb of data on dvd...

[ring.of.steel]

Right, i have 400 gb of data on 2x320gb disks that needs putting on dvd becuase i need to rma the drive, dvd is the only option at this time so i bought 100 of them :p

Is there any software i can use to do this automaticly? so i dont have to select the files and burn them to dvd one by one? some of the files are infact bigger then 4.7gb.

What about norton ghost?

[axan]

acronis ti can backup onto dvds, all i can say it's gonna be a major pita, why not pay for advanced rma, get the wd, seagate or whoever to send you drive first, then backup your drive onto the new drive and send it back to them.

[ring.of.steel]

acronis ti can backup onto dvds, all i can say it's gonna be a major pita, why not pay for advanced rma, get the wd, seagate or whoever to send you drive first, then backup your drive onto the new drive and send it back to them.

Because if i return to my vendor i normally get the disks back within 2-3 days, i have found the western digital rma process to take forever. Also i cant really afford to pay for anything at the moment.

I will take a look at acrontis ti, thanks!

[axan]

well wd advanced rma is $9.99 and you get the drive in like 3-4 days (about day to process rma and they ship it using 2day shipping)

[ring.of.steel]

Hmm wd are saying they will only cross ship the drives once i have given proof of postage, so this isnt really an option.

edit: ignore, this was my vendor getting things wrong.

[axan]

i think wd rma would be worht it to avoid the hassle burning 400gb onto dvds will take forever, even assuming acronis can compress it 50% thats 200gb which is about 45 dvds. 8 min to burn single dvd * 45 = about 6 hours of sitting there swapping dvds back and forth :o
NOT fun.

[ring.of.steel]

Hmm come to think of it i have a 160gb drive laying around that i can use, and a couple of 40gb drives, so that would cut the total backup via dvd to about 200gb. If i could compress that 50% to 100gb thats only about 22dvds.

22dvds wouldnt really be a big problem.

Can the software you mentioned do it automaticly, so all i have to do is replace the disks?

[axan]

yes acronis will automaticly split the backup into dvd size chunks and prompt you for new dvds. Atleast that's what the manual says, I never tried backing up onto dvds, I use a file server for all backups.

[ring.of.steel]

, I use a file server for all backups.

This is my file server!

My raidz is 100% full and these other 2 half dead drives are part of a 3 drive 'set' and the third drive also happens to be full.

When i get them all back my plan is to create another raid-z array beside my existing one to equal 13 storage drives.

[compslckr]

buy a 500gb external, use it as a backup then just return it once you are done. I have seen them costing as little as $100 around bestbuy etc.

I know that 6 hours of my time is worth much more than $100, so even if you do keep the external its still a better deal imo.

Acronis costs $50 and will take about 6 hours of your time and 44 blank dvd's

The external 500gb would cost $100 and take about a minute of your time (plus transfer time of course, but you could leave that unattended while you sleep)

[ring.of.steel]

Right just got a mate to bring his copy over [thank god] as im not paying $50 for one use. I dont think this is piracy as he doesnt have it installed on his computer at the moment?

I tried to burn a test 10gb file to a dvd but when the disk is full it aborts the operation! :(

[ring.of.steel]

buy a 500gb external, use it as a backup then just return it once you are done. I have seen them costing as little as $100 around bestbuy etc.

I know that 6 hours of my time is worth much more than $100, so even if you do keep the external its still a better deal imo.

Acronis costs $50 and will take about 6 hours of your time and 44 blank dvd's

The external 500gb would cost $100 and take about a minute of your time (plus transfer time of course, but you could leave that unattended while you sleep)

Hmm thats a good idea, but the city centre is ages away and its raining and it happens to be cold aswell :(.

If i pay in cash will the refund me in cash do you think?

[jahseriah]

I usually use a small utility call size me http://lars.werner.no/?page_id=2

[ring.of.steel]

I usually use a small utility call size me http://lars.werner.no/?page_id=2

Thanks!

[scoob8000]

It all depends on the data and how compressable it is.

Norton Ghost will also compress and backup to your DVD burner, and span discs.

[ring.of.steel]

It seems to be mainly ripped avi's/divx and ripped iso's. It would not be possible to rip all this again as it is all stored away at my grandparents house.

[bbz_Ghost]

If it's ISOs and movies and music, you can pretty much forget all about compressing it. You would have been better off buying an external hard drive as a backup device instead of DVD media.

Someone suggested the advanced RMA; I would strongly recommend you pursue that course of action before even thinking about burning off 100 DVDs (roughly) in sequence. That process alone is going to be a nightmare of epic nightmare proportions - I wouldn't dream of ever doing such a thing myself.

Of course, I have a 250GB drive and an 80GB drive and I take the philosophy of: "If it's worth downloading it, or ripping it, or whatever - basically if it was worth the time to acquire it at all, it gets burned" and I burn it to DVD at that point in time. I have everything that's currently on my hard drive on a DVD someplace around here, save for a few movie files I downloaded from friends (vacation stuff, weddings, etc) that I just got yesterday and haven't burned yet, but...

My system partition is 36GB and the rest is a second partition for "storage," but to me a hard drive is just a drop zone temporary storage till the data is archived in a more permanent format.

I don't envy what's ahead of you, that's for damned sure - my advice is plan ahead next time. :)

[ring.of.steel]

Argh, i might have to go out and 'rent' a usb hard drive. Thing is places have dodgey returns policys around here.

[bbz_Ghost]

I'm just curious so I'll ask:

If this hardware related to what's in your sig, because I see 10x320 and then 2x160 and I'm thinking: "Ok, if he's got all that why not just shift some data around" or is this some different hardware altogether? Or is all that space in the sig already full too? :)

[ring.of.steel]

Solaris box has 4mb free and my main rig has about 3gb free this is the problem, flac audio takes up space very quickly!

[bbz_Ghost]

I have 90 DVDs full of FLAC files...

Like I said, if you're willing to acquire it (and I hand ripped about 95% of the stuff I have in FLAC format from my own CDs, that wasn't fun I assure you but it was worth it), then I'd say that makes it worthy of archiving almost immediately. But that's just me.

I've always told people I wouldn't get anything over an 80GB drive for myself over the years, and I still have an 80, but the 250 I have was in a Dell Dimension system I bought for $125 - the entire computer system with a 19" LCD cost me less than the retail cost of the 250GB drive inside it when I bought it. One of the few times I got lucky with a deal...

Losing hundreds of gigs because of a dying/dead hard drive, I simply can't imagine it. :p

[ring.of.steel]

All my flacs are hand ripped so are the avis, but the problem is i do not have the originals because of a garage fire, so keeping these files is critical.

[unhappy_mage]

I would suggest buying - and keeping - a backup drive. ZFS is fine and good, and I haven't had any problems with it... but all of the Sun documentation for "when it breaks" says "Restore the pool from backups." Having one is essential. There is no fsck.

[ring.of.steel]

I would suggest buying - and keeping - a backup drive. ZFS is fine and good, and I haven't had any problems with it... but all of the Sun documentation for "when it breaks" says "Restore the pool from backups." Having one is essential. There is no fsck.

I dont see any practical way to backup the near 3tb of data i have :mad: also i cant really afford a backup drive at the moment, or i would of got a 500gb a while ago.