BR Burners - price range...dropping ?

MrGuvernment

MrGuvernment

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Aug 3, 2004
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We all know it took DVD burners some time to drop in price, i recently grabbed a BR burner for work @ $160 and i love it for burning lots of files.

I was considering one for home, since i have alto of stuff i want to backup, lots of digital pics and so on.What i wanted to know, is if anyone thinks the price is likely to drop in the next few months at all? Or do you think they still got a good year before they go below the $100 mark?

Not that $160 is bad, + $10 for a 50G BR disk....... but if it looks like it will drop, i can wait..
 
MrG; I advised considering BR-burners when they first hit that price point, but *only* as a backup drive. The problem now, as was the case when I made that recommendation, is media costs (blank BR media is still horrendously expensive, even though the drives themselves are not). For everyday typical burning chores, blank DVDs (even DL DVDs) beat BD on a cost basis up to 100 GB (the price difference between blank DL DVD media and blank BD media is still that steep).

The other issue is that OEM DVD burners have stayed low in price (there is little reason that anyone should pay more than $35, even retail, for an OEM DVD burner, even with LightScribe; MC has OEM Samsung and Sony LS DVD burners for $30 every day).

BR-burner in the home server (especially a media server)? Yes (especially if you have 1.5 TB or more of movies and other files that need backing up). As a DVD burner replacement? Nope (media costs are too high).
 
Ya, the cost is high $10 for a 50G disk.

I guess for me, i do have about 2T of media now i would like to backup, and i guess i just am getting tired of inserting a DVD every 5-6 mins, when i take 4G of digital pics, or have other stuff to backup.

I am thinking to get the BR Burner, and then maybe get 4 or 5 BR disk to get the larger load of stuff i have backed up, then from there i can go back to DVD's perhaps and try to keep on top of my burning instead of spending a hole evening burning things.
 
I'd love to get a blu ray burner but the discs are the price of hdd's kinda but the space saved and convenience of disk storage are going to cause me to blow some money soon.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Ya, the cost is high $10 for a 50G disk.

I guess for me, i do have about 2T of media now i would like to backup, and i guess i just am getting tired of inserting a DVD every 5-6 mins, when i take 4G of digital pics, or have other stuff to backup.

I am thinking to get the BR Burner, and then maybe get 4 or 5 BR disk to get the larger load of stuff i have backed up, then from there i can go back to DVD's perhaps and try to keep on top of my burning instead of spending a hole evening burning things.
Click to expand...

When I first bought my BR burner last fall, a 50G disk cost $25-$35 (if you could even get them). They are $10 now and falling. By Christmas they will be $2.50/ea - and still falling.
 
Still more expensive per GB than a harddrive.

2TB or 2000GB for 100 dollars = 20GB per dollar
0,048TB or 48GB for $2,50 = 19GB per dollar

So even with 48GB blu-ray dropping to 2,50 a piece, it is still not cheaper than harddrives. Assuming you never get to burn a bad disc. ;-)

Thus, if i may be critical, blu ray:
  • Is still 'old' optical technology that relies on redundancy to cope with the high error rate of optical media.
  • Increases data density yet again, increasing the risk of data errors
  • Virtually unusable without special coating that protects against scratches;
  • only Sony makes the coating meaning this is a sony-only product; no vendor can do business in the Blu-Ray market without paying Sony its proprietary technology fees.
  • CD used to be an open standard (orange book), i believe blu-ray is proprietary and closed.
  • Burning 50GB discs takes a long time and prone to failures; data rates would have to be very high. Optical technology thus far has not been very resilient with buffer underruns

Simply put, optical technology is... old. It feels old, it has all the disadvantages of floppies; heck they even smell like floppies!

To me, it appears optical removable technology is dying; harddrives have become much cheaper per GB than optical technology; in the past a 700MB CD-R was cool when you still had 1GB harddrives. But what is 48GB blu-ray when we have 3000GB HDDs, and i bought my first shipment of 2000GB under 100 euro.

Not that harddrives are a direct substitute to removable drives, but either local storage or network streaming is the standard today; why would we need optical drives at all? It used to make sense in the past, but optical technology is evolving extremely slowly and is now totally 'proprietarized'; likely entering a time where optical technology will start to die silently, just like floppies.
 
Honestly, if someone gave me a Blu-ray burner of a decent build and 100 blank Blu-ray discs I think I'd sell it on craigslist and make a profit. :)

There's just something I don't quite have any faith in when it comes to backing up that much data on optical media knowing a scuff, a scratch, or worse can render all of it effectively useless. I'll still be using DVD blank media for years to come I believe.

That 50TB tape drive some company announced recently, that would be awesome to have but of course it'll be another decade before something like that is a "practical" device for your average Joe computer owner.

Would be nice, however.
 
It all depends on what you are backing up, why, and for how long...

If all you are doing is general backup of your PCs and live data then yes, hard-disk based backup is probably best - and will remain best for a very, very long time.

But if you are looking for archival backups of high-value data then BR is a really good option. The disks were designed so that no organics are used (unlike existing CD-R, DVD-R or tape) - the chemical science says they should last at least 50 years. Find me a tape solution that can make that claim. And if you are storing it for 10 years or more then I wouldn't count on that hard-disk motor still spinning when you need it...

For me and my needs, even at $35/disk, BR was (and is) the best way. At $2.50/disk it will be a steal.
 
For your needs, photos and the like, why not use an online server like Mozy and/or hard drive for backup? I'm not saying BR is bad, but at this price point and for back up purposes, you are much better off with a hard drive and/or an online service. Mozy is less than $5/month, and with the 2 year plan it's a bit over $100 or roughly 11 BR disc at 50GB each or 550GB; if you wait a month or so, this will probably be the typical price of a 2TB hard drive. I'd forget the BR at this time, and for your needs, I'd definately 1) use a hard drive for backup and 2) if it is really important to you, use additional backup like Mozy which also has other features too.
 
doubt any online backup is suitable for multimedia backups more than a few GB.
I'd love to see someone back up say 1 TB of data that way. I can imagine all types of problems happening (upload speed, bandwidth caps, unannounced file caps, etc).
 
jiminator said:
doubt any online backup is suitable for multimedia backups more than a few GB.
I'd love to see someone back up say 1 TB of data that way. I can imagine all types of problems happening (upload speed, bandwidth caps, unannounced file caps, etc).
Click to expand...

Doing a Google search "mozy really unlimited backup," the second link is http://www.goodwebpractices.com/other/unlimited-online-backup-mozy-carbonite.html and here's an excerpt:
Unlimited backup from Mozy
"When we say Unlimited we mean Unlimited. When I was in support I saw accounts that were well over the 350GB. Tell your readers to throw whatever amount of data at us and we'll make room for it."
Unlimited backup from Carbonite
We have users with over a terabyte backed up, and thousands of customers who are backing up more than 100GB. There is no limit, and never has been.

It is possible, people have gone over 1TB so unannounced files caps it not a problem. Upload speed, I've got 2Mbps which is 125kb/sec upload, I set my torrents at 100kb/sec upload and my ping on FPS games don't change. 2TB = 2,000,000,000kb which would take roughly 231 days running at 24/7 (I leave my computer on 24/7 anyways) or almost 8 months to backup what is currently already there at my speed. No idea on bandwidth caps, but considering that I've seen people load 100's of TB on torrent sites in 2-4 months, I don't know if this will be a problem. On a monthly usage basis though, if you do a BR 50 GB disc a month or 50,000,000kb, it would only take you only a bit under 6 days to upload or 138 hours, if you sleep 6 hours a day than you can get this done in 23 nights at 100kb/sec. It is a lot still but easily doable and when you break it down by month, it's a bit more apples to apples. Imagine though, if you wanted to backup 2TB onto BR disc, that'd require 40 disc, $10 a pop or $400. For $400, I can upgrade my service to a 6Mpbs upload service for a month, upload 2TB in a bit over 30 days, go back to my old service and pocket $360.

That being said, a BR disc is $10, online services are $5. BR disc can still go bad (kid plays with it, something falls on it, etc...) while an online service is normally up 99.99% of the time; not triple 7 uptime but still good for a consumer. There are other features too like desktop backup's, incrementals, etc... If you build a proper NAS and throw in WHS, which can do what Mozy can do, it will be cheaper in the long run (very very long run at 50GB a month though). Just buying a hard drive and throwing it in a computer though would be extremely cheap and the best option.

Lastly, FYI, I store my stuff on hard drives, and backup on an external hard drive. Important files for me (wedding pictures, etc...) are copied on my computer, HTPC, laptop, and external hard drive but I've only got 200GB of media. I'm going to be building a NAS in the future though as I plan to store quite a bit of things that I have on the 100+ DVD's I have which I stopped burning since hard drives as so cheap.
 
That is interesting. But you still have issues like with comcast who give you a 250 GB cap. Now that is for download, but I would suspect u/l is the same, or worse.
 
jiminator said:
That is interesting. But you still have issues like with comcast who give you a 250 GB cap. Now that is for download, but I would suspect u/l is the same, or worse.
Click to expand...

Comcast's 250 GB monthly cap is a soft cap (not a hard one); still, that is less than 1/4 the size of WD's smallest Caviar Black SATA HDD today (currently, 1 TB). Further, even assuming no cap at all, backing up even half that (500 GB) to online storage is going to chew up serious time, even at the fastest online speeds that DOCSIS 3.0 modems are allowing at any sort of reasonable fee. Given the costs of BR media, hard drives in an enclosure still offer better transfer rates, at lower prices, than BR, and for amounts larger than 500 GB/month, they put major hurt on any residential online storage offered today (including Mozy). Whether external hard drives are better for the individual depends on what you will do with the storage device
 
FrostBite said:
For your needs, photos and the like, why not use an online server like Mozy and/or hard drive for backup? I'm not saying BR is bad, but at this price point and for back up purposes, you are much better off with a hard drive and/or an online service. Mozy is less than $5/month, and with the 2 year plan it's a bit over $100 or roughly 11 BR disc at 50GB each or 550GB; if you wait a month or so, this will probably be the typical price of a 2TB hard drive. I'd forget the BR at this time, and for your needs, I'd definately 1) use a hard drive for backup and 2) if it is really important to you, use additional backup like Mozy which also has other features too.
Click to expand...

My needs are archival in nature. That means 10-20 year storage life - perhaps more. What are the chances that Mozi will remain in business that long? With the rate that tech companies come and go BR backup actually looks extremely attractive.
 
PigLover said:
My needs are archival in nature. That means 10-20 year storage life - perhaps more. What are the chances that Mozi will remain in business that long? With the rate that tech companies come and go BR backup actually looks extremely attractive.
Click to expand...

If your needs are archival and need to be stored for 10-20 years, and for $/GB rate, BR is still not a good options, in my opinion. You are still better off buying a hard drive, copying your 2TB over, and just storing it somewhere safe until you need it again. The chances of you scratching, breaking, something falling on a BR might be a bit greater than someone waving a huge magnet over a hard drive or pouring soda over it. What really makes BR not an option for you is if you need to archive the 2TB of information you already had as you would need to buy 40 BR disc or $400 just onto the disc itself. You can buy 4x 2TB hard drives on sale for that price, and just have 4 backup copies of every single item. From a scaling point of view too, someone mentioned storing 500GB/month, that's $100 per month in BR discs, a little bit less if prices go down, compared again to paying $100 every 4 months for a hard drive; this doesn't even factor in hard drive prices falling while sizes increase.

As for online storage, chances of Mozi staying in business that long? No idea. Chances of your data being stored though, pretty high as companies still need clients and will buyout the information so they can continue your subscription. Personally, I think online storage is the wave of the future as cloud computing is to small businesses; you get all the resources of the big guys, but you only need to pay for what you need. In addition, internet speeds are getting faster and faster. On the extreme consumer side, FIOS offers something like 20-35Mbps upload or 2-4Mb/sec uploads, and even my iPhone 3G plan gets faster speeds than my DSL 5+ eyars ago.
 
The magnet in the hard disk is not the problem. The motor is. More specifically, the organic material used as lubricant for the motor bearings. The chances of a hard-disk stored for 10-20 years spinning may be somewhere close to 60-70%, which is not anywhere near good enough.
 
FrostBite said:
For your needs, photos and the like, why not use an online server like Mozy and/or hard drive for backup? I'm not saying BR is bad, but at this price point and for back up purposes, you are much better off with a hard drive and/or an online service. Mozy is less than $5/month, and with the 2 year plan it's a bit over $100 or roughly 11 BR disc at 50GB each or 550GB; if you wait a month or so, this will probably be the typical price of a 2TB hard drive. I'd forget the BR at this time, and for your needs, I'd definately 1) use a hard drive for backup and 2) if it is really important to you, use additional backup like Mozy which also has other features too.
Click to expand...

jiminator said:
doubt any online backup is suitable for multimedia backups more than a few GB.
I'd love to see someone back up say 1 TB of data that way. I can imagine all types of problems happening (upload speed, bandwidth caps, unannounced file caps, etc).
Click to expand...

and me with a 756kb upload = about 78KB it would take forever to upload things.

harddrives i worry about earthquakes in Costa rica, shake, falls to the floor, good bye, just had a 6.2 hit the other night.

I was considering tape even, i still have burned DVD's from 8 years ago, i store all my burned disks in folders with the soft holders in them.
 
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