Archiving Solutions Compared

Penguin March 26th, 2008

Little Frong in High Def compares various archival solutions:

LTO3 (Tape)
$0.08/GB
Pros: Cheap, long life-span
Cons: High setup ($2000), sequential read/write

HDD
$0.20/GB
Pros: Fast, no setup costs
Cons: Unreliable

DVD
$0.19/GB
Pros: No setup costs, easily expandable, versatile
Cons: Slow, takes up space, medium life-span (5-10 yrs)

Blu-Ray
$0.90/GB
Pros: High capacity, Can produce HD content, reliable, long life-span (50+ yrs)
Cons: $600 setup for drive, takes up space, slow

As it stands, for pure backup purposes, DVD is probably the most practical. As Blu-Ray comes down in price, and especially if you are doing a lot of HD, it may make sense to move to the new format, especially since HD-DVD is dead, there’s no more uncertainty in the format war.

Prices as of March 2008

-Penguin

Related posts
blog comments powered by Disqus