Monday, August 6, 2012

The "M Disk" - Permanent Backup Storage by any DVD Burner?

This was cut from  Millenniata.com's blog about the "M- Disk" - a solution to the decades old quest for backup storage that 1. holds a lot of stuff, 2. Is durable enough to toss around and be okay, not damaged, and 3. Inexpensive.  Here's what THEY have one of THEIR clients' saying about their product.  I find it quite interesting.  I'm currently trying to contact them for more information regarding storage capacity, formats, required software, etc.  As the 2014 deadline approaches for doctors to have an efile of all of their paper files, one question keeps rearing its head- so do we also want to go ahead and make a backup of our own stuff, while we're scanning all of this media to be available online?

What will doctors put patient records on / in?  The 'cloud'?  I doubt a lot of doctors are going to let patient data float around with everyone else's in the 'cloud.'  In my experience, doctors, lawyers and CPA's trust ONE place for keeping backups- within an arm's reach.

Servers are great, ephemeral- especially the drives, and especially at this time in history as I'm seeing the crappiest hard drives coming out of Taiwan and China that I've ever seen...And no, I'm not surprised- just wishing they would start making drives in the Motor City of Detroit, or something- somewhere they can be built Ford Tough or Heavy Chevy.  I personally won't use hard drives solely for backing up important files, such as videos of my daughter's birth and birthdays.  I use the arm's reach, a couple of clouds, a locked FTP directory and also, a PAIR of duplicated (RAID) hard drives (Good old, and slower, IDE 40 Pin Barracuda drives 180GB at 7200RPM's -Well Western Digital is all I could find there with IDE interface- $80 for 160GB and $80 for 260GB, Which do you buy?  The smaller one if it's going to be your operating system disk, and the larger for storage only. Those two should ALWAYS be separate... Heavy as a brick, each one- and will click for a year before going out finally, so you know when it's time to change them.  Sata drives- don't get me started- technology- just bring on the Solid State, made in the United States preferably. )

So the "M- Disk"  See we all loved the 100 megabyte zip disk for its rigid strength 15 years ago- and then 250 megs!  Whew!   It would only take, aahuuummm about 7 zeros (2,500,000,000) / 250= 1 hundred thousand of those things to back up most good libraries and data servers today...  And 3 or 4 boxes of Sharpies to make sure they stay in order......And yes, 3 or 4 months to do the process.

Ultimatum- This "M Disk" needs to hold around 20GB at least to be as awesome as it's touted, because putting DVD after DVD into a drive as you back up a computer gets rather annoying.  Considering the typical 320GB - 2 TB we're doing these days, that's 16- about 16x6 (a hundred?? Not a math person) disks... Hopefully, on second thought their compression ratio and design has them holding 100GB per disk- that's only 10 per Terabyte... I can go with that for arm's reach sake.....  (Keep in mind a fire proof safe is not only crucial, but will only hold so many disks.....)

Millenniata:

We recently received an email from a small business owner who wanted to share his review and recount the story that lead him to using the M-DISC as his method for backup. With his permission we’ve posted his review below. If you’ve also started using the M-DISC and would like to share your review, please email us at contact@homePCmedia.com . We value the comments and feedback of our customers and community members.

I wanted to take a moment and give you guys some feedback on your m-discs and the BP40NS20 LG drive I bought for my small business. First, I decided to give your discs a try because at the end of last year the unthinkable happened and my external hard drive quit working. I was worried about this same scenario happening because the drive was getting a bit old (if you can call 3 years old!!) and so I had backed up the most important files on a jump drive. I still lost some photos and files that I really wanted to save, but as sad as it is to say I’m glad I didn’t lose everything on that drive.
Needless to say, I was feeling a bit vulnerable after this because I have documents and files for my business that I absolutely cannot lose. So, I did extensive research on the subject of backing up data and eventually made the decision to use m-discs. To be honest I was a bit skeptical when I first read your site, but after watching the video where you guys dip a disc into liquid nitrogen I was sold. I emailed your customer support with a few questions about which drive I could use on my mac and they did a great job helping me pick out the right one—kudos to them!
I’ll admit, I couldn’t help but do some of my own stress tests after watching your videos when my drive and discs arrived. It’s really quite amazing how much abuse the disc can take and still be readable. Anyways, I had thoroughly convinced myself that the m-disc would suit my needs and so I started backing up all my business files and docs. 37 discs later, I’m incredibly happy with my decision. I’ve saved absolutely everything I want to keep to my discs and continue to burn them as I inevitably acquire more files. I store the discs in a good location in my office and I feel confident that I will always have them when I need them. So thank you for the peace of mind!
Brig T.

 http://millenniata.com/2012/04/13/an--disc-review-from-a-small-business-owner/
 
                                                                               
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