Recovery discs - which media are best? 3

[manhunter2826]

Hi, can anyone suggest to me what would be the best and most reliable media for creating recovery discs for W7? This is assuming that I have a dual layer dvd writer installed, yes (which is quite common in new laptops?). What would be best?
For example:
CDR
CDRW
DVD-RAM
DVD-R
DVD-R

As always, much thanks.

 

[Nocandu]

Hi

I would like to suggest that you might consider buying an external USB hard drive to create your backups on.

You won't have to deal with multiple disks and it makes it much easier to keep you backup updated, instead or creating a new set of disks all the time.

They are very inexpensive now, and you can just plug them in and use them.

If you are going to use disks then you want to use DVD not CD as it will take fewer disks. My drive backups are almost 100 GB in size even after compression. That's a lot of disks. I use DVD R for things I want to save to disk.

Mike

 

[vacunita]

While a USB hard drive is a good option, I still find CD/DVDs to be more reliable in the long run.

External Hard Drives will inevitably fail its just a matter of when.

Optical media (CDs,DVDs) Can function for a very long time as long as you take good care of them to avoid any scratches.

I'd use DVD's over CD's if only for the added capacity.

You may want to look into a Blue-Ray Burner and Blue Ray DVD+R's for the added capacity over standard DVD's. up to 25GB of info on a single disc.

Other than that, look at what you are backing up and how much space it will take up.

My backups are usually about 20 to 30GB. I may stick some data onto an external drive, but for more important data I'll burn a DVD. Portable and easy to read almost anywhere these days.

If you are very paranoid you can burn an extra copy for added security, without the added cost of a second external drive.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[manhunter2826]

Thanks Nocandu, really kind. I do indeed have an external usb drive, and was just being inquisitive. So, I'll do as you suggested and bear in mind DVD R as a good choice. Thank you for your time .

 

[manhunter2826]

Thanks vacunita also; you squeezed in between my subsequent post. Can I just reiterate: It's not back up of data I am necessarily talking about here, it's making the Recovery discs for W7 (which you are told to do if you do not have a recovery partition for example). So, for this, would DVD-R be a good choice or DVD+R DL or DVD+R? Thanks.

 

[linney]

I think that any type of DVD that your DVD Drive can handle would be a sufficient choice.

I'd also look at the manufacturer's web site for the procedure for using the Recovery Media and performing any such recovery. See what is actually going to be saved and restored. Any manual you have may help too.

How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html

How to Backup User and System Files in Windows 7

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/615-backup-user-system-files.html

 

[vacunita]

Ahh I see. Well I don't think there's really any difference/benefit/disadvantage in picking one type of DVD to another.

I guess as long as you have a drive that supports the type of disc it really doesn't matter.



----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[manhunter2826]

Thanks linney and vac again/ And thanks for the links linney; I'll have a read asap.

 

[ken07734]

what about using BlueRay?

 

[Nocandu]

Hi

I considered getting a BlueRay writer in my new computer but finally decided not to spend the extra money and went with a pair of standard CD, DVD writers.

While it would be nice to have the disk capacity I decided that for me, since I have to update my backups so often that making permanent backups on disks all the time is just too much of a hassle.

It's much easier for me to use one of my external hard drives to make backups that can be updated.

However if you want to make permanent backups of things like photos and music files BlueRay would be a good option cutting the number of disks required substantially.

Mike