Back Up to CD advice :-)

[nick/slickrenderer]

Ok I have been organizing all my files for backup. It took me the whole weekend. (My fingers are aching :-)

Everything is nicely structured. For example- 3DFOLDER > 3d folder_1, 3dfolder_2 etc etc......I made a blue print of the file/folder structure in Indesign.

Now all that I have to do is burn the 20GB+ worth of stuff to CD.

My Question-
I have Samsung and Sony CD's lot's of them. Which should I use? Are they both reliable? Any advice? Thanks.

[YrbkMgr]

I got most of my answers from Nero's site ([url]www.nero.com[/url]) and use Mitsui CD's exclusively. In point of fact though, if you are using a verify feature with your burning software, you should be fine. Nero has free utilities that you can use to "scandisc" your CD rom and perform other benchmarks on both the CD player as well as the disc. Worth a looksee anyhow.

Peace,
Tony

[nick/slickrenderer]

I use Nero as well. I will check these features you were talking about.
I have to choose between Samsung and Sony. I got so many of them cheap.

[Bill Lamp]

Cheap... How much is what your going to put on the disks worth to you? As you have lots of them, make two copies of each on EACH brand AND verify EACH burn.

Bill

[nick/slickrenderer]

The 'verify' feature can be used to check if ISO compilations have been written correctly on the CD. This may be extremely useful if you planned to backup your valuable data in order to be able to restore them after a fatal system breakdown. It would not be much fun to find out at this very moment, that the backup CD contains bad sectors or that the files have not been written correctly. However, if you use the Nero verify feature at the end of the burn process you can be sure that the CD is readable and that all the files have been written correctly.

All you have to do to activate the verify feature is to click on the "Verify Compilation" button in Nero's burn status. That means you can still decide, if you need verification or not while the CD is being written.
Nero will eject and reload the CD after it has been written. Afterwards it will compare all files of the compilation and will check if the file has been written correctly. For multisession compilations, Nero will compare only those files that have been written at the last burn process and ignore all other files. At the end of the verification Nero will display a summary containing information on the number of identical files, the number of different files and the number of inaccessible files, that have been found during the verify process.

The 'verify' feature is currently only available for ISO9660 compilations and only, if the Nero driver is installed in the system. This driver is installed automatically during the Nero installation.

[nick/slickrenderer]

Bill...phew!!!Might have to do that
:-( It will be so confusing though having 2 copies of everything.

[nick/slickrenderer]

Is there any problems with the length of the name if I have names like this-

n_3dMayafilesPlus_1

[YrbkMgr]

It depends on the mode you are writing in. When I produce CD's for clients, they are always 8.3 ISO 9660; when I back up information I use "relaxed" restrictions, assuming that I will most likely always be in Windows or have access to legacy Windows OS's to transfer info should I need to.

So, IMO, that type of naming convention is fine for your own use - it's when you get into unknown environments (like distributing a CD) that's it's best to stay in ISO 9660.

Peace,
Tony

[nick/slickrenderer]

I thought that name is OK for ISO as well. Correct me if I am wrong. I think underscore is ok.....OR?

[YrbkMgr]

The name will be ok with relaxed ISO restrictions. But for cross platform use, 8.3 is what I've always used.

If you have a 30 char name with underscores, it's okay with relaxed ISO Level 2, but when viewed in DOS for example, it will be truncated to 8.3.

[nick/slickrenderer]

I thought that name is OK for ISO as well. Correct me if I am wrong. I think underscore is ok.....OR?

[nick/slickrenderer]

I read up in the help docs. I don't understand 8.3 or 8+3. What does it mean?
8 charecters long but what is the .3
or + 3?

[YrbkMgr]

the "3" is the three character extension. For example: myfile.ext is a 6.3 (6+3) filename.

Remember DOS? It only allowed 8 chars max infront of the period, and three behind the period. That's 8.3;

Windows opened that up, allowing filenames to be 255 chars long. But CD Standards, specifically ISO 9660 Level 2 limit file names to 30 chars in front of the period and three behind it.

So if you take a ISO9660 level 2 recorded disc and put it in a DOS machine, the filename will have 8 chars and will look like this: myfile~1.ext

If its for your own use, don't worry about it, but as far as I know, 30 chars will be the limit unless you want to obviate ISO 9660 rules altogether.

[nick/slickrenderer]

OK but what about a folder it does not have an extension.....

[YrbkMgr]

Just because it does not have one does not mean that it cannot have one. I have folders that look like this:

RawPSD.001
RawPSD.002

Perfectly legal, albeit uncommon.

[nick/slickrenderer]

All is clear. So i will stick with the current naming convention. As it is only for my backup.

Or maybe I should change it to strict ISO standard.
Who knows maybe one day Apple will have 99% of the PC market and then it will be easier to transfer my data :-)

[nick/slickrenderer]

Len that^'s a good point. Indesign has.4. What happens then?

[YrbkMgr]

Nick,

Who knows maybe one day Apple will have 99% of the PC market and then
it will be easier to transfer my data :-)




You *could* do that but here's my personal rationale.

If I ever go to a more limited OS or one that will not read my mission critical backups, I'll know in advance. When or if that time comes, I'll re-burn if necessary (although I doubt it will happen).

In the meantime, I have DESCRIPTIVE file names and folder names. Much better when I want to find things a year from now, and I can guarantee that I won't be in a Mac this time next year <grin>.

Peace,
Tony

[Bill Lamp]

Windoze Folders CAN have extensions too. Even DOS Directories have been able to have them. But they don't HAVE to have them. The space for it is reserved in the file name data block. If you don't use an extension, it is empty space that was set up when the folder (OLDE TERM - Directory) was created.

* required disclaimer- The above is close enough to reality, even if perchance a small error or three snuck in, to explain what is going on. Hard core Operating System Programmers are free to add in comments IF it will help out someone who is rather new to this stuff**

* *Stuff: Noun used to replace a term that is not normally acceptable in this forum

Bill

[nick/slickrenderer]

Len that^'s a good point. Indesign has.4. What happens then?