I've tried to search explanations in the internet and on this subreddit, but information was incomplete for me to understand it properly. Therefore, I'd need some help from you who burn data to BD-Rs for archival purposes.
Here's my setup: I have data: photos, videos, files from my study period which I no longer need so frequently and want to back up for archive and store it in case needed. I really don't want to lose such data. Also, I don't want to upkeep the data by transferring it to a new medium in the human lifetime.
The best choice for me then is to burn M-Discs. I'm not going to question the validity of the manufacturers' claims here and I'll assume the BD-R M-Discs are capable of storing data for more than one human lifetime without corruption (e.g. 100+ years). I don't want to use 50 or 100GB versions, since they're multi-layered and are not tested for longevity as M-Disc DVDs. Because of the same single layer nature, I hope BD-R M-Discs should behave similarly as DVD counterparts.
I already have the discs and capable drive for burning m-discs, but when researching methods to burn them, there were numerous ways to achieve the same goal.
My goal: I plan to have two copies of the data on the M-Discs (one off-site) and additional copy of all data stored on an HDD. If I split the data throughout multiple discs, they should stay independent from each other (i.e. data corruption on one disc mustn't affect the data on the others).
Now I'm going to list the burning settings and formatting options that I considered relevant and need your help in deciding the best option considering my goal. I use both Windows and Linux systems and cross-compatibility would be a must, at least to read the files.
Burning Software and filesystems (ISO9960, UDF)
Here is generally the easiest. For Windows there is ImgBurn and for Linux k3b and I plan to use those for in my case. ImgBurn is not longer mainained though, please let me know if there's any burning software for Windows which is still maintained, preferably open source.
Since I want the Windows-Linux reading cross-compatibility, using Linux/Unix + Windows filesystem on k3b when burning should do the thing. For ImgBurn the default option is ISO9960 + UDF. Are these options fine? Should I use UDF?
What format of data to burn to a disc: disc image .iso, .zip archives or just simple data disc
Here I'm mostly confused how should I evaluate each option. For example, from my studies I have ca. 160GB of data and want to archive it onto BD-R M-Discs of 25GB each.
Data disc
If I go with simple data disc, I'd have to manually split the data so that it fits on 7 discs. By doing so, even if some bits get corrupted, it won't affect all the files on the disc. The only difficulty is that one would have to prearrange the files to fit onto the discs. I've seen this feature offered on CDBurnerXP for Windows.
Do you know some scripts that would be useful in arranging data into parts of certain size for burning?
Making Disc image (.iso)
When making disk image (.iso), I'd have to split the whole 160GB file into smaller parts. On Linux this is possible, for Windows I didn't look much into it. But I'm not even sure this will achieve the desired outcome, since the discs will become bootable.
The only concern that remains for me there is what if one of the seven discs gets corrupted? Can I still bring them together into original .iso file and extract some data from it? Is this even the concern for me since I'm using the before mentioned 3-2-1 method for archival/backup?
.zip archives
Here I could use 7zip to split large archive and even compress it. Is this method advisable? Here I'm quite sure that one part failure would compromise the whole archive, which I don't want. I'd like to have each disc independent of each other. Do .tar archives do the same thing as .zip archives?
What if I have a single file larger than 25GB?
If I have a very large video file I cannot just burn it that way. Should I make an .iso or (compressed) .zip archive and split it? What about parity data and/or ECC in this case?
I also read that files larger than 4GB would make some issues and UDF would be recommended. Can somebody confirm this? What do you do when burning large files that fit on one disc?
Should I use parity data and/or ECC from dvdisaster?
Basically the question is in the subtitle considering that I have two copies of the data on the M-Discs and one on the HDD and that every disc is independent from each other.
If yes, what option is the most robust? How should I proceed on storing parity data or ECC files?
Writing speed and burn verification
Here I'd use the lowest 2x speed and check "verify" when burning for the best results. Also I don't plan to copy the disc I just burnt to another one, but redo the burning from the original source. Please say if something should be changed.
Completely filling up the disc isn't advisable. But what is then the optimal limit to fill the discs?
Is there any other advice you'd like to tell me or any aspect that I missed that you consider important? Please let me know. All suggestions are welcome.
Thank you very much for helping me.
Much appreciated and a lot of success in your data hoarding.
