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Whats the best solution for 'permanent' archiving to bluray?

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I'll preface this question with my scenario: I have a massive heap of applications, games, movies, and tv shows that i want to archive to bluray disks and then delete. If I wanted to restore something, I'd like to go into the application, find the file, choose restore and have it prompt me for the disk or tib file I need and then restore it.

I'm scratching my head as to how to set that up...

My first thought was to create a continuous incremental task to a hard drive and then manually burn the split TIB files (starting with the full backup and moving on to subsequent incrementals).  But then do I have to copy all the files back to the hard drive everytime I need to create an incremental? (And then burn them all over again?)

My second thought was to create a new single version full backup task each time i need to purge my hard drive of data. But then how can I keep track of where a specific file is in regards to a backup set? I would need some sort of master catalog that knew where all files reside in each backup set, otherwise I'll be hunting around multiple 1st disks trying to find what I'm looking for.

Any thoughts? 

  

 

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May I ask why blu-ray and not a cheap hard drive solution?  CD's/DVD's/Blu-ray are probably the slowest form of media, and the least reliable as they are susceptible to scratches.  I made DVD backups of some movies a decade ago. They sat in case, in a closet, in the dark the entire time.  Went to play some and none of them work, even though they were all tested right after the burn and working fine.  Basically, the DVD's broke down overtime, just doing nothing.  This can happen with other media too, but I think this type of media is probably going to be the least useful for retention.  

Plus, you can get a 2TB hard drive for the purpose of archiving for liek $60 and would not need to fumble through adding disk after disk for backup or recovery.

Going this route, if it's a true "archive" then you would create one archive  point and never touch it again... only in the event of recovery, but you wouldn't configure incrementals or differentials.  You would do another "archive" when the time comes.  

As a backup plan though, you could do incrementals whenever you wanted (or differentials), which would be based off of the original full and then go form there.  Neither of these are "forever" solutions though and you should create an updated "full" at some point again as those are the most reliable and fastest to recover from. 

Regardless of backup or archive, I would strongly advise against using CD's, DVD's or Blu-ray's as the medium to write the data too.  Grab a hard drive (spend more if you value your data - $60 for 2TB is a great deal, but they make enterprises drives with longer warranty and reliability that cost more for a reason too).

Thanks for the quick response! I totally agree with you, these days, a 1.5TB 2.5" hard drive is about $65 and a 25pc spindle of 50GB blu rays are about $50. I already have a 1TB drive that i keep offline and periodically updated with more important data.  Since I already have a spindle of 25 bluray discs, I thought I'd use them a fall back plan for stuff that isn't terribly critical and may not see the light of day for a while. This will let me free up space on that offline drive for more important things. In the past I've had trouble with CD-Rs and less for DVDs but I havent had any issues with bluray yet.

In any case, getting into details, if i create an 'archive' task, run it, then delete the source data, wouldnt any incremental or differential essentailly be another 'full backup' since the original full source material is gone and new stuff is being added? Would I just want to make a series of full backups? Would using the same task for full backups create a new 'version' number or should i create new 'archive' backup tasks each time? Can Acronis keep a master list of all the files that have been backed up by this task and point me to the right TIB/disk when its time to restore? 

side note: I was just going to create 50GB vhdx files, fill them with files, burn the vhdx to disc, then create a spreadsheet with a file list and disk number so I don't have to hunt through mutiple versions of backup sets to find what i need.