Archive to DVD?

[theboyk]

I have a series of my photos from the past couple years that I would like to archive. I'm already using Retrospect for backing up my work, and I would like to use it for this archiving task as well. My question — I have 30 gigs of photography to archive — using Retrospect, will it automatically "span" across multiple DVDs (as there will obviously be more information than will fit on a single DVD)? I realize I've have to insert new DVDs manually, but I'm hoping Retrospect can automatically calculate the spanning across multiple DVDs.

Thanks,

Kristin.

[RonaldL]

You can definitely use Retrospect to span accross DVDs as long as your DVD drive is supported. Check the device support database to see if it is:

 

http://www.emcinsignia.com/supportupdates/technical/retrospect/device/

 

In general, I would recommend +R media over -R media for use with Retrospect.

[theboyk]

Why are +R better than -R?

Is this specific to Retrospect only?

If so, I can always use Toast to archive (as it now too supports spanning muliple DVDs) as the only DVD burners I have are -R.

Regards,

Kristin.

[CallMeDave]

Retrospect is not Toast.

 

Toast uses track at once or disk at once; perfect for files if you know exactly how many files you have and how large they are.

 

Retrospect uses packet writing; perfect if you need to be able to write as many files as you want as many times as you want.

 

There are pros and cons to both methods.

 

Toast can create a group of disks that contain a collection of files larger then any single disk. But once those disks have been written, you can't add another file or group of files to that group. No file spans across multiple disks, so there can be some loss of efficiency (depending on the size of the files).

 

Retrospect can write that same group of files to members of a Backup Set, with the added benefit of being able to add additional files to the Set over and over again. Retrospect will completely fill each disk, spanning files from one disk to the other if neccessary.

 

A Toast group is very slick; all files are Finder readable, and each disk contains an OS X application that helps you to locate files that are in the group.

 

A Retrospect Backup Set requires Retrospect to Restore files. Contents of the Backup Set can be browsed without any of the members present.

 

As with any other computer program, choose the one that best fills your needs.

 

Dave