Ever since high-definition video disk formats appeared, the thought of parking up to 50GB of data on a CD-sized platter has hovered tantalisingly close to the clutches of systems administrators. It seemed to be taking slightly longer than forever for an HD recorder to appear on the market. Then Toshiba threw in the towel and ceded the field to Sony's Blu-ray format. Suddenly, Blu-ray burners appeared on the shelves.
 

At first they cost an arm and a leg (and several vital organs) but such is the way of new technology, and some six months later prices haven't exactly reached the Bunnings power tool level but they have fallen considerably. You can now acquire an internal Blu-ray drive from Sony for around $750, or from Pioneer and Lite-On for about $400. You can also get an external Blu-ray writer from LaCie, with both USB and Firewire ports, for about $800. At these prices it was time to take a closer look, so we asked LaCie to send one over. If you haven't upgraded to Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 yet, you'll find it a tad tricky to integrate a Blu-ray drive because earlier versions of Windows such as XP haven't got a clue about this new format. However, there are ways and means to get around this limitation, the first being to install the software which ships with the LaCie external drive. The good news is that this lets you play Blu-ray movies and burn Blu-ray video disks. The bad news is that you can only do it from within the supplied applications, rather than from Windows Explorer directly.

Never mind, we're looking for a way to achieve reusable and affordable backups, so not being able to browse files natively from Windows isn't a show stopper, particularly since it also means there's no way to accidentally delete your precious backup files directly. To start with something simple we downloaded a trial version of Handy Backup (www.handybackup.net) and it proved to be very handy indeed, and was happy to throw its files onto the Blu-ray disk. However, we could only see the files from within that application.

Next, we downloaded the latest version of Acronis True Image Home v11.0 (www.acronis.com). Acronis was also happy to use the Blu-ray drive. Using Blu-ray is a lot slower than burning an image to an external hard drive.

Since we used USB 2.0 for both the hard drive and the Blu-ray the slowdown must be in the burner not the interface. Getting the files off the Blu-ray took about the same time as copying from a DVD, which is still slower than a hard drive, but nothing to complain about. Acronis also kindly loaded a driver into Windows XP which allowed us to look at the files on the Bluray disk using Windows Explorer, but we could only look and read - no deleting or adding more files allowed from outside Acronis.

You'll need some blank disks for your backups and the 25GB versions sell for about $50 with the 50GB version going for (no surprise) about twice as much. They're the current online prices for rewriteable disks, with the write-once disks costing about 10% less. If you go for an internal Blu-ray drive the good news is that it will also read and write DVDs and CDs so you'll only need one device in your server or workstation.

The bad news of course, is that you'll also need an external drive like the one offered by LaCie, so you can restore your data when the office burns down. After all, that was why we went chasing removable backup media in the first place wasn't it?

Blu-ray prices should continue to fall, and so should the media, and we can also hope that burn speeds improve beyond the current "2x" being offered on rewriteable and "4x" for write-once.

That's where DVDs started too, way back when, and now the drives are available in "12x" or better for under $100 including a box of blanks. But with a maximum of 8GB on a dual-layer DVD we really need the capacity offered by Blu-ray for a practical removable backup solution. Then again, there's always tape. Sorry, but it had to be said.

Visit www.lacie.com/au for further information.

Note:  AIan Yates©  Permission to copy or quote extracts from this article may only be done with the written permission of the author. 

Reprinted from the August 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

[ About Melbourne PC User Group ]