Dvd To Hard Drive

[BMT TX]

I am capturing VCR and Hi8 home video of the kids and it will end up being about 300 GB. The files are going onto an external hard drive since my C:/ drive is not large enough. I will then export to DVDs.

 

If the external hard drive ever crashes, can the DVDs be used to put the video files onto a new hard drive? Or should I have a 2nd back-up external hard drive?

 

I will keep the tapes, but making the assumption that the equipment to play the VCR and Hi8 tapes will soon be gone.

Edited December 16, 2011 by BMT TX

[Jim_Hardin]

Yes! No! Maybe!

 

V2D ONLY imports mpeg files... You cannot import from a DVD Movie!

 

However, in the VIDEO_TS folder of a DVD Movie disc you will see many files:

 

Your 'movie' is found in the VTS_0x_x.VOB files. If you copy those VOB files to your HDD and rename the extension to 'mpg' you can import them

 

DVD discs are dirt cheap! - I recall buying blank VHS tapes for more than $25 for ONE tape (even considered buying empty cassettes and reels of tape media at one time, 80's )

 

So it would not be out of line to make achieve copies onto good quality discs (Verbatim - JVC) and store them away.

 

My own archiving is a bit different... I have 2 'main' PCs that are networked, so I back up to each other. Then I have 2 external HDD's for each of them. So if one HDD would fail, I go to any of the 5 remaining HDD's to recover

 

May seem like overkill, but since I have been in this game since 1980, I have probably lost more info than most folks will ever create (I still have some cassette tapes with data)

[BMT TX]

Yes! No! Maybe!

 

V2D ONLY imports mpeg files... You cannot import from a DVD Movie!

 

However, in the VIDEO_TS folder of a DVD Movie disc you will see many files:

 

Your 'movie' is found in the VTS_0x_x.VOB files. If you copy those VOB files to your HDD and rename the extension to 'mpg' you can import them

 

DVD discs are dirt cheap! - I recall buying blank VHS tapes for more than $25 for ONE tape (even considered buying empty cassettes and reels of tape media at one time, 80's )

 

So it would not be out of line to make achieve copies onto good quality discs (Verbatim - JVC) and store them away.

 

My own archiving is a bit different... I have 2 'main' PCs that are networked, so I back up to each other. Then I have 2 external HDD's for each of them. So if one HDD would fail, I go to any of the 5 remaining HDD's to recover

 

May seem like overkill, but since I have been in this game since 1980, I have probably lost more info than most folks will ever create (I still have some cassette tapes with data)

 

 

I've never lost much data, but do have a dreaded fear of it happening.

 

I had assumed the DVDs would be less likely to go bad than a hard drive, especially since they won't be played very often. But doesn't look like it would be easy to go from DVD to hard drive. Not like inserting DVD and hit "copy".

 

You're right, blank DVDs are cheap, just takes a long time to burn. I may go with another hard drive to backup the files, either a bigger one on the computer or another external. I sure don't want to face Capturing the video tape again because a hard drive failed!

 

Thanks for your help.

[cdanteek]

I've never lost much data, but do have a dreaded fear of it happening.

 

I had assumed the DVDs would be less likely to go bad than a hard drive, especially since they won't be played very often. But doesn't look like it would be easy to go from DVD to hard drive. Not like inserting DVD and hit "copy".

 

You're right, blank DVDs are cheap, just takes a long time to burn. I may go with another hard drive to backup the files, either a bigger one on the computer or another external. I sure don't want to face Capturing the video tape again because a hard drive failed!

 

Thanks for your help.

 

You have to capture the VHS tape in real time. DV Avi is about three times the size of what mpeg 2 gets put on a DVD disc as Vob's.

 

Ripping a DVD back to the hard drive is very easy and fast. You can use a application to rip it or select all of the disc from My Computer and copy and paste it to a folder on the hard drive.

 

 

 

Jim Hardin did say,

 

So it would not be out of line to make achieve copies onto good quality discs (Verbatim - JVC) and store them away.

.

 

The choice is yours hard drive storage backup or DVD storage backup.