Hurt By Blu Ray

Steve Jobs says that Blu Ray is a "Big bag of hurt." And you know what, he's right...if you're planning on watching movies on your Mac. And while I'd love to see an Apple TV or Mac Mini with that set-up, I've watched one DVD in the last month. My main concern with Blu Ray is not as a player. "the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting until things settle down and Blu-Ray takes off in the marketplace," says Jobs. 

If it does. And that's the problem. I don't need an HD player. I don't have an HD TV. I barely have a TV at all. 

What I want is a Blu Ray burner, so I can backup my hard drive on less than 20 DVDs. So I don't have to take and split the photos from one session across two disks because I have more than 4.3 GB. What I need is a better archiving format than DVD.

I could put stuff onto hard disks. Up until about a year ago, that was my attitude. Then I started hearing reports that hard disks tend to go bad if they sit idle for a year or two. 

I know that DVDs start to corrupt after a decade or so, but ten years is better than one. 

And I know I could go and get an external BluRay burner.

But...

But what if BluRay dies on the vine? Where does that leave my backups?

True, what I am looking for is something as an emergency backup. Something that I can keep off-site. I have a Drobo, and I trust that for my two copies on-site. But I've already got over a terrabyte of information on there. Do you know how many DVDs I'd have to burn to back that up?

Perhaps a Sugar Sync or service like that is the way to go, but I live in a town where it takes a week just to upload 6 GB of photos to Pictage. That initial back-up would take the better part of a year. 

I keep going around and around on this issue. If BluRay were more stable, and looked like it would last until the next big thing came along, I'd be much less reluctant. 

Maybe the best option would be to buy a second Drobo, sync it here, then take it to a friends place in a different town and set it up to automatically sync every night. Sure, I'd still have to face those three day syncs after shooting a wedding, but at least I'd have a redundant back-up....