Recording into DVD-RW media

[Stewart Nelson]

>I have just bought a DVD recorder and want to make daily backups
>of some important files into a DVD-RW media. I am in doubt about
>the recommended way of doing this. I am thinking about using the
>following commands to be run from a script in /etc/cron.daily
>
>  mkisofs -v -J -R -o /tmp/image.iso -V 'Backup' -A 'Backup' <files to backup>
>  umount /dev/dvd || :
>  cdrecord -vvv -eject -dev=/dev/dvd blank=fast
>  cdrecord -vvv -dao --eject driveropts=burnfree dev=/dev/dvd /tmp/image.iso
>
>Is that a good procedure? I am looking for comments on it.
>
>Regards.
>
>Romildo

IMO, if your drive supports it, you should use DVD-RAM media for
backup.  That's because it's directly block-addressable at the
hardware level, just like a hard drive.  After writing, the
firmware reads the data back, and if it cannot be read with
sufficient margin, the block is reallocated and rewritten.
I trust this more than software that performs a similar function,
because the firmware environment is much better controlled.

You can make e.g. an ext2 filesystem on the media (needed only
once) and then do a backup with:

tar cf /mnt/dvd/<some name> <files to backup>

or just use a suitable cp command.

If you will put only one tar file on a disk, you don't even need
a filesystem.  Just do tar cf /dev/dvd <files to backup>
Of course, you can use compression if desired.

Also, if your drive supports it, use DVD-RAM cartridges.  That
eliminates the need to ever touch the media, and greatly
minimizes the chance of accidental damage.

--Stewart

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