I'm looking for an open system that will record DVDs for archived data via an automated process. I'd like something that included a robot; I don't need anything as fancy as a random-access jukebox, but I'd like capacious input and output trays. The software should be able to make UDF filesystems at least. This would preferably be attached to a Unix machine, but Windows would be okay if that's the best we can do.

Honestly, I could just do most of this work myself with scripts and open source tools except for finding a robot I can control. If someone could point me to an appropriate robot, that might be good enough. I'm looking for something that could hold, say, a couple hundred discs total; again, I don't need random access, just a stack of blank discs and a stack of recorded discs is fine.

Oh, and I need to be able to print onto the recorded discs.

Anyone have any suggestions.

Are recordable DVDs reliable enough for long-term storage and backup?

I'd think that any of the automated CD-duplicator rigs would work for you in terms of the loading and printing from a spindle...

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm having trouble finding such things. Please point me in their direction.

As to lifespan of DVD±Rs, I don't really know, but it's the only vaguely cost-effective solution I've got. We're currently using them and we're going through a hundred or so a week. So that's, what, 450GB a week? What else am I really going to do? Bare IDE drives aren't near-line enough, not to mention being way more expensive. Backup tapes would be very expensive, not to mention the time it takes to deal with them (again, not near-line enough). If you have a better solution, let me know.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. I picked the first one Google found for me, I'm not specifically recommending anything on this page. It's just the general class of products I'm talking about.

Oh, yeah. They pretty much all fail the "open" criterion. They're all sold as turnkey solutions, and our experience with that sort of thing is poor, because they're largely Windows-only, or damned close to it.

They seem to all use standard off-the-shelf burners, and the one I clicked on at that site said that it had a Mac version, so it's possible that there's enough openness that you can get it working for you. Of course, that's an expensive "if". But once you get a model number you can start googling it and seeing if there are any people who have written Linux drivers or utilities for them.

It's not the burners that are the problem. It's the robots and the printers.

But, as usual, I seem to have managed to find some stuff on my own that looks pretty good after posting a plea for help.

Bitt,
I am by no means an expert, but the PC attached CD ones I've looked at tend to have two connections to the PC. One for data, scsi/usb/firewire - this connection is use to write to the disc by some a some what regular but customised CD burning program. The second connection is to control the robotic arm, which is controled by the custom CD burning software.

Now, you want to do the same but with your own software and with a DVD. The robotic systems do come with DVD drives, but that does not realy matter, as it is just going to show up as a drive in your system. The bit you need to focus on is the communication along the serial connection, load up a simple serial port sniffer on your PC and start playing with the robot from within the customised burning software - there are only so many movements the arm is going to need to make.
Once you know these commands, pair them up with some burning software that you can control and you'll be all set.

Well, the thing is that the one we have now is set up similarly to waht you say, but the IDE DVD-R drives are connected to the computer via IDE/FireWire converters, and the system doesn't see the drives. Only their software can see the drives. More importantly, it doesn't seem to understand any drives other than the ones they came with. So I worry that if I get a new system, I'll be locked into their hardware support again, which is not what I want.