"J. P. Gilliver (John)"
Sat, 02 Dec 2017 03:05:15 GMT in
alt.windows7.general, wrote:

On the "we're all different" theme:

In message , Char
Jackson writes:
[]
True, but I weigh that against the enormous inconvenience of
optical media. CD-Rs are completely out of the question for data
storage, I hope you'll agree, but even single layer DVD's with
their ~4.5GB storage are a non-starter for me. That doesn't even
hold a movie unless you forego the HD versions, which I'm not
willing to do. Also, I don't have pockets big enough to hold
discs.

Least with optical you can often retrieve a
lot of it

Things must have really changed since I exited the stage. I've
never, not once, heard of a case where you could retrieve part of
a damaged disc. It has always been all or nothing, in my
experience.

It ought to be possible in theory, just as with magnetic discs.

It's possible in practice. Optical doesn't typically lose it all
at once, short of a microwaving or severe creeping bitrot death.
Commercial optical media can also suffer from the death of bitrot.

I have an ancient original metallica cd that succumbed to it.
Essentially, due to manufacturing flaws, air was eventually allowed
to access the area where data is actually stored, between the two
thin pieces of plastic. Once exposed to air, the material breaks down
taking whatever was stored on it along with it.

[snip]

I've never had a flash drive fail on me, so I guess that's
something I can look forward to happening someday. When it
happens, it won't matter because everything on a flash drive also
lives somewhere else. (Famous last words)

I've had them fail - and when they do, it's nearly always been
sudden and total.

More often than not, yes. Even if some data is still present
somewhere on the memory chip itself, you have no viable means of
pulling it.


The main problem with internal (or "always on") drives is not
electronic or magnetic failure (though I guess being always on
increases the chance of those), it's the danger of corruption -
either user mistake, or ransomware or similar (OK, some very
holier-than-thou types would say ransomware and similar are user
error too, but YKWIM).

Excluding SSD types, the mechanical components do fail due to wear
and tear.

(Wow, what do you handle - HD movies for the whole family? The
250G drive on my main machine still has plenty of space, so my
backup 1T one [external and disconnected except at backup time,
but a 3.5" one] has multiple backups on it. We certainly are
different in that respect!)

I'd run out of room in a semi short period of time if I was
restricted to a single 250gig drive. It wouldn't even hold some of my
backups.


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