No optical drives?

On 10/08/2020 14.13, Mayayana wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote

| Ah. Nunca limpia su casa, no?
|
| :-D
|
| Although I don't think we use the verb "limpiar" with that meaning here.
:-)
|

Sorry. My high school Spanish training, combined
with an aging brain, leaves me with a limited selection
of words.

No, it is ok, it was understood instantly, just a bit "weird".
Maybe the expression is used in Central or South America, I don't know.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

In article , Carlos E.R.
wrote:

But I developed custom software and I needed
something to carry and deploy it, and the binaries often did not fit a
floppy. I often used rar with multidisk compression.

in the 90s, it was easy to send software via the internet.

Certainly not.

it was very easy and everyone i knew did it.

I was not talking of "ease", just availability.

the availability of the internet is what made it easy.

And about ease... I also doubt it, it required having access to an FTP
server (in the command line).

ftp was one of several methods and did not require a command line.

gui ftp apps existed in the late 1980s and were common in the 1990s.

it was also possible to email an ftp server to request a file, which i
always found amusing.

Sending an email with a 1 MB attachment
would have provoked a call from the sysadmin :-D

then you had an idiot for a sysadmin.

Nobody here had internet, not even e geek like me. Some
of us had Fidonet, some Compuserve, and some in Universities or
institutions had Internet. Most did not even have a modem. With geeks
like me, I did direct modem to modem transfera - on emergencies, because
it was expensive.

maybe where you were, but internet access was widely available in the
usa in the early 90s, from a variety of providers.

I was in Canada on a college in 1990 and Internet was not even
mentioned. Not by teachers, not by the students. Not even in the data
transmission courses.

The first time I heard the word was several years later.

then you went to a ****ty college.

usenet was widely used in the 1980s, along with email, ftp and much
more.

In fact, I had a friend who worked with a Mac something and used floppies.

macs could use floppies, however, by the 1990s, they were rarely used.

Mayayana wrote:
"Paul" wrote

| Floating gate electrons stay on the floating gate for
| around 10 years. A modern drive that props up its act
| with "TLC rewrite", if it was powered a couple times
| in that 10 year period, might well be good indefinitely.
| The "time capsule in the back yard", the 10 years might
| catch up with it. Maybe at 40 years, you'd have a
| "can of mush". Like trying to read those old floppies
| that no longer read out.

Thank you, Paul. Thorough, as usual. So I shouldn't
worry about something like an SSD being in proximity
to a car alternator. But when I looked around, the retention
ability in general didn't sound so promising.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/...data-retention

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global...ive-faq-us.pdf

On the one hand they're saying your data *could* last
10 years, if the drive was almost new, you store it in a
cool, dark place and you put a Maxwell Smart anti-spy
bell on top of it. But it can also lose data in as little as
3 months unplugged. And it might not require a great loss
to corrupt some kinds of files. It could be debated, but I
don't see any reason to depend on storage beyond weeks.
Mostly I only use sticks to move data between machines
or do an overnight backup when I've been doing a lot of
work like coding.
I currently have an older SSD sitting in a bay, unplugged,
as potential backup, but I wouldn't depend on it.

My 20 year old CDs have never failed me. I also keep
backup on old hard disks. They've never failed, though I
wouldn't depend on them like I do with CDs/DVDs.

You don't

"lose data in as little as 3 months unplugged"

There was at least one TLC drive, where the error correction
was a bit slow, and after three months, each sector needed
a slight touchup, and the result was what annoyed the users.
They did not appreciate their "500MB/sec" drive running at
185MB/sec on reads, because error correction was being done.
All the data was perfectly fine. Just a little slow being
delivered. People hate that.

Re-writing portions of the drive, was a firmware fix
to keep the customer base happy. It was a way of "perking up"
a bad controller design.

We don't know how long such a drive could go, before
there were too many bit errors and the drive announced
"CRC error" as its indication it had thrown in the towel
on fixing the sector. The drives weren't doing that.
User data was still recoverable. But you're not
going to have much of a fan club, if the drive
drops down to HDD speeds. I have an HDD here that
does 250MB/sec, so that's what the competition has to
offer.

*******

Some of the drive straw man scenarios, are done assuming
"end of life" "all 3000 write cycles used up", and then they
prepare a "most likely scenario for user data at this point".

You can't be quoting median behavior, 5% of drive life used,
and then copying those results in place of the correct ones.
The drive doesn't suck, when it's 5% used. The retention
will be better.

Sure, the end of the drive life is going to be bad, but
how many people will be using that drive all the way to
3000 write cycles ? (Especially if it's an Intel and
it promises to *brick* the instant it hits 3000.)
You're an enthusiast, you'll buy another and another.
The brick-ready drive, is already sitting in the corner.

I don't know enough about "SMART Notifications", to be
able to tell you today, how many softwares warn you
of impending SSD doom. They report when some of the
major health indicators are bad, but I've never heard of
any being based purely on wear. Windows could do such
a calculation or projection, and tell you "based on
your usage pattern, this drive will wear out
Dec.3,2020 2PM". They could do that if they wanted,
because the drive keeps stats from which such projections
are possible.

In the "great drive bakeoff" years ago, some of the non-bricking
end of life drives, went 50% further than they were supposed to.
But Intels thinking on the matter, is "why take a chance with
your data" and "oh, why not buy another Intel drive". Yet, if
you have a drive bricked at 3000, you're unlikely to make
your next drive an Intel :-) The bricking policy is part
of what you're buying, so check the bricking policy before
you buy. Some, do nothing. Some, go read-only. Intel,
on the other hand, stops both reading and writing.

Paul

On 8/9/2020 1:49 PM, Ant wrote:

Optical drives and discs are rarely used these days.


They are certainly rarely sold with new computers. I'm not so sure that
they are rarely used, since lots of people still have them on old computers.


--
Ken

On 8/9/2020 2:00 PM, Ant wrote:

Chris wrote:
micky wrote:
Is tit my imagination or are they these days selling a lot of PC's
without DVD drives? If you say No, I'll look harder or look somewhere
else.

You're correct. Since software stopped being distributed on optical media
(5-10 years ago), there's been little need/demand.

Same for movies, etc. Lots of people are streaming online these days.


Yes. Many people used to have Netflix mail them DVDs, but Netflix
dropped that service a couple of years ago. Streaming is now the only
Netflix option.

But I still have a lot of movies on DVDs, and I watch them now and then.
I'm sure many other people also have them.


--
Ken

On 2020-08-10 9:04 a.m., Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/9/2020 1:49 PM, Ant wrote:

Optical drives and discs are rarely used these days.


They are certainly rarely sold with new computers. I'm not so sure that
they are rarely used, since lots of people still have them on old
computers.



Certainly, I installed one on my new build last year because I still
have some irreplaceable software on CD and DVD discs.

Rene

On 8/10/2020 12:39 AM, Bill wrote:
John Doe wrote:

For the vast majority of users "may not be needed often" is a gross
understatement. They are NEVER needed anymore. They just aren't.
They went the way of floppies. Don't mess with something that's just
a waste of time. The telltale sign is that new computers do not come
with optical media.



There are still institutions out there running COBOL programs. Go tell
them your story... Technology doesn't disappear as quickly as it
arrives. Notice that the core of Intel's x86 instruction set has long
been preserved in the interest of backwards compatibility. Even though,
from your point of view, it's "a waste of time".


Yes. Also note that many people still run Windows 7, and some run even
older versions..

And although laptops seem to be well on their way to taking the market
from desktops, many people still run desktops.

And many people still have gasoline-powered cars even though hybrids and
all-electric vehicles are becoming more and more common.

And, and, and... There are lots of other examples.


--
Ken

In article , Ken Blake
wrote:


Optical drives and discs are rarely used these days.


They are certainly rarely sold with new computers. I'm not so sure that
they are rarely used, since lots of people still have them on old computers.

old computers might still have them, however, they are rarely used,
which is why nearly all new computers no longer include them.

In article , Ken Blake
wrote:

But I still have a lot of movies on DVDs, and I watch them now and then.
I'm sure many other people also have them.

they might, but most have ripped them to put on a media server, along
with movies they've downloaded (legal or otherwise), which is far more
convenient and allows for watching videos on many more devices,
including phones, tablets and set top boxes. the better media servers
can transcode based on device and available bandwidth. some have even
set up remote access so they can access their video library away from
home, wherever they happen to be.

In article , Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

Certainly, I installed one on my new build last year because I still
have some irreplaceable software on CD and DVD discs.

anything irreplaceable should have multiple copies in multiple
locations.

if it's on hard drives, it can all be kept in sync without needing to
manually do anything.

In article , Ken Blake
wrote:

And although laptops seem to be well on their way to taking the market
from desktops, many people still run desktops.

not that many anymore.

laptops overtook desktops more than fifteen years ago:
https://www.engadget.com/2005-06-04-...ops-for-the-fi
rst-time-again.html

more recently, smartphones and tablets have outsold laptops *and*
desktops combined.

nospam wrote:

laptops overtook desktops more than fifteen years ago:

Toshiba have sold the remnants of their laptop business to Sharp.

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2020_08/pr0401.htm

On 8/9/20 1:36 PM, Ralph Fox wrote:

[snip]

CDs and DVDs took hold when a CD or DVD could hold massively more than
the then average PC hard disk. Those days are now long gone.

I remember when CD writers first became available. The CD would have to
be written all at once, and most people didn't have big enough (700MB)
hard drives. These CD writers were often sold in a bundle with a big
hard drive.

If you say No, I'll look harder or look somewhere
else.

Get an external USB optical drive to read (or write) those optical
disks which you still have.

And you just need one, no matter how many computers you have.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily
inclined to believe themselves citizens of another." [George Santayana]

On 8/9/20 2:21 PM, nospam wrote:

[snip]

windows 95 and 98 came on cd, as did office 95.

Win 95 was also available on floppies (I forget how many).

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily
inclined to believe themselves citizens of another." [George Santayana]

[snip]

in the 90s, it was easy to send software via the internet.

Certainly not. Nobody here had internet, not even e geek like me. Some
of us had Fidonet, some Compuserve, and some in Universities or
institutions had Internet. Most did not even have a modem. With geeks
like me, I did direct modem to modem transfera - on emergencies, because
it was expensive.

I first got internet access in 1995, when the phone company made it a
local call to places that had dial-up numbers.

I first had access through Compuserve (why is a long story), which
didn't work very well. I was also dealing with a 19.2K modem that didn't
work well with Windows (although it was fine in DOS with BBSes).

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"People who feel themselves to be exiles in this world are mightily
inclined to believe themselves citizens of another." [George Santayana]