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  #76  
Old December 1st 17, 11:11 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
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Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 04:02:20 -0400, pjp
wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:42:05 -0400, pjp
wrote:

In article , rednoise9
says...

On 30 Nov 2017, "Mayayana" wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

"NY" wrote

| I've had more CD/DVD discs go bad (unreadable) on me than I have
| hard discs.

I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've
*never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last
week I was backing up email to a database, going
back 10 years. All the disks were fine.

Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count
on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's
because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had
proportionally more hard disks go bad.

I've got 1000's of cds and dvds going back more than a decade now.
Everyone I've had need to "use" I've been able to read with only the
occassional disk requiring being put in a second or third reader before
it was properly seen. I ALWAYS verify burns. I trust them more than
backup drives and/or flash media. Mind you they're also properly stored.


I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical
media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or
take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a
stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with. Some people
made actual drink coasters, others used the back-side of the disc as a
clock face, things like that. I have memories of buying 50-pack spindles
and being happy to get more than 30 good burns. So my impression of
optical media is very poor, but maybe it's just a case of me getting out
before the industry had matured.

Even if true, there's no way I'm going back. A flash drive the size of
my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or 100 650MB
CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use them anywhere. I
can't say the same about optical media, even if it has somehow emerged
as a stable medium in recent years.

As for the media types I trust most, it's hard drives, hands down. Flash
drives are a close second and optical media don't even make the list.


One sure trueism is that the larger the storage medium then the more is
lost when said medium fails.


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.

where-as with flashdrives and hard disks it tends to be an all
or nothing affair with limited number of attempts.


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)

For hard drive longevity, the best advice I can offer is to stay away
from external drives. Always mount your hard drives internally. I know
that flies in the face of how a lot of folks here use their drives, so I
don't push it. Of the folks who have asked me to help them replace a
failed hard drive over the years, I'd say 99.7% of them have been
external. No one ever says they dropped it or bumped it while it was
writing or anything. It's always 'it just stopped working all by
itself'. If it's internal, they can't get their hands on it and it just
keeps going until it's too small to be practical.

Optical usually are
4.5 Gb which is a lot less to loose than my 3 Tb drives but I trust the
optical more.


And here I sit, wondering what to replace my 4TB drives with: 6TB isn't
enough gain to be worth it, so it has to be 8TB or 10TB, I guess. My
server case only holds 15 data drives, (OS drive is mounted over an
unused PCI slot and doesn't use a full bay), so I have to maximize the
capacity or I run the risk of having to replace my 15-drive case with a
24-drive case. Ugh...

I do burn the occssional toaster but not nearly as many as days past.


Good to hear that it's less of a problem now.

--

Char Jackson
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  #77  
Old December 1st 17, 03:02 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
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"Char Jackson" wrote

| I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical
| media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or
| take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a
| stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with.

Your impressions are outdated by about 20 years.
And apparently you don't use boot disks for anything.

Maybe that explains why so many people don't like
CDs/DVDs .... They got fed up back in 2004 with their
2000-ish CD writer.

Today the devices are cheap, the media is cheap,
the writes are fast and the result is dependable. I
have disks from 2004 that I can still read.

| A flash drive the size of
| my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or 100 650MB
| CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use them anywhere.

And you pay what for your 64 GB stick?.... $40? $50?
For large-scale storage disks are not the solution. But
I could write 16 DVDs for about $5. Not a bad backup
option.

| As for the media types I trust most, it's hard drives, hands down. Flash
| drives are a close second and optical media don't even make the list.
|
Interesting. I'd list them in exactly the reverse order
in terms of expecting them to work next time I want
to get at data.


  #78  
Old December 1st 17, 03:06 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Dell computer with no input

"Char Jackson" wrote

| 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

Do you want to store data or movies? 10,000
docs or 1 full length movie? Those are different
uses. I easily get all of my time-sensitive backup
onto a DVD. Things that don't change, like software
installers, video, photos, etc, go on DVDs and a
backup hard disk.

You keep talking about what a tremendous hassle
DVDs are, yet you haven't used a CD/DVD for 13
years!


  #79  
Old December 1st 17, 03:29 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Dell computer with no input

"Nil" wrote

| I'm surprised that so many people say that. I've
| *never* tried an old CD/DVD that I couldn't read. Last
| week I was backing up email to a database, going
| back 10 years. All the disks were fine.
|
| Me, too. I have hundreds of CDRs and DVDRs and I could probably count
| on one hand the number of them that have gone bad... and usually that's
| because of physical damaged caused by me. I'm sure I've had
| proportionally more hard disks go bad.

This got me to thinking. I decided to try my
oldest USB stick. Macally 256 MB. I'm not sure
how old it is. Probably 10 years. Maybe more.
It doesn't show up at all. The system doesn't
see it. All these years it's just been sitting on
a shelf over my desk, with the cap on.

That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
understand how it works, but it seems that
it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
I don't know.


  #80  
Old December 1st 17, 04:56 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Dell computer with no input

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:17:48 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:



I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical
media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or
take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a
stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with.




Those were AOL CDs. I remember them well. g

But I eventually threw all mine away.
  #81  
Old December 1st 17, 05:18 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
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Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 10:37:37 -0500, Wolf K wrote:

On 2017-12-01 09:29, Mayayana wrote:
That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
understand how it works, but it seems that
it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
I don't know.



Cosmic rays?

The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage
over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable.


Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up
data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-)

--

Char Jackson
  #82  
Old December 1st 17, 06:03 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default Dell computer with no input

Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 10:37:37 -0500, Wolf K wrote:

On 2017-12-01 09:29, Mayayana wrote:
That's my hesitancy about USB sticks and
hard disks. Magnetic storage. I don't really
understand how it works, but it seems that
it has to be less durable than grooves in plastic.
And maybe it's susceptible to magnetic fields?
I don't know.


Cosmic rays?

The Earth's magnetic field is strong enough to degrade magnetic storage
over time. That's one reason VHS/Beta tapes become unusable.


Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up
data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-)


The spiral groove in the media, is for tracking with the laser.
It allows the head to move at the correct radial rate, so that
the path the head follows, follows that spiral.

https://www.powerdatarecovery.com/cd...rdable-cd.html

On DVDRAM discs, the pattern is concentric circles, and
the media is intended for "random access", as if it
was a very slow hard drive.

Paul
  #83  
Old December 1st 17, 08:23 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
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Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 08:56:52 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Thu, 30 Nov 2017 23:17:48 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:


I'm surprised to see so many people coming to the rescue of optical
media. I used optical media from somewhere around 1998 to 2004, give or
take a year, and back then I didn't know of anyone who didn't have a
stack of coasters that they didn't know what to do with.




Those were AOL CDs. I remember them well. g

But I eventually threw all mine away.


AOL CDs were another topic. I had some of those, too. But in this case I
just meant failed burns, which apparently are far less common now than
they used to be.

--

Char Jackson
  #85  
Old December 1st 17, 10:29 PM posted to alt.windows7.general
Nil[_5_]
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Posts: 1,731
Default Dell computer with no input

On 01 Dec 2017, Char Jackson wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I have memories of buying 50-pack spindles and being happy to get
more than 30 good burns. So my impression of optical media is very
poor, but maybe it's just a case of me getting out before the
industry had matured.


But that's two different things. I admit that it used to be
problematic to get a good burn. Things could go wrong at a number of
points - the media could be bad, the drive could be bad, the
computer could bog down, depleting the cache, and the burn could
fail. But in my experience, once you have a solid, verified-good burned
disc, it's unlikely to fail later if it's stored safely. I've got
lots of data CDRs and DVDRs that are still good years and decades
later.

Even if true, there's no way I'm going back. A flash drive the
size of my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or
100 650MB CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use
them anywhere. I can't say the same about optical media, even if
it has somehow emerged as a stable medium in recent years.


I've had a number of flash drives and SD cards go bad on me for no
apparent reason. I don't totally trust them.
  #86  
Old December 2nd 17, 12:00 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
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Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:29:52 -0500, Nil
wrote:

On 01 Dec 2017, Char Jackson wrote in
alt.windows7.general:

I have memories of buying 50-pack spindles and being happy to get
more than 30 good burns. So my impression of optical media is very
poor, but maybe it's just a case of me getting out before the
industry had matured.


But that's two different things. I admit that it used to be
problematic to get a good burn. Things could go wrong at a number of
points - the media could be bad, the drive could be bad, the
computer could bog down, depleting the cache, and the burn could
fail. But in my experience, once you have a solid, verified-good burned
disc, it's unlikely to fail later if it's stored safely. I've got
lots of data CDRs and DVDRs that are still good years and decades
later.

Even if true, there's no way I'm going back. A flash drive the
size of my thumb nail can contain the equivalent of 16 4GB DVDs or
100 650MB CDRs, and I can carry the flash drive anywhere and use
them anywhere. I can't say the same about optical media, even if
it has somehow emerged as a stable medium in recent years.


I've had a number of flash drives and SD cards go bad on me for no
apparent reason. I don't totally trust them.


This shows how each of us is shaped by our personal experiences. No
right, no wrong, just different. :-)

--

Char Jackson
  #87  
Old December 2nd 17, 12:05 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
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Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 16:41:17 -0400, pjp
wrote:

AOL disks LOL Had 100's of them at one time or another. That reminds me
that my mom-in-law still uses AOL as her ISP in TO, Canada!!!


I know a lady who *shares* an AOL dialup account with her Mom! Neither
of them are heavy users, so conflicts are rare, but still. I've offered
to help them move to a faster-than-dialup connection with a 'real ISP',
but they're completely happy where they are.

--

Char Jackson
  #88  
Old December 2nd 17, 12:14 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
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Posts: 2,221
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:05:23 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:


On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 16:41:17 -0400, pjp
wrote:


AOL disks LOL Had 100's of them at one time or another. That reminds me
that my mom-in-law still uses AOL as her ISP in TO, Canada!!!


I know a lady who *shares* an AOL dialup account with her Mom! Neither
of them are heavy users, so conflicts are rare, but still. I've offered
to help them move to a faster-than-dialup connection with a 'real ISP',
but they're completely happy where they are.




I know a man who has used AOL for umpteen years. What's strange about
it is that his technical knowledge and skills are generally very
good.

  #89  
Old December 2nd 17, 12:41 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,449
Default Dell computer with no input

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:14:37 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 17:05:23 -0600, Char Jackson
wrote:

On Fri, 1 Dec 2017 16:41:17 -0400, pjp
wrote:

AOL disks LOL Had 100's of them at one time or another. That reminds me
that my mom-in-law still uses AOL as her ISP in TO, Canada!!!


I know a lady who *shares* an AOL dialup account with her Mom! Neither
of them are heavy users, so conflicts are rare, but still. I've offered
to help them move to a faster-than-dialup connection with a 'real ISP',
but they're completely happy where they are.




I know a man who has used AOL for umpteen years. What's strange about
it is that his technical knowledge and skills are generally very
good.


Inertia, perhaps? I should have shopped for a new insurance company long
ago, but it's easier not to.

When it comes to Internet service, I can overcome that kind of inertia.

--

Char Jackson
  #90  
Old December 2nd 17, 01:27 AM posted to alt.windows7.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default Dell computer with no input

"Char Jackson" wrote

| Mayayana mentioned grooves in plastic within the context of backing up
| data to DVD. Obviously, there are no grooves... ;-)
|

My understanding is that the writer cuts grooves
at various depths underneath the surface as a way
to record data. Is that wrong? In any case, it cuts
some kind of marks in plastic. It's not just magnetic
storage.


 




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