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Posted by Mike S. on 06/11/07 13:23
In article <f4i5mb$ae7$1@aioe.org>, Dubious Dude <Shifty@eyes.com> wrote:
>I have an old laptop that I want to do selective backup on. Rather
>than using a 2nd hard drive to mirror the current drive, I'll reduce
>risk by backing up to DVD so that I can distribute the info over time
>and over DVDs. The problem is that it only has USB 1. The laptop can
>take CardBus, however, which can apparently provide USB 2
>connectivity. I compared DVD speeds to USB 2 speeds:
>
> http://dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.2
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_signaling
>
>Apparently, the 60MBps of USB 2 is often not realized. Typical speeds
>are upto 10-20MBps, and more often at 3MBps. However, 8-16x DVD
>speeds range over 10.57-21.13MBps; this really pushes the upper limit
>of practical USB 2 speeds, and is an order of magnitude above the
>typical 3MBps speed. In practice, has this been a concern?
>
>If so, what is a better solution?
>
>If not, what is a recommended drive and CardBus?
>
>My system is a Dell Inspiron 8000 running Windows 2000.
>
>I intend to use Roxio or Nero to burn the DVD-Rs, sometimes
>multisession, sometimes single session (in the lingo of CDs that I got
>familiar with). This allows me to read them in standard CD readers
>without application-specific software.
>
>I decided against DVD-RAM because it seems less supported, and more
>expensive. If the error correction offsets these disadvantages, I'd
>be interested in hearing your experience.
A Cardbus USB2 host controller is the only practical way of adding i/o
that could be used to burn DVD's on your old laptop. Even though real
world throughput is often short of the spec, you should not hesitate for
theoretical concerns. After all, it's pretty much your only choice. USB1
does not have the throughput for even a 1X DVD burn.
I'd think twice about using multisession on anything other then DVD-RW
which is, of course, not an archival format. Multi-session DVD's are
problematic on OS versions before Windows XP; and even then there is
always the possibility that you may only "see" the first session at some
critical moment.
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