Posted by Bill Vermillion on 04/19/07 14:25

In article <4625d614.5780718@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
SalesMart.com.au <sales@___Email_Address_on_Web_site> wrote:
>On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:45:01 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote:
>
>>In article <4624c74f.4886703@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
>>SalesMart.com.au <sales@___Email_Address_on_Web_site> wrote:
>>>On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 22:45:01 GMT, bv@wjv.com (Bill Vermillion) wrote:
>>>
>>>>In article <XMNUh.83538$aG1.4486@pd7urf3no>,
>>>>Stuart Miller <stuart_miller@shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>><edenesiuk@cogeco.ca> wrote in message
>>>>>news:1176680902.255879.254670@o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
>>>>>> On Mar 30, 2:49 pm, Ron <ron_j_ma...@hotpop.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi! .....
>>>>>>> My "Pioneer" 'DVR-310' DVD Recorder accepts
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I expect in a year I will have to buy a DVD recorder because VCRs are
>>>>>> being phased out. I use my V. continuously and wonder if the
>>>>>> recorder discs are as cheap to use/re-use daily. The tapes for V
>>>>>> are reusable for a long time is this true of D discs.
>>>>>>
>>>>>I have seen conflicting data on this. Some people have expereinced failures
>>>>>after as few as 10 write/erase cycles. There are posts about this in the
>>>>>various dvd newsgroups.
>>>>>
>>>>>Also, some people have experienced significant signal loss on rewriteabe
>>>>>dvd's after month or years, so this apparently should not be considered a
>>>>>permanant media.
>>>>>
>>>>>Your mileage may vary.....
>>>>>
>>>>>Stuart
>>>>
>>>>The more expensive DVD-RAM disks - which would be fine if he's
>>>>going to use them over and over - are good for thousands of
>>>>write/erase cycles. They act more like small hard-drives and can
>>>>actually be used as re-writeable filesystems for OSes that
>>>>support it.
>>>
>>>The RiDATA DVD-RAM 3X video disc I bought back in 2004 still works
>>>today for rewites some 3 years later. Bought them for my first
>>>recorder which was the Panasonic DMR-E30 which I bought in April of
>>>2003. Hardly use DVD-RAM these days as my two latest recorders have
>>>hard drives on them which are much easier to play with than messing
>>>around with DVD blanks on a recorder with no hard drive.

>>>I did play around with DVD-RW and DVD+RW but after a few re writes
>>>found the media to be a bit unreliable. Mainly use DVD-R with the odd
>>>DVD-RAM these days.

>>On some of the earliest DVD-RW I got - Optodisk - I'd get failures
>>after as few a 4 writes and don't think I got more than 10.
>>Really poor media IMO

>>>DVD-RAM are like small hard drives with up to 100,000 re writes.
>>>I've done a few hundred re writes on the DVD-RAM discs that I have
>>>used over the last few years and the media still holds up well today.
>>>The RiDATA DVD-RAM 3X I bought was from 3 years ago and these
>>>haven't missed a beat since.

>>And they are used often for computer backups where you dno't need
>>more than the 4GB capacity. All the systems I work with have
>>gone long past that limit however - and the 60/120 GB tape drives
>>are starting to look small :-(

>For computer backups I prefer to use USB2 hard drives which are many
>times faster than DVD will ever be. To backup 4Gb only takes seconds
>on my system.

I had one client who took a lightning hit - but luckily only took
out a multi-port serial device and about a half-dozen terminals.
I had been trying to get him to take backups off-site for years.

He read through his insurance to see if the lightning was covered
and found a clause that losses for business-interuption due to data
loss WOULD NOT BE COVERED UNLESS THERE WERE OFF SITE BACKUPS.

And my clients run Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur tapes and Fri1, Fri2, Fri3
and Fri4. With the Friday's being saved we can retreive almost any
file that was lost or accidentally erased if noticed within a
month's time.

>In another life I once used 250Mb Tape drives but that was going back
>some years. I still have the old Conner Tape drive sitting up on a
>shelf. Seagate took over Conner years ago thats how old it is.

Conner made it's mark by making low-cost HDs. Low-cost turned out
to be cheap as they failed a lot.

>There are those thumb drives that are out to 128Gb now. These are
>smaller than a car key but at 128Gb cost an arm and a leg. 4Gb
>thumb/flash drives are about $55 AUS dollars now and these are
>becoming quite popular. The 16Gb thumb/flash drives have just made
>their way to Australia but they are to expensive at $300 AUS. Like
>every new toy they'll come down in price over time. Just a couple oif
>years ago a 1Gb thumb drive would have been over $2000 AUS and now
>they are only about $35 AUS.

And I get regular email notices from the backup programs 3 of my
clients use. This AM's mail showed that one backed up about
20GB in about 2.5 hours, and then it rewound the tape and did a bit
level verify to make sure the tape matched the hard drive.

All this is done overnight. Removeable hard drives are bulkier
than the 8MM tapes, and I'd suspect they'd probably get dropped
sometime during the removal, transport to off-site, and during the
exchange when a new off-site was brought in.


>There are also external 2.5" and would you believe 1.8" drives which
>are out to 40Gb already. Seagate has a 7200rpm 2.5" drive available
>now so those that are lookng at laptops ought to make sure it has one
>of these newer drives in them.

And the amazing things about the 2.5" drives for laptops is that
they will survive impact forces of up to 100G in some instances.
That makes sense a lot of sense. I remember the days when you
could bump a computer and you'd bounce a head and lose data.

Things are surely a lot better now.

>SalesMart.com.au
>Perth, Western Australia
>http://www.salesmart.com.au
>*******************************************
>Email Contact info on the above site.
>*******************************************


Bill

--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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