X-No-Archive: Yes

Anyone know what's the modern high capacity rewritable media that can
be written in a manner like a floppy drive using drag 'n drop that is
very reliable?

I'd like something that can be permanently archived and can be used
over and over again without a significant reliability compromise.
Those flash ROM USB pen drives allows pretty good drag 'n drop copying
and certainly better than zip drive  for repeated use, but I'm
skeptical of its long term stability.

CD-RW is out of question.  The disc itself is like eraser & paper.
It's useful cycle is rated at 1,000 cycles, but real life life
expectancy is disgustingly low. After as little as 20 cycles, error
rate goes up　much like paper wearing out after multiple
erasing.  When it's used in packet write format, the stored data is
extremely unstable and slighest problem can wipe out everything.  In
my personal experience, packet write was less reliable than a floppy.
Its capacity is comparable to a 640MB Magneto-optical disc but MO
system is leap years ahead in reliability, but for some reason I never
see them.

CD-R, DVD-R, etc are nice for write once in one session applications,
but what is the modern media that is high capacity, can be accessed
like a hard drive/floppy drive and very reliable?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <b959931f.0409072325.18ec266b@posting.google.com>,
~Dude17~ <dude17@sacbeemail.com> wrote:
>X-No-Archive: Yes
>
>Anyone know what's the modern high capacity rewritable media that can
>be written in a manner like a floppy drive using drag 'n drop that is
>very reliable?
>
>I'd like something that can be permanently archived and can be used
>over and over again without a significant reliability compromise.
>Those flash ROM USB pen drives allows pretty good drag 'n drop copying
>and certainly better than zip drive  for repeated use, but I'm
>skeptical of its long term stability.
>
>CD-RW is out of question.  The disc itself is like eraser & paper.
>It's useful cycle is rated at 1,000 cycles, but real life life
>expectancy is disgustingly low. After as little as 20 cycles, error
>rate goes up　much like paper wearing out after multiple
>erasing.  When it's used in packet write format, the stored data is
>extremely unstable and slighest problem can wipe out everything.  In
>my personal experience, packet write was less reliable than a floppy.
>Its capacity is comparable to a 640MB Magneto-optical disc but MO
>system is leap years ahead in reliability, but for some reason I never
>see them.
>
>CD-R, DVD-R, etc are nice for write once in one session applications,
>but what is the modern media that is high capacity, can be accessed
>like a hard drive/floppy drive and very reliable?


Megneto-optical (MO) disks used to be the technology used when losing
data meant someone got fired, I looked recently and see the disks are
now as big a 1GB. The problem with all of these is the cost of
the media.

In this market "good enough" drives out "great", and CDR disks seem to
be considered good enough.

--
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes  at p a n i x . c o m

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On 8 Sep 2004 00:25:35 -0700, dude17@sacbeemail.com (~Dude17~) wrote:

>X-No-Archive: Yes
>
>Anyone know what's the modern high capacity rewritable media that can
>be written in a manner like a floppy drive using drag 'n drop that is
>very reliable?
>
>I'd like something that can be permanently archived and can be used
>over and over again without a significant reliability compromise.
>Those flash ROM USB pen drives allows pretty good drag 'n drop copying
>and certainly better than zip drive  for repeated use, but I'm
>skeptical of its long term stability.
>
>CD-RW is out of question.  The disc itself is like eraser & paper.
>It's useful cycle is rated at 1,000 cycles, but real life life
>expectancy is disgustingly low. After as little as 20 cycles, error
>rate goes up　much like paper wearing out after multiple
>erasing.  When it's used in packet write format, the stored data is
>extremely unstable and slighest problem can wipe out everything.  In
>my personal experience, packet write was less reliable than a floppy.
>Its capacity is comparable to a 640MB Magneto-optical disc but MO
>system is leap years ahead in reliability, but for some reason I never
>see them.
>
>CD-R, DVD-R, etc are nice for write once in one session applications,
>but what is the modern media that is high capacity, can be accessed
>like a hard drive/floppy drive and very reliable?

Tape and cheaper disk.  Tape media can easily be written to 20 times,
for the most part.  But like all media is subject to odd failures.
The best guarentee you have is raided drives.  Use tier2 storage for
things like this.  Can be done cheaply, as cheap as tape in some
cases.

~F

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Clinging to sanity, ~Dude17~ mumbled in his beard:

> Anyone know what's the modern high capacity rewritable media that can
> be written in a manner like a floppy drive using drag 'n drop that is
> very reliable?
>
> I'd like something that can be permanently archived and can be used
> over and over again without a significant reliability compromise.
> Those flash ROM USB pen drives allows pretty good drag 'n drop copying
> and certainly better than zip drive  for repeated use, but I'm
> skeptical of its long term stability.
>
> CD-RW is out of question.  The disc itself is like eraser & paper.
> It's useful cycle is rated at 1,000 cycles, but real life life
> expectancy is disgustingly low. After as little as 20 cycles, error
> rate goes up　much like paper wearing out after multiple
> erasing.  When it's used in packet write format, the stored data is
> extremely unstable and slighest problem can wipe out everything.  In
> my personal experience, packet write was less reliable than a floppy.
> Its capacity is comparable to a 640MB Magneto-optical disc but MO
> system is leap years ahead in reliability, but for some reason I never
> see them.
>
> CD-R, DVD-R, etc are nice for write once in one session applications,
> but what is the modern media that is high capacity, can be accessed
> like a hard drive/floppy drive and very reliable?


external USB hard disks or hard disks in removable drive bays. The
former is more portable, hot swappable, and doesn't require you to keep
a drive bay installed.

Long term: I have many disks that are 5+ years old, but I haven't done
things like letting a disk lying around unused for years before using
again. If you want longer than that, go for MO, but I guess even then
you'll have to evaluate your media and data formats after 5 years or so
as old technologies become unavailable and new software can't read the
old data (obviously this depends heavily on what data you're using -
I'd expect a thing like jpg to be around for a long time, but I'm not
so sure about, day, divx or wmv, or of course, the office format of the
day.)

cheers
- -- vbi


- --
Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: get my key from http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/92082481

iKcEARECAGcFAkE/ 7KVgGmh0dHA6Ly9mb3J0eXR3by5jaC9sZWdhbC9n
cGcvZW1h
aWwuMjAwMjA4MjI/ dmVyc2lvbj0xLjUmbWQ1c3VtPTVkZmY4NjhkMTE4
NDMyNzYw
NzFiMjVlYjcwMDZkYTNlAAoJEIukMYvlp/fWzoEAoIdsj/+Sl6vagOXKeH4A0XBU
QQhXAJ9Ds9iPxlBtJexh+bUbd4adNEykHA==
=C5x5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <7657155.qGCxKTt8Kg@altfrangg.fortytwo.ch>,
Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder  <grazdan@fortytwo.ch> wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Clinging to sanity, ~Dude17~ mumbled in his beard:
> 
>
>
>external USB hard disks or hard disks in removable drive bays. The
>former is more portable, hot swappable, and doesn't require you to keep
>a drive bay installed.
>
>Long term: I have many disks that are 5+ years old, but I haven't done
>things like letting a disk lying around unused for years before using
>again. If you want longer than that, go for MO, but I guess even then
>you'll have to evaluate your media and data formats after 5 years or so
>as old technologies become unavailable and new software can't read the
>old data (obviously this depends heavily on what data you're using -
>I'd expect a thing like jpg to be around for a long time, but I'm not
>so sure about, day, divx or wmv, or of course, the office format of the
>day.)
>
>cheers
>- -- vbi

MO is widely used in business for archival storage and, IMO, if you
should find an MO disk in your sock drawer 50 years from now you'll be
able to send it sonewhere to be converted to whatever the current
media is.

I thing the popular standard data formats, like jpg and html, will be
readable forever.  C code never dies, and can be ported to the next
great system, this applies to Open Source implementation. All it takes
is one hacker, somewhere on the planet taht needs the same format you do
to port the code.

Proprietery stuff like Quicken data worry me. You have to match the
application version to the data, and it has to run on an OS the vendor
approves of.  I actually see emulators as the solution here.










--
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes  at p a n i x . c o m

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"~Dude17~" <dude17@sacbeemail.com> wrote in message
news:b959931f.0409072325.18ec266b@posting.google.com...
> X-No-Archive: Yes
>
> Anyone know what's the modern high capacity rewritable media that can
> be written in a manner like a floppy drive using drag 'n drop that is
> very reliable?

Yeah,  here:
http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/det...mail,ewbfroogle

VERY fast and relaible and 400GB for $400.  It's good for at least 5 years
and then can be copied to replacement media.

> I'd like something that can be permanently archived

Define permanent.

> and can be used
> over and over again without a significant reliability compromise.
> Those flash ROM USB pen drives allows pretty good drag 'n drop copying
> and certainly better than zip drive  for repeated use, but I'm
> skeptical of its long term stability.

Define "long term".

> CD-RW is out of question.  The disc itself is like eraser & paper.
> It's useful cycle is rated at 1,000 cycles, but real life life
> expectancy is disgustingly low. After as little as 20 cycles, error
> rate goes up　much like paper wearing out after multiple
> erasing.  When it's used in packet write format, the stored data is
> extremely unstable and slighest problem can wipe out everything.  In
> my personal experience, packet write was less reliable than a floppy.
> Its capacity is comparable to a 640MB Magneto-optical disc but MO
> system is leap years ahead in reliability, but for some reason I never
> see them.
>
> CD-R, DVD-R, etc are nice for write once in one session applications,
> but what is the modern media that is high capacity, can be accessed
> like a hard drive/floppy drive and very reliable?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

X-No-Archive: Yes

adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote in message news:<chpk94$k2i$1@panix3.panix.com>...
> In article <7657155.qGCxKTt8Kg@altfrangg.fortytwo.ch>,
> Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder  <grazdan@fortytwo.ch> wrote: 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> MO is widely used in business for archival storage and, IMO, if you
> should find an MO disk in your sock drawer 50 years from now you'll be
> able to send it sonewhere to be converted to whatever the current
> media is.
>
> I thing the popular standard data formats, like jpg and html, will be
> readable forever.  C code never dies, and can be ported to the next
> great system, this applies to Open Source implementation. All it takes
> is one hacker, somewhere on the planet taht needs the same format you do
> to port the code.
>
> Proprietery stuff like Quicken data worry me. You have to match the
> application version to the data, and it has to run on an OS the vendor
> approves of.  I actually see emulators as the solution here.

What I'd like to do is make frequent backup of things like weekly
backup of My Documents folder and the such.  CD-Rs are ok for one time
backup, but it gets hard to keep track of what's changed, a file
that's been modified can't be updated on a CD-R.  I can do
multisession and keep on adding, but reliability is questionable.

CD-RW is out of question as its reliability is too poor.  Same goes
for FLASH drive.  I need something that can be written/accessed like
the flash drive or floppy while offering the advantage of archival,
non volatile storage offered by CD-R.  Zip and Jaz might offer the
convenience and capacity, but they're very robust in my opinion.  I
had a Zip 100 and it was highly unreliable.

Can you guys think of anything that will meet all of these beside M.O?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <b959931f.0409180354.5c6a6a4b@posting.google.com>,
~Dude17~ <dude17@sacbeemail.com> wrote:
>X-No-Archive: Yes
>
>adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote in message news:<chpk94$k2i$1@panix3.pani
x.com>... 
> 
>
>What I'd like to do is make frequent backup of things like weekly
>backup of My Documents folder and the such.  CD-Rs are ok for one time
>backup, but it gets hard to keep track of what's changed, a file
>that's been modified can't be updated on a CD-R.  I can do
>multisession and keep on adding, but reliability is questionable.
>
>CD-RW is out of question as its reliability is too poor.  Same goes
>for FLASH drive.  I need something that can be written/accessed like
>the flash drive or floppy while offering the advantage of archival,
>non volatile storage offered by CD-R.  Zip and Jaz might offer the
>convenience and capacity, but they're very robust in my opinion.  I
>had a Zip 100 and it was highly unreliable.
>
>Can you guys think of anything that will meet all of these beside M.O?


If losing data is unacceptable, multiple generations of  media
are required, no matter how much you trust the technology.

Do you need the latest version of any file or do you need to go back
to the version of a specific date ?

I like "delta" backups" A delta is like an incremental but all the
new/modified files since the last FULL backup are written to media.
This obviously grows over the month. Asit  approachs a full media
unit (CD, these days) I do a full backup (disk to disk) and
the next day's delta backup is nearly empty.

Does your data fit on a CD ?  Burning it all into one CD a day,
writing the date on it, and puting it in the drawer in date order
doesn;t seem like a bad system. It works for me. If your data
is larger than a CD then dividing it up by fle type or folder
name to fit the chucks onto CDs might work.

There are server-class backup systems that catalog every file
on all media and let you search by all sorts of criteria.
If you search by file name it tells you all files by that
name and which media they are on.  I've never seen
this on a single-user application.






--
Al Dykes
-----------
adykes  at p a n i x . c o m

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

A hard drive.

"~Dude17~" <dude17@sacbeemail.com> wrote in message
news:b959931f.0409180354.5c6a6a4b@posting.google.com...
> X-No-Archive: Yes
>
> adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) wrote in message
news:<chpk94$k2i$1@panix3.panix.com>... 
> 
>
> What I'd like to do is make frequent backup of things like weekly
> backup of My Documents folder and the such.  CD-Rs are ok for one time
> backup, but it gets hard to keep track of what's changed, a file
> that's been modified can't be updated on a CD-R.  I can do
> multisession and keep on adding, but reliability is questionable.
>
> CD-RW is out of question as its reliability is too poor.  Same goes
> for FLASH drive.  I need something that can be written/accessed like
> the flash drive or floppy while offering the advantage of archival,
> non volatile storage offered by CD-R.  Zip and Jaz might offer the
> convenience and capacity, but they're very robust in my opinion.  I
> had a Zip 100 and it was highly unreliable.
>
> Can you guys think of anything that will meet all of these beside M.O?

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]