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It's Almost 12/15...Bye-Bye, Optical Disc Media


Anderton

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Taiyo Yuden, which has been a mainstay in the world of optical media production, will cease making recordable optical media in December 2015. According to the company, hard drives (which always fail eventually) and cloud storage (which I still don't trust completely) have made such inroads into the market that TY says it can't improve its earnings by continuing to make optical media. There's speculation the technology will move out of Japan to China or some other market with lower labor costs. Tayo Yuden says that in the future, the company will concentrate on "super high-end products as a main driver of its growth strategy."

 

With Apple and others removing optical media drives from computers, the collapse of the music industry, and movies turning to streaming instead of DVD releases, I understand that the market for recordable CDs and DVDs must indeed be dropping. But...how are we going to back up our data? I guess the best we can hope for is inexpensive SSDs that hold a whole lot of data and can sit on a shelf for decades without data deterioration.

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Maybe not so fast on the SSD's...

 

TechReport com: The SSD Endurance Experiment: They're all dead

 

Anandtech com: The Truth About SSD Data Retention

 

 

Particularly worth noting is the relationship between ambient temperature and unpowered storage data retention. [There's a chart in the Anandtech article.] Don't count on years.

 

In a worst case scenario where the active temperature is only 25-30°C and power off is 55°C, the data retention can be as short as one week, which is what many sites have touted with their "data loss in matter of days" claims. Yes, it can technically happen, but not in typical client environment.
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I don't trust the cloud and I don't trust SSDs (or USB flash drives, either) for permanent storage. I probably shouldn't trust CDs or DVDs either, but at least they're easy enough to check and duplicate since they're in reach and usually labeled. I've stored files (mostly pictures) on on-line file hosting sites that have gone under, but that's before they were called "the cloud." Maybe inventing a new name has made the concept more reliable, or at least closer to eternal. Or maybe not.

 

I do trust hard drives for backup as well as normal storage. I have a few plain ol' hard drives that I connect to my computers via USB and make an image of the computer's internal drive every now and then.

 

But Sony is quitting making Beta video tape this month, too. Who knew that they were still making it? Well, I did, but I haven't bought any in years.

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..........hard drives (which always fail eventually) and cloud storage (which I still don't trust completely) ............

 

.......how are we going to back up our data? I guess the best we can hope for is inexpensive SSDs that hold a whole lot of data and can sit on a shelf for decades without data deterioration.

 

 

I caught the Taiyo announcement a few months back and pondered the eventual return of the $25 blank cd. Which I believe is what I was paying for the plastic in 1990 or so... to feed into my equally absurdly priced $800 Pioneer 1x burner. Oh well. Maybe a check of current vhs tape prices is a reference to where blank cd/dvd prices will go. In any event ........

 

Multiple hard drives are the way I'm continuing to go. Not ssd either. Good old platter/motor. I must have twenty or thirty of them on the shelves. All redundant backups or filled with safeties of data. I'm guessing the collection will grow as it sits next to the shelves of multitrack tapes and boxes of cds/dvds here.

 

Yes, all the drives will fail. But not at the same time. I'm fairly well convinced that I will fail before all the drives do.

 

And I'll tell ya, most of my drives, even the ide drives that are as old as circa 1992, still work when I pop them into systems. Some of the drives were purchased new and only run once or twice to create data safeties. I pop in some of the drives every year or so to see if the data is still intact. When a drive goes bad, no biggie. There are two or three other redundant drives. I just buy another, create a safety again, throw the dead drive away, and there... I now have leapfrogged drives of varying ages.

 

Over the course of time, it's no more expensive to than cds/dvds were.... considering what I was paying for blanks and burners in the old days. It was worse in the days of Travan tapes.

 

I've had plenty of cds/dvds fail. Which is why I moved to hard drives for redundancy.

 

My ghost backups are also on redundant drives..... even the ghost 2003 backups of my circa 1989-1990s dos/win98 machines.

 

I have a high degree of peace of mind. Good riddance to the plastic. They were such a hassle for backups due to the size limitations. I started to get as frustrated with saving stuff to cd/dvd as I had been in 1987 with floppies.

 

Over time, I also became careless with my cd/dvd labeling and at the moment, I have several boxes of cd/dvd data that would take FOREVER to sort out. As it is, I don't imagine trying. If I need any of that data, out comes one of the 1tb or 2tb hard drives. Or even an old lowly 10gb Maxtor ide.

 

I don't use clouds. Transfers take too long. Like Craig, I don't trust them either.

 

I will not buy an ssd until they are as dirt cheap as standard 1tb/2tb drives. And until they can be thrown in the freezer overnight to recover abruptly gone-bad drives smile.png . Actually, I will not buy an ssd drive until standard drives are completely gone from the planet and computer interfaces can only use ssd. And even then, I'll have to think about it for a while.

 

 

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I pop in some of the drives every year or so to see if the data is still intact.

 

This may be the secret to hard drive backup happiness...aside from outright failure, I hear about hard drives that "freeze up" and the only option is to try and recover the platters.

 

 

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Time to stock up! It's too bad that youth and inexperience decide what technology will be available to us (and who will be president and about everything else). Having experience with different mediums doesn't mean much if we have no choice. My tape backups have outlasted many of my CD/DVD backups, but I still like optical drives as a relatively short-term option.

 

But Sony is quitting making Beta video tape this month, too. Who knew that they were still making it? Well, I did, but I haven't bought any in years.

 

I didn't even know that, but I have tons of NOS Sony and TDK Beta tape for my last remaining and very reliable Beta machine I bought new in the '80s... a Sony SL-HF350 Super Beta Hi-Fi.

 

 

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The other issue with data storage is that the software needed to read the data may no longer be available. As the march of technology has progressed, once popular (but proprietary) formats have fallen by the wayside. I don't know of any software today that will open a WordStar document or Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft Works was popular for a while, but I don't think the latest versions of Word will open those files either. For that matter, will the current version of Word even open Word 1 files? When looking at technology, 30 years is forever, but when looking at historical documents, it wasn't that long ago.

 

This is nothing new. Remember the Apollo 11 moon landing tapes were recorded to video tape, some of which we later recorded over, some failed and some can't be found. Pictures fade, paper burns.

 

However, it seems that before the computer came along, we took greater care of our documents. Today, there is little regard for maintaining the history that is contained in those documents.

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However, it seems that before the computer came along, we took greater care of our documents. Today, there is little regard for maintaining the history that is contained in those documents.

 

Interesting. The computer has produced an exponential increase in data...but not the wisdom, or for that matter the foresight, to know what data will have value in the future. We can't preserve everything, but we shouldn't preserve nothing, either.

 

Sony and Panasonic have announced work on a 300 GB Blu-Ray disc that they hope to ramp up to 500 GB and 1 TB. Personally, I would find that very worthwhile if...the cost is reasonable (likely), and it can be played back some time in the future (who knows?).

 

One of the attributes of optical that seems to have gotten lost in the noise is that Blu-Ray is allegedly much more robust than standard CDs and DVDs, because it doesn't use an organic dye that's sensitive to light...it also repeats the disc catalog in multiple places on the disc, which would allow for retrieval of undamaged sections even if other sections are damaged, and is more resistant to scratches and fingerprints. Still, I can't help but wonder if anyone cares, or whether there's more than a passing interest in "history." It seems the main thrust of society is today, with some passing interest in tomorrow. In the future, people simply may not care about how we got here, especially because the ground rules under which we live seem to change almost daily.

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Interesting. The computer has produced an exponential increase in data...but not the wisdom, or for that matter the foresight, to know what data will have value in the future. We can't preserve everything, but we shouldn't preserve nothing, either.

 

Sony and Panasonic have announced work on a 300 GB Blu-Ray disc that they hope to ramp up to 500 GB and 1 TB. Personally, I would find that very worthwhile if...the cost is reasonable (likely), and it can be played back some time in the future (who knows?).

 

One of the attributes of optical that seems to have gotten lost in the noise is that Blu-Ray is allegedly much more robust than standard CDs and DVDs, because it doesn't use an organic dye that's sensitive to light...it also repeats the disc catalog in multiple places on the disc, which would allow for retrieval of undamaged sections even if other sections are damaged, and is more resistant to scratches and fingerprints. Still, I can't help but wonder if anyone cares, or whether there's more than a passing interest in "history." It seems the main thrust of society is today, with some passing interest in tomorrow. In the future, people simply may not care about how we got here, especially because the ground rules under which we live seem to change almost daily.

 

 

Haha... "we shouldn't preserve nothing" stood out. I think I heard that from bandits on an old Monkees episode.

 

I didn't know about the 300gb and up research. I lost interest when 50gb was being discussed. If Sony and Panasonic are working on it, yeah, it'll probably come out. By the time 1tb discs hit 10 cents each in price though, I'll probably be just a randomly accessed memory in time. Or like you say Craig, maybe no one will even care that the discs exist. Won't interface with holographics or something.

 

 

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This may be the secret to hard drive backup happiness...aside from outright failure, I hear about hard drives that "freeze up" and the only option is to try and recover the platters.

 

I haven't heard of that failure mode for years, but I suppose anything with a lubricant can "freeze up" given enough time. The old "freeze" failure mode was back before they designed the hard drive mechanism to lift the heads off the platter when it was powered off. The heads would move to a "parking area" where there was no data, but rested on the platter when the motor stopped. In fact there used to be a "park" command in the early DOS days that would move the heads to the parking area to assure that they'd be parked in the right place.

 

If the heads were parked for too long (usually a period of months) lubricant that condensed on the surfact of the platter would get sticky and glue the heads to the platter. An early firmware update to hard drives detected that the platter wasn't turning when power was applied and gave the head motor a few hard jolts to try to unstick it. A common last ditch effort was to whack one of the edges of the drive smartly on a table to free up the heads. Another was to put the drive in a freezer for a couple of days.

 

. . . . . Your lesson in computer folklore for the day.

 

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I remember backing up the HD to a box of floppy disks, tape drives, and so on.

 

Now I have a "Toaster" USB drive with two slots. I make a back up to the first HD, and then backup the backup to the second one.

 

I also archive a lot on optical disks.

 

In computing, everything seems to eventually go obsolete.

 

startech-unidock3u-usb-3-0-to-sata-ide-hdd-docking-station-2-5-and-3-5_1252469.jpeg

Toaster: Not my picture.

 

I like it because it uses big hard drives, and they seem to be more reliable than the tiny ones they use in the portable USB/HDs. I can keep a drawer full of hard drives and pop them in or out as needed. And with a USB connection, they won't go obsolete very soon anyway.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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[...] I've stored files (mostly pictures) on on-line file hosting sites that have gone under, but that's before they were called "the cloud." Maybe inventing a new name has made the concept more reliable, or at least closer to eternal. Or maybe not.

 

[...]

Depends on the company, the rigor of its systems and internal management, its security and backup systems, and all the usual corporate variables.

 

In theory, a company with rigorous discipline could provide enough redundancy and security to make data loss virtually a thing of the past for its customers -- at least with regard to storage system failure -- there is a world of other possible sources of data compromise/corruption/etc arising from the 'customer' side. A company tasked with simply storing data has an easier security job than their customers who must access, edit, and manipulate the data in various ways at times. The cloud storage company has one set of duties across all customers with little real variability and simpler conditions and tasks allow the imposition of greater discipline. But the end user of the data must occasionally (or often) get his corporate hands into the data and stir it around from time to time and that invites more possibilities for human error.

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I do have a SSD, but not for backups - just as a boot drive. My data / audio drives are all standard HDDs, and I back them up primarily to USB hard drives. While I might occasionally use a thumb drive to transfer data from one machine to another, I'd never want to rely on one (or on a SSD) for long-term storage or archiving.

 

It's kind of sad to see optical disks going the way of floppies, but that does seem to be the way it goes.

 

Someone really does need to give some thought to coming up with a scalable, long-term backup format that will stick around for a while, and that is reliable for long-term storage.

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I remember backing up the HD to a box of floppy disks, tape drives, and so on.

 

Now I have a "Toaster" USB drive with two slots. I make a back up to the first HD, and then backup the backup to the second one.

 

I also archive a lot on optical disks.

 

In computing, everything seems to eventually go obsolete.

 

startech-unidock3u-usb-3-0-to-sata-ide-hdd-docking-station-2-5-and-3-5_1252469.jpeg

Toaster: Not my picture.

 

I like it because it uses big hard drives, and they seem to be more reliable than the tiny ones they use in the portable USB/HDs. I can keep a drawer full of hard drives and pop them in or out as needed. And with a USB connection, they won't go obsolete very soon anyway.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

 

This is what I've begun using as well fairly recently. I like the flexibility of them, and so far, it works really well. I can then store some of the HDs off-site. For me, backing up to "the cloud" (never really did like that phrase, but since it appears to be universally used, so be it) is not a great solution because I have terabytes of data from audio and photos, especially photos, and uploading all that data would take months.

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I considered toasters for a while but had the consideration (imagined I'm sure) of wearing out the hd pins after repeated insert/removal from the toaster. So I went the route of plastic computer bays and plastic trays, just leaving drives in their own dedicated trays for life. I don't even screw them into the trays. Talk about easy removal.

 

Plus the bays are direct connected to the mobos. No intermediate usb etc to slow transfers down. I didn't care much if the bays/trays wore out ... but they never do after 10-15 years.

 

I may still try a toaster for some uses.

 

I have bays/trays for my sata and ide based machines. I also have an old external ide, self-powered bay tray enclosure for popping ide drives in/out and then routing the enclosure via usb. Old skool toaster.

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I don't know if they make them for IDEs.

 

It seems to work so far, but who knows. I've only been doing this for a few months, I think, no more than a year for sure. Very convenient so far, though. I only have USB 2.0 on this computer, although I think the toaster take USB 3.0, so it can be slow going, but if need be, I just let the thing back up while I make dinner or go about my business, and it works flawlessly if not lightning fast.

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I think they are SATA only. You might try BandH, NewEgg or Tiger Direct. If they don't have IDE I doubt if anyone does.

 

I've been using mine for a few years now and I have one on each computer (my wife's too). I got frustrated with those tiny little USB hard drives failing on me. The 3.5" internal drives go a long time between failures in computers, so they should last a long time in the toaster. And you can get a TB of storage for under $50.

 

Plus having two bays makes it easy to clone them. I use Microsoft SyncToy for that. Run it and it updates the second drive to match the first. Having two copies of backup data is much better than one.

 

I do pack them in static resistant wrap before putting them in a drawer, and I keep copies of essential data off-site.

 

I also apply Caig DeOxit Gold to the contacts. It's a contact enhancer and it also acts like a lube. I live in corrosion world and my PA Rack, studio connections, guitar cables, and everything else gets an occasional dose of it. It cuts down my connection problems quite a bit.

 

I highly recommend them (for whatever that is worth) ;)

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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Maybe it's just me... but I trust the longevity of my burned CD's/DVD's more than I trust the longevity of my 2 little external TOSHIBA hard-drives. Even though, of course, the largest DVD's only hold-- what-- 8 gigs, while my my Toshibas hold a Terabyte each.

 

I always--- from the git-go--- thought that The Cloud was a daft idea, and still do. More than a "convenience", I always viewed it as a crass attempt of larger entities to infiltrate and view all your sh*t. idk.gif For marketing reasons of their own... that were not necessarily for YOUR benefit. I also figured it would take nothing at all... to obliterate/lose the data you store there. I also think softwares that are rented to you monthly... and require you to establish an ongoing "cloud" relationship with the "mothership" are just conniving bullsh*t. Is it just me who doesn't want to establish some kind of chummy "relationship" with a corporate entity (ADOBE, I'm talking to you).smiley-angry018.gif

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I'm finding these only for SATA drives...has anyone seen one that handles IDE?

 

If the these you're asking about is what Ken called a "toaster," no, they're only for SATA drives. I think it's because, since it's only a few pins, the connector is cheap and there isn't much insertion or removal force. The same sort of thing is also available in the form factor of a CD/DVD drive that's intended to be mounted in a desktop computer case and that you can just shove a bare drive into. I've been thinking of getting one of those for my workshop computer so I can run Windows 7, Windows XP, or Linux just by swapping drives and not have to mess with multiple boot partitions.

 

My Mackie hard disk recorders use IDE drives in a Lian Li mobile rack. I mounted the docking part in a USB/Firewire 5-1/4" drive case (a hard-to-find item these days) so I can move files easily between the Mackie and a computer, or back them up to CD or DVD.

 

For my IDE drives, I use an adapter which consists of a block with an IDE connector on one side and a SATA connector on the other side, and a cable with a USB plug to connect to a computer. I think that cost about $15 at Micro Center and has been really handy over the years.

 

 

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For my IDE drives, I use an adapter which consists of a block with an IDE connector on one side and a SATA connector on the other side, and a cable with a USB plug to connect to a computer. I think that cost about $15 at Micro Center and has been really handy over the years.

 

Thanks, I'll check that out. For now I have external USB drives with IDE connectors. They work, but it would be great to be able to copy from one to another.

 

 

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Maybe it's just me... but I trust the longevity of my burned CD's/DVD's more than I trust the longevity of my 2 little external TOSHIBA hard-drives. Even though, of course, the largest DVD's only hold-- what-- 8 gigs, while my my Toshibas hold a Terabyte each.

 

It's not just you :). I've had multiple hard drives fail over the years. I have yet to have a CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray ROM fail to read, and some of these go back decades...although I do have some commercial audio CDs with pinholes.

 

I always--- from the git-go--- thought that The Cloud was a daft idea, and still do.

 

If you can access the data, other people can access the data. Although I do think "cloud" is an appropriate name...they come and go. :)

 

 

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