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Anyone actually use rewriteable media?

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Jimdoria:
Wow, all this time I thought it was just ME that couldn't get CD-RW to work!  :o The promise of CD-RW was always that you could use it more or less like a big floppy disk. I've NEVER had that kind of experience. Has anyone?  :-[

I've tried on many different systems with many different drives and a few different packages (Nero's InCD, the Roxio thingy, etc.) I always suspected I was missing some major piece of the big picture or was just having a really long string of bad luck. I couldn't believe that a technology as ubiquitous as CD-RW could be so flaky, unreliable, incompatible and flat-out difficult to use.

In fact, I still don't get it. How can they keep selling CD/RW disks and drives if EVERYONE has these kinds of problems using it? It seems like the technology would have choked on its own bile by now. Are people just buying them and using them like CD-Rs because they don't know the difference?

superboyac:
No kidding, I felt the same way.  basically, if cdrw or dvdrw can't work like exactly like the old floppy drives, it's not worth it to me.  As in drag and drop, copy, delete, normal file management stuff...if it can't do that, forget it.  I don't really want to use nero or roxio software to us a rw disc.  If I'm going to go through the whole burning process, I'll just use regular media.  That's why people use the thumbdrives, it just acts like a normal disc drive.

I'm actually kind of surprised that through the years, no good removable rewriteable storage device became popular.  I know zip disks were pretty popular for a while, but they are pretty much done now.  Thumbdrives are everywhere, but it's not really the same as a high capacity disk drive with cheap disks.  Something like minidiscs are cool, but that never took off in the US.  Don't you think it would be cool to have a stable, rewriteable media with cheap floppy-diskish prices?

There's a company, Addonics, that offers a solution for swapping hard drives back and forth that is cool (this is kind of off topic).  They have encolsures that kind slide into a regular 5.25" bay, but the cool thing is that when you pull one of them out, you can also use the encloure as a usb or firewire drive.  How cool is that?!  Double the pleasure, double the fun!

longrun:
I use DVD+RW and reuse repeatedly without problems. I hate sending CD's or DVD's to the landfill.

tomos:
I'm actually using CDRWs :-[    Well amongst others! :P

Im interested to hear how other people backup stuff cause Ive learnt to use computers myself & at times can be plain ignorant of, oh well, lots !! - I'll tell you my situation:

I work on maybe 100 drawings at a time, ends up being a lot more files cause as I correct them I save as a new file.
These I back up on a couple of disks of which I try to keep at least one fairly current copy "off the premises" (you never know ..)

I use nero (express I think its called - Im not at home now so cant check) Its the simple interface anyways (came with the burner)
I either simply click on make "datei Disk" (literally "file" - its in german) & it updates\synchronises data on disk with equivalent on harddisk. 
Or I save contents (nero) file after burning & open that for next backup.
I dont know how trustworthy these are, esp. the second option.
Every now & again I copy disk to regular CD for "snapshot".

Are there other options?
Software, hardware ??
as I usually work on the one computer Ive never gotten a USB stick - are they fairly dependable ? - could be an option for "current work". (in the past Ive used a zip drive, I guess stick is just much more convenient version of  same).
I usually have finished jobs or "jobs on a break" on DVD or CD anyways.

The CDRWs I use are Octron (ancient by now) & intensto & I dont have many - (keep reusing them (!)) mostly without problems - if there is a problem i just use a different disk for that backup  & format the problem one (~ 45seconds b.t.w.)

thanks for any advice tips links etc, tom

mouser:
tomos, you might want to read our power-user backup guide:
https://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/BackUpGuide/index.html

usb stick drives are quite nice.

don't depend on a dvd (or anything really) lasting forever... your best bet is redundant copies - don't depend on any one single backup device for your most critical files.

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