Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Anyone actually use rewriteable media?

<< < (9/9)

Scott:
Scott, have you considered that your experience of DVD and other optical media might be just a tad biased by such an extensive experience in the support field? :D I'll bet you mechanics who work in Honda shops could tell you about millions of stupid problems that happen all the time with Hondas, but they're still demonstrably some of the most reliable cars on the road. Likewise if you look around for opinions on the 'net you'll often find actually *more* complaints about Honda, Toyota, etc. cars than others. The reason however is not because they are more problematic, but because A: more people buy them than a lot of other cars and B: more of those people expect extreme reliability and thus they have higher standards for how reliable their car should be. Some people go a little too far in believing the Honda/Toyota reliability and expect that they should just never have to change oil or even do regular maintenance. :P-JavaJones (May 20, 2006, 02:07 PM)
--- End quote ---
You're right, I am biased.  Biased heavily against current optical technology.  But "biased" doesn't mean "baseless" or "wrong".  It's precisely because I see so many support relating to various storage devices that I know what sucks and what works about each of them.

The Honda/Toyota analogy isn't a fitting one.  That implies I only have opportunity to see support requests relating to CD/DVD drives.  I don't--most customers use hard drives, many of them use external hard drives using IEEE 1394 or USB 2.0 interfaces.  So I'm not a Honda mechanic; I'm a general mechanic (or perhaps more aptly, just an "industry observer" :)) who has taken it all in, and figured out what sucks and what doesn't.  CDs and DVDs really do have more problems.  It's not too often that I see people being advised to upgrade the firmware in their hard drive, or to try writing to it slower, or trying a different platter maker for it.

Even if you could explain away the constant miserable failure and problem rate of CDs and DVDs (which, sorry, you can't), you're still left with the slowness and the miserably-lagging capacities.  Consumer hard drives are very close to reaching the 1-terabyte level, and you're honestly defending 700-MB and 4.37-GB removable media technology?  I wouldn't care if it was dead-nuts reliable, and blazingly fast; I'd still avoid it just because the capacity sucks.  I can't even fit more than about 17 normal-length songs onto a CD, unless I use lossy compression, and then screw around using a compatible playback device for it.  The next-gen (non-)solutions still suck, too.  What are they going to offer, 30- or 50-GB capacities?  The level that tapes and fixed disks had met eons ago?

[M]ost people don't have a lot of large stuff to backup unless they're unsensibly backing up their entire drive, with multi-gigabyte games, applications, etc. installed. So for most people 1 or 2 DVD's should be able to back up their entire system.
--- End quote ---
Well, I back up my entire hard drive, to the tune of around 120 GB (much of it music), and I feel it is completely sensible.  My time is too valuable to me to risk spending on reinstalling applications and all that nonsense.

Still there are many power users like myself, Scott, and others here that do have 10's or even 100's of gigabytes they want to backup, either regularly, or at least once and then do incrementals on it going forward.
--- End quote ---
And if that one original full backup gets lost or damaged, all your incrementals are meaningless, or pretty close to it.

Keep at least 4 generations of backup around.
--- End quote ---
Backing up 120 GB, that's 28 DVDs each.  You think I'm going to store 112 DVDs for backup?  And hope they all work when I need them to?  Despite the fact that a mere plastic CD case is a threat to their very survival?  No thanks!

I actually made the mistake of relying on a DVD backup not too long ago.  The backup was done with a byte-for-byte comparison done, meaning that it was stored with definitive accuracy.  Yet, after restoring from it, my system was flaky.  I suspected that something had gone wrong in the restoration process.  So, I restored from an older backup that had been stored on a hard drive (non-shit technology, in layman's terms).  Bingo, everything was fine once again.

And [tapes are] also prone to deterioration over time, although so are CD's and DVD's.
--- End quote ---
Tapes are a lot more stable in storage than DVDs are.

These days you can buy a 200GB [hard] drive for little over $100
--- End quote ---
You can actually get a 320-GB hard drive for very little over $100 ($106 as I write this).

JavaJones:
You're right, I am biased.  Biased heavily against current optical technology.  But "biased" doesn't mean "baseless" or "wrong".  It's precisely because I see so many support relating to various storage devices that I know what sucks and what works about each of them.
--- End quote ---
Bias implies prejudice or impartiality. It doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does call your conclusions immediately into question, as opposed to a more even-handed presentation of pluses and minises of different approaches.

In general I agree with you though re: CD and DVD media, mostly in terms of capacity and speed though. As a private computer support technician for the last 8 years I think I've seem my fair share of the ups and downs of writing CD's and DVD's from a customer's perspective. I can tell you that very few of the calls I've had have related to difficulties with burning. I've watched the industry in general and yes there are probably more issues than there should be. But for the most part things do seem to work, as long as people aren't expecting too much of the systems.

All that being said again I agree that things can and should be better, and that optical discs are not the best for backing up data larger than a few GB at most. But again it's questionable how many people really have that much data to backup, too. Most people get their music already in a lossless format these days anyway, or don't know how to rip to a lossless format, or wouldn't likely care even if given the option.

Ultimately it's all a matter of who the customer is and what their needs are. *Everyone* should be doing backup, but the vast majority of people don't need to backup their entire drive like you do. Even if many of your customers want that, I don't think a large percentage of people really need that. Part of an effective backup scheme is also determinig what is really worth backing up - how much hassle and cost is involved with every extra GB that you backup, and how much the data you're backing up is worth in return. Obviously there are other factors like the time involved and how much that's worth to you. Clearly for you your time is a big concern. For others it may not be. Neither perspective is right or wrong, just different needs and priorities. I tend to concentrate on what the average person needs, but if anyone asks me for advice on their particular situation it's vital to get good information about their particular needs. Giving advice like "DVD sucks" as a blanket response isn't really very productive as it may be an ideal solution for their needs. Not that you said that per se, but your response could easily be perceived that way. I don't suppose that would bother you, but it bothers me. I hope you'll forgive me. ;)

Still there are many power users like myself, Scott, and others here that do have 10's or even 100's of gigabytes they want to backup, either regularly, or at least once and then do incrementals on it going forward.

--- End quote ---
And if that one original full backup gets lost or damaged, all your incrementals are meaningless, or pretty close to it.
--- End quote ---
Er, well I don't know about anyone else but I do a new full backup every 5 incrementals. That's only sensible. I use Cobian Backup and it serves me quite well. Lots of options and nicely free. :)

Backing up 120 GB, that's 28 DVDs each.  You think I'm going to store 112 DVDs for backup?  And hope they all work when I need them to?  Despite the fact that a mere plastic CD case is a threat to their very survival?  No thanks!
--- End quote ---
No, of course not. I don't think I ever suggested you personally should use DVD. I do think your backup needs are a bit larger in scope than most people however.

Tapes are a lot more stable in storage than DVDs are.
--- End quote ---
Yes, that's true. But both are subject to deterioration. Just something that people should keep in mind.

You can actually get a 320-GB hard drive for very little over $100 ($106 as I write this).
--- End quote ---
God bless the arrival of SATA and various space-increasing technologies. We're down to 30c/GB! :D Still, you wouldn't want to just buy the drive and toss it into your machine and leave it there to backup to. If you get a virus it can easily infect both drives and kill data anywhere on the system. Power issues can still affect both (yes, even a good surge protector can be compromised/fail). And the more it runs, the closer it will get to failure. You really want an external drive, which is an additional cost, or a removable drive, again a bit more cost. Yes it's still very cheap! I would definitely recommend HD backup for those who need to backup anything more than what would fit on say 2 DVD's. But I don't think that is most people. That's all I'm really saying. Oh, and that CD's/DVD's aren't so bad either. :D

- Oshyan

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page