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Anyone actually use rewriteable media?

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gjehle:
i've never used a RW CDR or DVDR, never ever since i got my first burner
the write-once media is just dirt cheap, so i dont have to bother about spending time on formatting the RW media

there's only one downside to the USB stick drive thingy
like all flash based storage it ages pretty fast
a single cell (bit) of the flash survives for something like 10000 write cycles, then it dies (the cell, not the whole memory)

compared to a the usual RW media, that's a _very_ long lifespan tho ;)


anyways, a little side note:
all that hype about "boot <XYZ OS> from usb" is non-trivial
eg. for linux you have to use a special filesystem that prevents repeated writes into the same cell by distributing data over the whole memory.
you also have to disable logging facilities like syslogd etc, to prevent (in most cases) useless writes
now if you want to do the same with windows, be my guest and watch your stick age waaay faster

but that's just a little note that basically says: usb drives aren't the solution for everything ;)

Carol Haynes:
Why do people feel the need to use CD-RW and DVD-RW as large floppies with the need to format them???

When I use DVD-RW (I don't bother with CD-RW these days at all - partly because of compataility issues with CD players) I just use it as a standard DVD-R disc. If I want to reuse it I use 'Quick Erase' which only takes a few seconds.

As I said before I have only ever had one problem disc (so far) and I have been using them for a while now.

I take Mouser's point though - don't rely on a single copy though with any 'burn it yourself' media. Manufacturer's recon they will last for up to 100 years but there just isn't enough data on lifespan of the dyes yet as any aging tests depend on artificial aging which is bound to be different to real aging! Personally I think a 10 year expectation is probably reasonable as the technology won't be around much by that time anyway.

Having said that I still use some floppy discs, music cassettes and VHS videos - some of which are up to 15 years old and I very rarely find problems with them.

Anyone see the article today about TDK producing a 200Gb Blu-ray disc? Now that could solve all my backup problems - shame they will probably be more expensive than the average hard disc for the forseeable future! (http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7467.cfm)

superboyac:
Wow, these blu-ray discs are incredible.  That storage capacity is enormous!  I can't wait until I move my backups to them, they'll fit on just a handful of discs.  I got my first dvd-burner last year, so it usually takes me a few years to get the latest burning technology.

But what do people have to backup that takes up so much space?  Besides video and music, everything else I have can fit on one dvd.

Tinman57:
  Back when I used CDRW media, I too found that it was prone to errors.  I also found that anti-virus software will corrupt the data if running in the background while writing to CDRW.  And there are other programs/Apps that interfere with CDRW media as well.

  Since I have upgraded to DVD media, I have never got an error on any of my DVDRW's, even with the anti-virus running in the background.

  One of the biggest factors with CDRW media is the type of media your using.  Some brands/colors of media will work fine with certain brands of CD writers and fail on others.  The trick is to find the brand of CDRW media that works best for your particular CD writer.  Most all CD writers have a list of media that is suggested for use.

  And don't forget, match the speed of the media to the writer.  Don't use 40X media on a  32X CD writer.  Shut down un-needed background task, especially anti-virus.  And never ever have more than 1 CD authoring software installed on your computer at a time.  INCD and Roxio, or any other brand of writing software installed on the same machine will make lots of trouble.

  There are many tricks and tweaks for CDRW drives that can be found all over the internet....

Rover:
just tried recording a TV show on DVD RW.  it recorded fine, but my DVD player wouldn't read it.  Bleh on RW.  >:(

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