Legacy 2 Go

[Slamman]

Floppy disks in both form factors, I finally got an old 5 and a quarter IBM drive after more then a year looking, and it's installed on one of my retrofit PCs!! I kid you not. I should doc it for YouTube in fact

[Fozzy Fozborne]

What do you guys think about optical drives? Consider That 1.5TB hard drives can be had for $99 shipped and then consider the cost of CD's, DVD's, and Blu Ray Discs.

 

As benchmarks, 20 cents/DVD ($20 for a 100 pack)

10 cents/CD ($10 for a 100 pack)

5 dollars/BluRay ($25 for a 5 pack)

and

4.38 gigs/DVD-R

.7 gigs/CD-R

25 gigs/BD-R

 

For a $100 investment, you could have:

1350[ish] gigs of hard drive space [after formatting]

21.3 gigs on 100 DVDs

7 Gigs on 100 CDs

100Gigs on 4 BluRays

 

 

**Prices based on approximate averages. I found $25 CD 100 Packs and $30+ 100 DVD packs along with $8+ single BluRay discs, so that only improves the value aspect of hard drives.

 

It just definitely seems to me that optical discs will soon go the way of the floppy, ZIP, and tape drives (for personal PC use, anyway, obviously tape drives are still used in business backups).

Also factor in convenience! How much nicer is all that data in your computer rather than hunting through discs? Also speed on optical discs is painfully slow compared to HDDs.

Edited November 24, 2009 by Fozzy Fozborne

[poopskin]

i'd still like to have my media tangible, what if the HD fails?

[Fozzy Fozborne]

That's a very good point, but for the same $100, you could get 2 500 gig drives and run a backup.

 

Also don't forget that DVDs and CDs get scratched and burned ones do eventually fail. Say you left a DVD out on a window sill on a hot day. It might seem far-fetched but if your computer is right next to a window... and accidents do happen.

[SWEETSAPRIK]

For storing all my data, even backing it up, HDs. Because with any other form of media I'd take a closet full of them.

 

For moving that data somewhere else, probably a flashdrive. Because I don't want to have to carry a f*cking HD with me where ever I go. But that's assuming I'm going to copy/move it over, then leave with my flashdrive.

 

Anytime I want to give someone else that data, and not have to supervise, optical. Mostly because I can give it to them, mail it to them, etc. and not care what happens to it. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

 

People have been saying "optical is dying" for years, usually talking about DVDs/CDs and such. I've yet to see any proof of that. I guess time will tell.

[Otter]

My personal track record - I've never had a hard drive fail on me. I've had about 20% of my DVD backups (5+ years old) fail or become unreadable over time.

 

With a slow read on a system at work, I can recover some of the files, but this is comparable to data retrieval. HDs are quite reliable, or have been for me.

 

My travel option is a portable 2.5inch 500GB that fits nicely in my coat pocket and is powered by USB. It's fantastic.

[leik oh em jeez!]

Why not take a hard disk platter and turn it into a removable media device? Similar to floppy disk, but with a hard drive platter? You could get what, like 250Gb out of a 2.5in? And, like a floppy disk, it would have a protective casing to prevent scratches.

[Slamman]

The man behind the pioneering effort of optical disc and Laserdisc, he proposed that future media would be on tape again, but holographic tape if memory serves. His idea may have just been ill-proposed, or too far ahead of it's time. Remember that classic film with Christopher Walken? BrainStorm? IIRC, a mylar looking tape fed into the brain via some virtual reality type gear, it seemed a bit of a precursor of something used to deliver data in a different way.

 

When I look for used NOS media, I'm finding literally boxes and boxes of 3 and half inch diskettes! I bought a few, but it's over kill, the capacity is so woefull!

[poopskin]

Part of me just thinks it's weird imagining having all my program install stuff being...intangible.

[Slamman]

My school media from 1988 was Targa related, I wanted to find an emulator or something to examine the stored content (on a floppy, of course) but I think Quicktime, with the right support was the only way to convert them to something like Bitmaps. Maybe it was XnView, but there are just some outdated file structures, etc. PS/2 IBMs I believe, in 78/88, they didn't last too long, or become a success. Except where the "new" adoption of the PS/2 mouse and keyboard were concerned