Q: Hard Drive
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Mar 17, 2014 10:54 AMby R.K.Orion,Like everyone else, when buying optical media I pretty much just assumed that it was ll the same, and went with the cheapest name brand I could find. Now it seems that what you're saying is that some of this media is far superior, while the rest of it is, shall we say, junk?
Here are some questions:
1 As far as archival optical media goes, how much are we talking about in terms of dollars and cents? I seem to remember being able to get DVDs for about $10 for 10 or 20. I really don't remember because it's been so long.
2. How about the DVD recorders themselves? Once again, how much? Are they different? Is there a special type you have to get for recording archive worthy optical media? One of the local stores is selling DVD burners raw, meaning unhoused, for about $20.
3. When you get down to cost/gigabyte, it would seem that I might be better off going out and bying a good external HD, like one of those 1TB Hitachi's, copying it to that and then only using it only when I needed to do a critical monthly back up. In fact, consideroing the cost, I suppose I could use one as a dialy backup and the other as a periodic golden backup.
4. Why not USB Flash? I thought I read somewhere that it was supposed to store what it had on it for up to 100 years? I'm not talking about an SSD, I'm talking about the type that's slow.
5. I thought the lasers on DVD recorders tended to have a short life, like about 5000 hours. Do they need to be replaced periodically?
This thread is interesting because in a lot of ways, I never paid much attention to backups before.
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Mar 17, 2014 5:53 PMby MrJavaDeveloper,R.K.Orion wrote:
4. Why not USB Flash? I thought I read somewhere that it was supposed to store what it had on it for up to 100 years? I'm not talking about an SSD, I'm talking about the type that's slow.
Well, according to this link:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_long_can_a_flash_drive_hold_data?#slide=1
A flash drive will hold onto it's content FOREVER!!!!
That link proves the following axiom: You can post anything as fact on the web and have no idea what you're talking about.
The "real" answer, if you google flash memory, is that no one knows exactly how long something would last, exept to say a few years should be expected. Being small, and possibly having unprotected USB connections, what are the odds that such a device might be inadvertently subjected to static electricity, and what effect would that have? What would a static zap do? I could think of a lot of things that might happen.
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Mar 17, 2014 6:27 PMby PlotinusVeritas,R.K.Orion wrote:
1 As far as archival optical media goes, how much are we talking about in terms of dollars and cents? I seem to remember being able to get DVDs for about $10 for 10 or 20. I really don't remember because it's been so long.
2. How about the DVD recorders themselves? Once again, how much? Are they different? Is there a special type you have to get for recording archive worthy optical media? One of the local stores is selling DVD burners raw, meaning unhoused, for about $20.
3. When you get down to cost/gigabyte, it would seem that I might be better off going out and bying a good external HD, like one of those 1TB Hitachi's, copying it to that and then only using it only when I needed to do a critical monthly back up. In fact, consideroing the cost, I suppose I could use one as a dialy backup and the other as a periodic golden backup.
4. Why not USB Flash? I thought I read somewhere that it was supposed to store what it had on it for up to 100 years? I'm not talking about an SSD, I'm talking about the type that's slow.
5. I thought the lasers on DVD recorders tended to have a short life, like about 5000 hours. Do they need to be replaced periodically?
This thread is interesting because in a lot of ways, I never paid much attention to backups before.
1. $40 per 100disk Taiyo Yuden DVD+R (buy on ebay in bulk to save $$)
2. Superdrive is made by Panasonic, general DVD burners NOW are nearly identical in quality.
(Bluray however is another matter).
3. Cost per GB/ TB is irrelevant, professional archival DVD are 100 year disks (some are), HD at best are both magnetically corruptible and you wont see 6-8+ years out of them.
4. Why not USB Flash?.........not a chance. no way.
5. I thought the lasers on DVD recorders tended to have a short life
Doesnt matter one bit......, good DVD burners are $30, cheap thrills.
People look at computers etc. upside down, they worry about their computers......
All computers, any computer is TRASH, are JUNK, are "worthless" ,..... the data created/ saved / etc. is PRICELESS
Worry / concern over a computer is like worrying about a tool belt that built a house and not insuring the priceless house it built.
My 20+ years of data is priceless, my $1000+ Macbook is absolutely "worthless" by comparison.
Though I have tons of hard drives, not a one of them is to be "trusted"
Hard drive failure and handling
The air cushion of air between the platter surface and the head is microscopic, as small as 3 nanometers, meaning bumps, jarring while in operation can cause head crash, scraping off magnetic particles causing internal havoc to the write surface and throwing particles thru the hard drive.
Hard drives are fragile in general, regardless, ... in specific while running hard drives are extremely fragile.
PDF: Bare hard drive handling generic instructions
hard drive moving parts
Some of the common reasons for hard drives to fail:
Infant mortality (due to mfg. defect / build tolerances)
Bad parking (head impact)
Sudden impact (hard drive jarred during operation, heads can bounce)
Electrical surge (fries the controller board, possibly also causing heads to write the wrong data)
Bearing / Motor failure (spindle bearings or motors wear during any and all use, eventually leading to HD failure)
Board failure (controller board failure on bottom of HD)
Bad Sectors (magnetic areas of the platter may become faulty)
General hard drive failure
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Mar 19, 2014 11:00 AMby PlotinusVeritas,Theyre made by JVC, i.e. Matsushita, the company that invented the DVD
JVC developed the first DVD+R DL in 2005.
So if you havent heard of THEM, somethings wrong.
They the industry standard of professional archival DVDs
No,.... local shops only carry junk / trash DVD blank media. Get them on amazon.com or Ebay.
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by Grant Bennet-Alder,Mar 19, 2014 11:15 AM
Grant Bennet-Alder
Mar 19, 2014 11:15 AM
in response to PlotinusVeritas
Level 9
(61,190 points)
Desktops -
Mar 19, 2014 11:37 AMby PlotinusVeritas,Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
The #1 on that list are not archival/ professional DVD, just the "most reliable"
Its good that it lists the "BEST" DVD, but it makes no distinction about archival DVD
of which , on that list , JVC Taiyo Yuden listed as #2, which makes it the #1 Archival by default.
However its impossible to agree with that link claiming Verbatim DVD R are #1, burning many 1000s of DVD, while Verbatim are excellent, they will and do always have a much higher reject rate in burning than do Taiyo Yuden DVD.
The DVD was invented by a consortium of 4 companies. Philips, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba.
correct, My first line was an error, second line states: JVC developed the first DVD+R DL
However the forerunner of the DVD in 1995 , the Super Density (SD) disc in 1993, was developed by Matsushita / JVC
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Mar 19, 2014 11:36 AMby Csound1,PlotinusVeritas wrote:
The DVD was invented by a consortium of 4 companies. Philips, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba.
correct, My first line was an error, second line states: JVC developed the first DVD+R DL
The second line is also erroneous.
The DVD+R format was developed by a coalition of corporations—now known as the DVD+RW Alliance—in mid-2002 (though most of the initial advocacy was from Sony). The DVD+R format competes with the DVD-R format, which is developed by the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum initially did not approve of the DVD+R format and claimed that the DVD+R format was not an official DVD format until January 25, 2008.[1]
In October 2003, it was demonstrated that double layer technology could be used with a DVD+R disc to nearly double the capacity to 8.5 GB per disc. Manufacturers have incorporated this technology into commercial devices since mid-2004.
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Mar 19, 2014 11:47 AMby PlotinusVeritas,JVC developed the first DVD+R DL in 2005
JVC's April 2005 announcement on DVD+RW DL
April 4, 2005
JVC Develops World’s First Single-sided, Dual Layer DVD RW Disc Technology
Newly Developed High Sensitive Recording Film and a New Writing Method “N-Strategy”
Dual Layer DVD RW Disc 8.5GB Disc
Its invention was 2 years prior, its release announcement was in 2005.
DVD-R are an inferior choice for data archiving regardless of quality of mfg. and should not be recommended to users, rather DVD+R.
Use DVD+R for archiving, not DVD-R
Since your data is so valuable, its is a stated necessity that you not purchase low grade retail DVD blank media rather ‘century-disks’ as meant 60+ year or 100+ year professional archival DVD blank media (such as Taiyo Yuden or otherwise). These blank media average only 20% more than consumer level DVD blanks, but are extremely reliable, have an extremely low reject rate of bad blanks, and your valuable data and work is most certainly worth the cost of 100-pack of DVD blanks which are only $15 or so more than the typical blanks.
As to the type of professional DVD blank media: DVD-R is inferior for data preservation for several reasons: error correction, wobble tracking, and writing method. For a DVD to track where it is on the disc, it uses three things: the ‘wobble’ of the data track to tell where it is in the track, the position of the track to tell where it is on the disc, and some additional information where on the disc to tell where the track begins and ends. On –R media, the ATIP is stored as a frequency modulation in the wobble itself; since the wobble changes subtly to encode data, it is impossible to use with the small size of tracks DVD requires, as electric noise in the laser pickup and wobbles introduced by the electric motor spinning the disc, these could easily be read as frequency changes in the real track itself.
On DVD-R this problem had been attempted to be solved by ‘pre-pits’ where spikes in the amplitude of the wobble appear due to pits fully out of phase with the rest of the track (between two spirals of the track, where there is no data). This can be viewed as a simple improvement over CD-R as it makes it easier to track the wobble. This method has one flaw: due to electric noise in the laser pickup, it would be very easy to miss the pre-pit (or read one that wasn’t actually there) if the disc were damaged or spun at fast speeds. DVD-R traded hard to track frequency changes for hard to read wobble-encoded data.
On a DVD+R there is a better write method. Instead of changing the frequency of the wobble, or causing amplitude spikes in the wobble, they use complete phase changes. Where DVD-R’s methods make you choose between either easy wobble tracking or easy ATIP reading, DVD+R method makes it very easy to track the wobble, and also very easy to encode data into the wobble. DVD+R method is called ADIP (Address In Pre-groove).
Now, the third item on the list: how DVD+R discs burn better. ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP stores information about optimum power control settings. DVD-R basically fails on all three accounts because DVD+R simply includes far more information about the media in the ADIP data than DVD-R does in it’s pre-pit data. DVD+R includes four optimum profiles, one for four major burning speeds. Each of these profiles includes optimum power output based on laser wavelength, more precise laser power settings, and other additional information. With this information, any DVD+R burner can far more optimize its burning strategy to fit the media than it can with DVD-R, thereby providing better burns.
DVD+R also gives four times more scratch space for the drive to calibrate the laser on; more space can only improve the calibration quality. So DVD+R media exists to simply produce better burns and protect your data better, which when it comes to data hub archiving is of vital importance.
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Mar 19, 2014 12:11 PMby PlotinusVeritas,Csound1 wrote:
The DVD was invented by a consortium of 4 companies. Philips, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba.
Panasonic is Matsushita Corp.
From 1935 to October 1, 2008 Panasonics name was "Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd."
Matsushita is JVC, is Panasonic.
In March 2008, Matsushita (Panasonic) however, sold off JVC. In 1953, JVC became majority-owned by the Panasonic Corporation, i.e. Matsushita.
All during the development of the DVD, JVC / Panasonic, i.e. Matsushita was one giant Japanese multinational electronics corporation
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Mar 20, 2014 11:26 AMby R.K.Orion,PlotinusVeritas wrote:
Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
The #1 on that list are not archival/ professional DVD, just the "most reliable"
Its good that it lists the "BEST" DVD, but it makes no distinction about archival DVD
of which , on that list , JVC Taiyo Yuden listed as #2, which makes it the #1 Archival by default.
However its impossible to agree with that link claiming Verbatim DVD R are #1, burning many 1000s of DVD, while Verbatim are excellent, they will and do always have a much higher reject rate in burning than do Taiyo Yuden DVD.
It sounds to me like what you're saying is that many think optical drives and media suck, not because they're really bad, but rather because the media makers themselves are producing such rubbish that they don't work properly.
I'm not in any position to argue for or against that, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Why would media makers deliberately produce trash products, products so bad that some manufacturers start pulling optical units out of their systems because they appear to be unreliable when some of your data implies the media can be made to be reliable at a relatively low cost. This practice would basically be an exercise in self destruciton.
