Hi there,

oh well, I did lose some hard disks, too. But in relation to the added hours of operation of all HDDs I've used so far, the risk seems considerably lower than with USB memory sticks. Flash memory technology has improved greatly, no doubt. About 3..5 years ago, it was yet optimistic to expect a "lifetime" of more than a few thousand write cycles. Today, the memory chips, together with clever logics in their controllers, last up to a hundred times longer.

CDs are a sore spot, I agree. Not only are they sensitive to scratches, as you mention, but also to excessive aging when they're exposed to daylight (AFAIK it's the ultraviolet radiation that kills them). Just leave a CD-R lying around uncovered for four weeks, and it's gonna be garbage. CD-RWs are a lot more resistant to UV, and DVD-R/RW seem more robust, too, though I haven't too much experience with them.

Hard disks, however, usually last many years. I routinely take them out of service after 4..7 years (depending on how much they're stressed in operation), but usually they still work like a charm after that time, only I don't want to trust them any more. All five HDD failures I had during the last 25 years occurred within the first 18 months.

And like many people, I learned the hard way that it's not a luxury to make regular backups of your data. ;-)

[X] Doc CPU

Really! I'll keep that in mind, but I assume it's only the side with the data that's vulnerable to daylight, which would mean that a CD-R in broad daylight would be damaged only if I left it data-side up?

Hi there,

no, not quite. Even if they lie face down, they slowly oxidate from the edge towards the center. Of course the process is slower than if you'd put them face up, but it's still a threat.

If you're willing to sacrifice some CD-R's for the sake of arts, deposit them in different positions.
Put one on the table, recording side up, and it'll soon turn into a a copper-bronze-brown kind of color.
Put one face down on the table, and its data side will turn brown from the edge.
Put one face up, and cover it partially with an odd-shaped object (a key, for example), and it'll show that object's shape in two or three weeks.

It's funny as long as you don't use CD-R's with precious data on them.

The first-generation CD-R's with real gold plating were nearly immune to that, but today's media have various kinds of organic dye which slowly ages (oxidates) after the actual burn process. Apparently, the green dyes are most critical, the blue ones (usually AZO dyes) are a bit more robust.

[X] Doc CPU

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Not danergous (depending won what you call dangerous anyway).....but still not a great idea. All you need is one unclean shutdown and your data can be compromised or lost.

HDDs are a lot more reliable than USB flash drives.

Buy an internal HDD, run your OS + programs from that, backup data to USB flash drives. Its faster and safer in every way.

Surely that depends upon how you are using the USB sticks?
I could see myself sticking a few live CDs on USB sticks and running some distros like that without bothering to take them out of my PC all the time just for the sake of it.
I agree that having USB memory sticks sticks plugged in, mounted and in use all the time is a little more risky than doing the same with hard drives but simply having a bunch of bootable USB sticks doing nothing in your USB ports is not likely to do any harm.
Heck, if you want a portable Linux like Puppy you've got no choice but to put it on a USB stick if you want persistence unless you're got large pockets .

I dont see any real problems with running a liveUSB....what I see as a bigger problem is using nothing but USB sticks for all data.

It wont do any harm (apart from higher exposure to possible data problems), but it can make life more difficult, even if its just the 'which USB stick is which' problem from post #1.