[SOLVED] why industry destroying/phasing out optical storage? I can't afford/trust some other physical media
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the CD is not "big" enough to store anything, and actually an OS like MS Windows, or a software like LibreOffice do not really fit on a DVD. By using an SSD, you can get much more storage capacity (space) within a smaller (space) area - not to speak about the speed.
Additionally we have a lot of remote storage in the cloud (space?), we do not need to keep these things at home any more. You cannot put an optical device into a smartphone.
When you say Libreoffice maybe you mean a version of Microsoft office 365(about 3gb+ for some versions)? :-) I've noticed android SDK and Visual Studio SDKs can get pretty huge with .net+libraries
Last edited by rico001; 04-24-2024 at 11:12 AM.
Reason: typo
A lot of drive or disk failures were dust related. In you operate in a clean room you should be good . I found optical sensors picked up dust when a drive was open, and over as few years, scratches appear on the lens. Dust also got on optical surfaces when things were put down. I don't rate them.
Just because you bought a dodgy usb key, don't give up on spinning rust, SSDs or any other form of conventional drive. There's a reason your optical drive you revere has an ISA bus: Not many agree with you!
I recently had to discard a bunch of CDs which I had written in the late 90s/early 2000s because they had become unreadable.
What color were the CDs? At one time, it was a way to tell the quality of the CD-R. Gold/Silver was considered good, while green/blue were the cheap CDs.
What color were the CDs? At one time, it was a way to tell the quality of the CD-R. Gold/Silver was considered good, while green/blue were the cheap CDs.
It didn't seem to have made any difference here. It was probably more likely because I used to write them at the fastest speeds my hardware could handle.
I recently had to discard a bunch of CDs which I had written in the late 90s/early 2000s because they had become unreadable.
The first generation of CD-Rs used Cyanine dye, and didn't last long. Phthalocyanine and azo dyes are much more durable.
However, both CD-Rs and writable DVDs degrade rather quickly if exposed to sunlight. The reflective layer of a CD-R also tends to flake off if exposed to humidity.
The first generation of CD-Rs used Cyanine dye, and didn't last long. Phthalocyanine and azo dyes are much more durable.
However, both CD-Rs and writable DVDs degrade rather quickly if exposed to sunlight. The reflective layer of a CD-R also tends to flake off if exposed to humidity.
No matter WHAT your media, there is always an advantage in storing it cool, dark, and dry.
IMHO, the dyes matter less. Optical media are exposed to anywhere they are stored; HDDs & SSDs are enclosed; NVMEs are not affected by normal dust and hard to get at. There's also the fact that in a 4.7GB optical dvd, I could fit 4-6×2TB nvmes.
I don't think they'll die, due to audio & film or series demand for merchandise. So writers & readers will exist. To me, your penchant for optical storage is a bit like the valve/transistor thing in the 1960s. Responsible persisted in specifying valves for audio (and indeed some tv parts) long after transistors had proven themselves superior & better at the job. They never woke up & smelled the coffee.
It is common knowledge in the industry that the Cyanine dye degraded quite quickly. It was only used early on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by business_kid
Optical media are exposed to anywhere they are stored;
You can simply store them in a box and make sure it isn't subjected to high temperatures.
UV is the issue. I accidentally left a box of blank CD-Rs sitting on the window sill for over a year, and I was sure they were ruined. But it turned out that the transparent plastic box must have excellent UV blocking properties, because they were fine. A few discs left beside the box were visibly discoloured and unusable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by business_kid
HDDs & SSDs are enclosed; NVMEs are not affected by normal dust and hard to get at.
HDDs are quite durable but as I mentioned earlier, consumer-grade SSDs and NVMEs are rated for 1 year of offline storage, no more. After that, electron leakage means you absolutely will lose data.
Flash memory simply isn't an offline storage medium.
Because consumer-grade flash memory with multi-level cells are rated for offline storage for no more than one year.
And USB sticks don't even have proper controllers to manage the cells. Even if a USB stick is left plugged in, you should expect to lose data to electron leakage after about a year.
I got a usb 2.0 stick from store today... Not performing well. I think usb standards are up to 3.2... ...5/5/2024 had a hardware error will try reformat... Update: works ok after reformat ex4
Cost of CD/DVD 35cents; Cost of thumb drive/micro-ssd : too much $10+; An idea might be to buy used old computers/get for free from people.
To return to the same basic question: because they are obsolete. The same reason no one makes floppy disks in 8", 5.25", or 3.5" any more: there is no market for them that justifies the cost to tool up.
We have better alternatives.
I wish we could resurrect some of the old tech, but it is just not economically viable at scale.
For long time offline storage, flash media is simply out of the question. Same goes for SSDs unless you use enterprise-grade SLC-based disks, and even those are only guaranteed to last 10 years. The humble floppy disk lasts longer than that, and by quite a margin.
Outsourcing storage to "the cloud" just replaces one problem with another. Even if the cloud provider has redundancy, isn't hacked, and doesn't accidentally wipe your data, the company will eventually be bought, or merged, or go bankrupt.
The safest solution is what it's always been: Tape. It's insanely fast (for linear access), standardized (nowadays at least), and a tape in storage will easily last decades. I have an LTO drive and a stack of tapes, but while the tapes are actually quite affordable, the drive certainly isn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wpeckham
I wish we could resurrect some of the old tech, but it is just not economically viable at scale.
It's weird, because floppy disks in all sizes fetch ridiculous prices on eBay. You'd think someone would be able to restart production and make a decent profit when the market is willing to pay $25 for a 10-pack of 3.5" floppies.
By the way, my local stores all still have CD-Rs and DVD-Rs in stock. And I still use them.
I can get a 18TB tape for under $90. That would hold about 60,256,720 floppy disks worth, or about 1498 CDs worth. A CD would have to cost less than $0.07 each to be cost effective as a storage alternative.
For shorter term use, a more reasonable measure, a $6 (often available for $4 to $10 each depending upon ) 8GB USB drive holds about 8G (naturally) and replaces about 12 CDs worth, so CDs could about replace that thumb drive if you were cool with filling your pocket with a dozen of them assuming you could get them for $0.50/disk or less.
Demand is way down for CD media, and there is no sign it will go back up. Painful, I know.
DVD-R is cheaper than CD-R these days, due to supply and demand I assume. BD-R are still kinda spendy and probably will never be cheap.
Another reason laptops don't come with optical drives anymore is people don't buy their software on disk anymore, so they aren't needed. For those that want to write optical disks with a laptop, USB 3.0 is faster than any external optical drive you can buy, so no problem there.
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