Can DVD+RW be used as live backup?
 

I am wondering if a DVDRW can be used as, let's say, a USB stick and allow me to cp files or rm them at will as long as it is mounted through shell commands.

Or is a USB stick more favorable.

I would use a USB flash drives over CDRW/DVDRWs.

I do not know the current state but you can write to a CD/DVD like a floppy drive via UDF packet writing.

Yeah in the back of my mind it seemed more practical... I was just being cheap to not buy a USB Stick... Ah well I am sure there are Holiday deals... Not that they are $$ in the first place but I'd also want a 64+ Gig.

Speaking of; am I able to mount a single users home to the USB? My point is that in the event my system crashes due to my mishaps, I'd like to not lose the 20 gig World Of Warcraft download as well as my music... I know I can mount /home on its on partition or even separate hard drive but I'd also like the ability to bring this USB stick to various places with me.

I assume this to be no issue but my question more direct would be, let's say I do this and my system crashes and I Reinstall, or even to a new system, can I "add user" to the USB (same user) without it overwriting the existing?

You can mount the drive on another system but to use it as an existing home the UIDs of the users would have to match. Yes, you can reinstall with out overwriting if you manually partition and specify not to format /home.

If your music and WOW stuff is really important than I would want to have multiple backups. One of those can be the flash drive but they do fail.

Thank you Sir.

DVD-RWs and DVD-Rs are also susceptible to disk rot and have limited capacity. A nice USB external would be a better bet and would soon pay for itself.

Is there a difference between a USB stick and a USB HD?

I do have in the range of 1TB of data is not want to lose so I figure a USB HD would be more my liking.

Google will be happy to answer this question.

Maybe a generalized explanation but my intent was some personal opinions about it. Maybe some advantages/disadvantages that someone who sells them would not necessarily mention.

/sigh

Price per gig, mainly. A 500 gig external HD will cost less than a 64 gig stick.

And iirc a hard disk is more resistant to an EMP than a USB stick. ;)

p.s. a stick is easier to smuggle in/out than an external hd. Doesn't apply to your situation I'm sure... just saying.

An external drive may use mechanical platters, flash or other solid state memory. Of those that are flash based may use different memory and wear levelling technology which would make them faster, more reliable and have a better lifespan over a cheap pen drive.

Just like rewritable media suffers from rot, flash memory suffers from data loss too if not powered and mechanical drives eventually wear out.