PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => General Tech Discussion, News & Q&A => Topic started by: mistybear on June 23, 2006, 14:46
-
I'm so glad I bought a stereo with a tape deck, now I think I'll go and buy some more tapes and video tapes as well.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32544
-
I still have VHS tapes that work after 24 years, although the vcr's themselves have all clapped out. Many of my home recorded dvd's conk out on the very first playback - particularly when the reach the halfway mark. That is if they can be initialized at all!
-
Digital tapes for backing up data only last 20 sessions on average. It's amazing how many people think their data is safely backed up, yet the tape they've been using is faulty.
Gill
-
I still have VHS tapes that work after 24 years, although the vcr's themselves have all clapped out. Many of my home recorded dvd's conk out on the very first playback - particularly when the reach the halfway mark. That is if they can be initialized at all!
Yes, the system is quite flaky isn't it, Clive? I have on many occasions recorded a program, and been unable to play it back afterwards, due to the machine refusing to read the disc. It also depends on the quality of the blank media used, and I have found TDK to be among the most reliable, but claims of being able to re-record and erase 1000 times is a complete fallacy.
-
What we really need is something like a solid state memory card, no mechanical moving parts and hopefully they wont degrade.
No doubt big capacity ones at a reasonable price will be available in the near future.
-
It does seem that re-writable media is the least reliable, and most likely to degrade. Does anyone know what the actual difference is, between write once, and re-writable discs? How are they made re-writable?
-
this might help... well put some background on it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc
-
The recording layer in DVD-RW and DVD+RW is not an organic dye, but a special phase change metal alloy, often GeSbTe. The alloy can be switched back and forth between a crystalline phase and an amorphous phase, changing the reflectivity, depending on the power of the laser beam. Data can thus be written, erased and re-written.
That explains it! :grin:
-
nice one!
-
The reliability of these technologies is of great concern when schools are becoming more dependant on computers. Students being asked to back-up their work on disc, what happens if the disc is faulty or it simply doesn't read properly.
Michael did a presentation using Powerpoint at school, when he tried to open the folder it came up "file corrupted". Thought he had gotten an extension, worked for hours after school to redo it, put it on a RW Disc, half of it is missing?
The Dept. of Education has very strict guide lines, computer failure is not an excuse. What if it the school's computer or software?
End result is that he fails.
Releasing these technologies to the general public before the all the bugs have been ironed out is akin to drug companies releasing drugs that haven't been fully tested.
Maybe the end result may not be as deadly but it can have severe consequences none the less.
Don't get me started on the social injustices, what if you can't afford a computer and all the software. Then there is the internet cost on top of that. How does this affect the type of education you receive.
Of course you can spend your lunch times and after school using the schools computers, if you can book ahead and get one. Or I suppose there is the Public Library, here a again you have to book ahead and it's a great place to be doing your assignments.
OK, I'm done. For now. :(
-
Data on CD's only lasts 2 years.
I don't believe that, i have some Kodak cd's i burnt 6years ago with a Yamaha scsi burner , there still fine i still have the burner in my shed somewhere, i could not bring myself to throw it out ,damm thing cost about $650.00 back then and it burnt at a blistering speed of 2X :)
-
the best thing to do with cds to stop getting file corruption is to use a programme that bit for bit checks against the original file, this should stop it. Nero has an inbuilt one if you use windows
-
Bring back the 1.3MB floppy. :evil:
-
yep... just remember dont leave it next to a speaker.
-
Well I have two big 100 disk spools here and probably another fifty or so dvdrws and cdrws in holders scattered around here and there. I backed up so much material when I got out of high school it was becoming a pain to find room to store the disks. Since then I?ve started backing up my data to hard drive. After i left the computer shop a few months back i found myself with a big box of 25 untested hard drives. Spent one night going through them and found out i had about 120gigs of good hard drive space to use in my encloser.
I have 280gigs in this machine that?s just about filled up. On the 80gig there's 45gigs of music, 30gigs of iso files, and other various applications. On the 200gig there's all 9 seasons of stargate sg1, 2 seasons of stargate atlantis, 2 seasons of galactica, 3 seasons of sliders and several other older movies that i couldn't find at the local department store dvd rack. On this machine I have about 40 gigs left to play with. I should probably start dumping stuff on to those spare hard drives to make sure i don't loose anything. But my point in all this is that if i tried to burn all this to dvdrw it would take forever and cost me a good penny in dvdrws. The most cost effective and efficient thing to do is just dump what you?re not going to need to use in the near future on spare hard drives and store them on the shelf.
-
yes, indeed. I have two machines and just dump all my data on the linux one regularly.