# Has Optical Media Lost Its Charm?



## RCuber (Aug 25, 2008)

I wanted to debate on this for a very long time.. I am sick of the quality of the drives and media which are comming these days.. Drives work for 3-4 month and the the trouble starts. and DVD-R/+R's are pathetic.. even if I give more money.. I cannot get the quality. I have totally lost trust on them. CD-R's are at a much better level and are more reliable.. buy we hardly use it now a days. The only problem concerning me is the Windows OS installation discs.. and I have the originals which work fine. But what abt Linux distros which I download.  

Hard disk storage is a much better option but im now running out of space, I already have 3 internal HDD's totalling to abt 450GB .. and one external HDD whihc is 250 GB. 

On the other hand regarding OS installation .. future motherboards will have on-board OS ( Linux mostly ) Like the ones which are comming out on ASUS boards, With this we can mount the DVD/CD images and then start the installation directly from the HDD this would save us from using optical media.

Media Storage will be taken over by NetDisks and/or Home Media Servers ( im not pointing to WHS ) which would enable one to store all the media at one place (with redundancy if he/she wants) and then shared over the network. 


With the Price per GB rates comming down.. I dont think Optical media has more time to survive.. 

Comming to BluRay.. it does offer high capacity storage but the current cost/GB is too much compated to HDD's. 

Please share your opinion. Let there be a healthy debate.


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## Faun (Aug 25, 2008)

IMO I use pen drives, PMP and HDD as primary source for storage. Considering the price tag, pen drives are more economical for persistent data storage and HDD for long term large data.

CDs and DVDs both fail at times while reading. I hope flash memories will become norm in coming years.

You can always make a USB install CD for most of the distros and some of the distros come with easy installers too.

But the thing is about data storage, I have lost countless data. Of course I used DVDs from Sony, HP and Moser Baer. 

Its been a long time since I reinstalled  my OS. Its simply that it never broke 
And storing data on HDD can be secured from viruses. Use the partition type which windows can't read or simply don't mount the partitions you wont need.

I have two HDDs converted to ext3 format. Just one partition is left as ntfs.

And remember to use a good UPS, coz most of the time HDD fails due to sudden crash or improper shutdown. Whenever there is need to shutdown withing 5 seconds I just do a REISUO to flush all cache and safely umount paritions and remount as read only.

A good ventilation is also required for overheating HDDs, my cabinet is open for that purpose. Anyone can see the HDDs standing erect at the bottom to provide even heat dispersion. 

These simple tips can save you a load of headache.


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## IronManForever (Aug 25, 2008)

Optical Media wont go away anytime soon, dude. The cost per GB simply pawns every other portable media. I realy dont get your idea with this thread but for me optical media is very easy to use and indispensable. Flash memory; Harddisk; all are for different genre.

But yes; failure rates have gone somewhat high when I hear about it; though I personally havent suffered problems much. lucky me!


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## Ethan_Hunt (Aug 25, 2008)

I'd still vouch for optical storage anyday over HDD's.I have so many DVD's burnt over such a long period & that too on those _el cheapo_ & most of them are intact.I usually prefer this media mainly because the amount of data stored on each DVD is 4GB.So even if 1-2 DVD's die I can afford to download them in 2 nights thanks to my 2 Megs internet line.But the biggest pain is transferring onto the media & back to any other medium.

HDD's are the fastest source of storing data & transferring them as well.BUT if I have a HDD full of say 250GB data & suddenly it decides to go kaput on me, then the loss is unbearable.Mind you this has happened to me but fortunately before my 320GB WD could die it gave vital signs of dying.So I promptly spent one whole day backing up all my movies which were 120 odd Gigs onto the DVD's.If it would have just crashed, all my hard work would have gone to waste with zero back up.

This has made me loose all faith in HDD's as a backup source.The larger the size the more chances you stand of loosing valuable data.


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## Rahim (Aug 25, 2008)

I think the debate should be more of convinience and when it comes to reliability HDDs are way behind than opticals and even Flash Drives which gets corrupted if not removed/unmounted properly.
Its like finding "Andhon mein Kaana Raja  "


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## spikygv (Aug 29, 2008)

i got my dvd recorder about 3.5 yrs back. its working fine. . doesnt make noise at all like newer drives. only 2 dvd's at 16x abt 3 yrs back failed ( local ) .. others are all fine and in good working condition. . but i do complain the slow data rate


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