OT: Advice about CD RWs

[Starhawk]

Hey all I may need to wipe my hard drive in the near future but I have a LOT of stuff on it that is to near and dear to my heart to watch get wiped away with it and I need to get some CD:RWs but I need to know what kind to get for .zip files, which is what all the important things on my computer are currently saved as.

As I said .zip files, I need to know what kind of CD:RW to get because to my suprise there was more then one type lol.

[El_Phil]

Fear the CD-RW! Unreliable beasts. If at all possible try and borrow a drive off a mate and copy them there. Or use CD-Rs, but so many mates have so many problems with CD-RWs that I wouldn't trust anything important to them.

Just my 2p(or 4cents) worth.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Always check your CD after writing to see that it actually got writ.

[Starhawk]

El_Phil said:
Fear the CD-RW! Unreliable beasts. If at all possible try and borrow a drive off a mate and copy them there. Or use CD-Rs, but so many mates have so many problems with CD-RWs that I wouldn't trust anything important to them.

Just my 2p(or 4cents) worth.



Oh I plan to ensure that everything is saved trust me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif but I have friends that constantly put things on CD-RWs including picutres, uh though I do know some folks who no matter what CD-RW they got it was "blank" turns out they just didn't have the proper software to begin with....though it took them long enough to realize it lol.

[El_Phil]

It's not just problems copying, its the fact they are much more prone to suddenly stopping working or developing errors for no real reason. A CD-RW may work perfectly, you check it, do your wiping and then come back to it and its developed errors whilst sitting in its case.

Their fairly flaky and the problems are inherent in the technology. I'll take something I trust over the re-use. Besides I've still got a big stack of unused CD-Rs as I rarely use them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[NullAshton]

CD-R's are cheap, so just use them.

[tesco samoa]

Get some TY's They are the best on the market for realiable back ups. Do not go to BB and buy the cheapest Mitsumi ones.

TY or the japanesse Maxells are very good. I order from a company called www.blankmedia.ca (http://www.blankmedia.ca) I am sure there is one like that in your country that you can order from or a mom and pop store that carries those brands in your area.

TY = TAIYO YUDEN RITEK is also good.

[AngleWyrm]

Ok one thing is that it doesn't matter what you are putting on the disk. All the stuff is the same to the computer (just ones and zeros), so it doesn't matter if it's a picture, a piece of music, a text file, or movie or anything like that.

So that helps a little about things to think about when getting the disks.

[Starhawk]

Gotcha just plane CD-Rs thanks for the help you guys!

[Fyron]

You can use fewer CDs by using a competent compression algorithm such as RAR, BZ, 7zip, etc. Plain old ZIP is very wasteful.

[Starhawk]

Thanks I'll use win RAR if it's still on my computer.

[Parasite]

Just don't compress the unextractor if you plan on rebuilding your machine from scratch.

[Fyron]

Hehe. I have done exactly that before. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif

[Phoenix-D]

Imperator Fyron said:
Hehe. I have done exactly that before. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/stupid.gif



Ditto.

I've also made the mistake of putting everything in ONE archive.

Said archive then got corrupted.

[Instar]

CD-RW disks can vary, just like other media. I'll wager that most CD-RWs are blasted out with little regard to quality. Also, the burner matters: Plextor > everyone else. The safest bet is an external HD...

[Thermodyne]

IMHO For the time involved, and with drives at dollar a gig, just use a second drive.

CD RW has some issues, and for what you are doing CD R would do the job just fine. Be sure to check the duty cycle on your burner before burning a bunch of disks.

[Starhawk]

Duty cycle? Don't know what you mean by that sorry.

[Suicide Junkie]

Time "on" vs cooldown/idle time required

CDs come out literally "Hot off the presses", and if you are going to be burning 40x CDs for a couple hours, you don't want things to cook inside your burner.

[Starhawk]

Well my Computer is "supposed" to have a built in CD burner in the standard CD-ROM so I figured since my regular CDs tend to get warm if I've had to use them for hours then I wasn't actually planning on burning disks for several hours streight.

Thanks for the advice though it's definately good to know that there is actually something "official" about the whole CD heating up thing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif And actually I think my CD-Rom can go faster then 40x but I don't remember exactly....I may have some other numbers stuck in my head as happens too often.

[Thermodyne]

The duty cycle is the amount of time it can burn cd's. Most std PC burners are 15m/hour. If you abuse the cycle, you will shorten the life of the burner.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I didn't know that.

[Thermodyne]

That's why PC burners are $75 bucks and CD duplicators are $500.

[Fyron]

How would this apply to, say, a 4x DVD burner? It takes quite some time to burn an entire DVD worth of data.

[Thermodyne]

Imperator Fyron said:
How would this apply to, say, a 4x DVD burner? It takes quite some time to burn an entire DVD worth of data.



It would depend on the brand, look for it in the detailed specs (small print). DVD burners are usually much better built; cheap CD burners are made of the stuff that drops from dog butts.