ewm@mdavcr.UUCP (Eric W. Mitchel) (07/18/90)
In article <1990Jul17.061409.23165@Neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.stanford.edu writes: >I heard somewhere that a European company was working on an erasable OD >that would also be able to play CD ROMs (and presumably music CDs). This >sounds like something worth waiting for. Does anyone have information on >this? Well, this isn't quite the issue, but your comment brought up a tidbit that I have heard recently: I have heard that Yamaha has been working on a WORM drive that writes on standard CDROM platters. These can then be read in normal CDROM read-only drives. They have been talking about release this year. This is significant, because CDROM platters are very cheap (~$5 @), have enormous storage capacity (can you say Gigabyte), and their format is STANDARDIZED. There is not yet an industry standard format for R/W or WORM optical drives, so you are currently taking a chance that whatever vendor you buy from will continue to support your current format. If you are using the optical drive for long term (years?) incremental backups, it is a big risk to use a proprietary storage format. Of course this applies to tapes and other media as well. An added benefit: The bit half life on WORM drives is measured in at least decades, where that of tapes is often less than 5 years (or even less than 1 year on some reel systems). Unless you refresh your tapes annually, you may well have a great mass of nothing on those shelves. Eric ============================================================================= Disclaimer: I make no promises. Hell, I'm wrong all the time. I also lie.
careyk@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Carey Kinoshita) (11/29/90)
I am thinking of backing up a lot of data by using a WORM drive. I am thinking of renting a WORM drive and storing all my data on Write-Once Optical Discs. Since in the future I plan to restore the data, I have to choose a WORM drive format that is widely available and would be in the future. I was wondering is there a international or united states standard for WORM formats? If not, what format & drive is the most prevalent in the United States? I also had a question about Optical Magneto Discs. If you take once of those discs and expose it to a professional cassette tape eraser, would the data on the disc become corrupted or would the disc have to be heated to be erased? I am primarily concerned with people sabotaging archived data without me knowing it and am trying to find the best way to archive the data. Thanks.
dwade@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Doug Wade) (03/20/91)
You don't hear much about WORM drives anymore in the magazines -- everybody's interested in the erasables. I am currently involved, however, in a project where we're going to be saving 10 MB/day for years to come. It is apparent that SyQuest drives get expensive in less than a year even compared to erasables, and tape is an option but not all it might be. The erasable optical drives and WORM are equally good for my application, but I don't need erasability and I assume that erasables are more expensive. Can somebody give me an idea of who is making WORM drives for the Mac, including drive cost and disc cost? .sig==header